Keeping Time

The alarm goes off at 6:30 on Saturday morning because there’s a swim meet we need to be at at 7:30, and my first thought is, “I don’t have time for this.”

At the end of the school year, I asked for Fridays off. Jesse and I have been having an endless conversation about how I WANT to write more, and how I CAN’T write more because there are 40,000 other things that need our attention and also there are bills that need to be paid, and in case anyone thinks otherwise, there ain’t no money in writing. Still, I managed to get Fridays off, and so last night Jesse and I did a little math (Math! On a Friday night! HOW FUN ARE WE?), and I went to bed thinking about how much money I need to make writing to make up for the Fridays I took off so I could write.

Oh, the irony, and also I’m on my last chapter of my second manuscript and it’s terrible. It’s so bad I don’t know why I even bothered with the other chapters.

There are two sentences that I like in the pages and pages I’ve written all week. Two sentences that have a quiet, but strong heartbeat, and even though I’m overwhelmed, even though I am filled with doubt, even though I’m afraid to try, those two sentences are enough for me to sit and sit and sit until I can make those two sentences bloom.

I don’t have time for that, either.

But I brew the coffee, and I wash some fruit, and I wake up the girls, lay their swimsuits and beach towels smelling like sunshine and chlorine on their floor while they take those first deep waking up breaths.

We walk to the pool. I bring along a notebook and a pen just in case I can get a few words down. I didn’t sign up to volunteer for anything because I did the last two weeks, and also I’m terrified of these kinds of situations. Anything organized,  anything involving sports, anything with rules and responsibility is just too much for me, especially on a Saturday. So maybe, I think as I walk through the wet grass, I’ll find some words to write today while Hadley and Harper attempt the butterfly.

And I do get something down. It’s going well, and I’m thinking I might even score a sprinkled Washtenaw donut, because the last two weeks all I got was the old fashioned ones because I was volunteering, and the sprinkled donuts go fast. I don’t want to be the first person – the first parent who isn’t volunteering and has no intention to volunteer – to get a donut. Also, the sprinkled donuts are for the kids, probably.

Still, I hope. One of these kids is going to make a beeline for the donuts, and when that happens, I’ll be right behind them. Maybe I’ll get two. Writing will be so much easier after two donuts, I am sure of it.

“Callie? Do you have any interest in timing?”

Of all the volunteer positions in sports I don’t want to do, it is running the snack shop because of the bees and also I shouldn’t handle any money. Don’t be giving me a dollar and asking for change because I cannot handle that kind of pressure. The other job is timing. Bees don’t seem to care about stop watches, so I’m good there, but timing involves numbers and numbers mean math. Oh, it’s no big deal, you sweet thing, is what you’re thinking. You are going to tell me it’s so easy because all you do is push a cute little button on the stop watch, but let me tell you, that is just a GATEWAY TO THE REAL THING. The next thing I know, you’ll be telling me to “round to the nearest tenth” and I’ll look at you with tears in my eyes and say, “I can stay in at lunch, but I just don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“Uhhhh,” is what I begin to say.

“It’s really easy,” she tells me, and continues to tell me what it is I’m going to do because I’m going to do it. I’m not going to say no for a couple of reasons. First, what donkey says, “No, I have absolutely no interest in timing. What I have an interest in is eating a sprinkled Washtenaw donut and getting some writing done”? Second, I know this person’s father. Well, it’s more that he knew me. When I went to Calvin, her father was the Chaplain, and when he walked the campus he’d say hello, and say our name so cheerfully it was as though he knew me. Those first few months at Calvin when I was so homesick I thought I would die from it, I would sometimes make a detour passed his office in the hopes he’d say hello and I could hear someone call me by my name, and I don’t think there is anything better than hearing a person call your name when you’re in a new town, in a new phase of life, and 100% unsure of what it is you’re doing in it.

“Can I get a donut first?” I ask her.

Turns out, timing is the best job of all the jobs there are at a swim meet. Timing means you get to stand inches away from the swimmers as they take their marks, and timing means you get splashed when they plunge themselves into the water. There is so much power in that water, so much concentration and worry and excitement and suspense in these children’s eyes. I’m not sure of all their names, but I try to tell each of them, “Great job!” I try to scream so they’ll hear, “Go! Go! Go!” I try not to cry when I watch these kids push and kick, making this effort look like art, and trying and trying with no idea what the outcome will be.

Earlier in the summer, I was talking to a parent on Harper’s baseball team. I told her how fun it is to watch her team play, and she told me that she and her husband thought the same thing. Her husband asked one night after a game, “Why is this fun?” I’ve been considering this question for weeks now. I know Jesse and I have a tight schedule when it comes to the activities we put Hadley and Harper in. I know he and I get stressed when there’s too much to do (me, more than him). I know we often find ourselves grimacing at the calendar hanging on the kitchen wall; it’s boxes filled to the brim with activities. I also know that this is fun.

It’s fun because every coach they’ve ever had has enthusiastically welcomed our girls at whatever level they are at, and I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what level Hadley and Harper are at when it comes to any of the sports and activities they attempt. All I know is they want to try, and every coach so far has made them feel like they can try.

It’s fun because when we come late to these events, and we often do, I get to hear from other parents who had very similar mornings when all was going well and then five minutes before we need to be there all hell breaks loose, and we can’t find the goggles, and we haven’t put on sunblock, and the swim cap broke, and where’s the towel, and all parents are screaming, “Why does it take my voice getting to this level for you to listen to me?” Sitting in the bleachers, standing on the sidelines, grouped around the pool, we are all sharing the same story, and it feels like communion, and it makes it so I can keep walking around in this story.

I’m learning more and more (or I’m admitting more and more), that what triggers my anxiety is watching my kids put themselves out there. Will they be good? Will they make friends? Will there be a point where they want to stop trying? When they think to themselves, “I don’t have time for this?” Or will it always remain that no matter what, no matter how hard, no matter the failings, there will be a few memories, a few victories, a few ideas that have heartbeats, and will it be enough for them to try again? This sort of dismay and hope is how I walk around at these things, and it is hard. It’s harder than writing. But I am keeping time with someone who promised she’d make sure I knew what I was doing, and we are talking about our work, and school, and going to Calvin. We are watching our kids, and everyone’s kids, and cheering them on. I am watching the other parents: kneeling down next to the water and screaming, “Push! Push! Push!” as their kid swims, taking photos, helping other kids get to where they need to be, handing out donuts, writing on score cards. I listen as the coach tells us, “The other team doesn’t have enough volunteers, so we need to help,” and then he says, “We can make this fun.” He and the other coaches high five, give last minute pep talks, joke around with all the kids, and I see at these things that we are all keeping the time.

We are all keeping watch. We are all bearing witness, and it’s not so much that I don’t have time for this, it’s that I am afraid for the definitions that come with taking these risks.

If she scores a goal, does that make her a soccer player? If she stands exactly how she’s supposed to stand at bat, does that make her a ball player? And when she pulls on her swimsuit and yanks on her cap, when she tells me, “I’m swimming a 200,” and I know what she means to say is, “I’m afraid,” and she does it anyway, and she comes in last – so last that the water in the pool has calmed save for the ripples she alone makes, does that make her a swimmer?

Maybe this is all practice for when they become adults, and they are pulled to something that they don’t know if they’ll be good at, if they’ll succeed in, but they can’t help but try anyway. Maybe they will remember these moments and they will say, “I tried all those things, and I am OK, so I can try this, too.”

Maybe keeping times means hearing your name called and pushing against that uncertainty and fear, ignoring the voice that says you could fail, you could make mistakes, and standing up and walking to the edge of the water, ready for children to take their marks; and being willing to try and make yours.