We start the day all dignified-like. A dishtowel in the kitchen hangs over the handle to the stove, and another towel hangs in the bathroom on the hook. Breakfast is eaten, chores are done, dishes are washed.

For now. For at least twelve seconds.

Daddy leaves for work and the school day commences. Three kids are at the table, three kids are all over the place, and my brain starts to scatter. Someone needs help with math, someone needs supervised, someone needs wiped, and someone needs to know if road rash is a compound word, totally separate words, or hyphenated. The laundry needs flipped and the dishwasher needs to be emptied soon and, now that I think about it, I’m not sure if I remembered to turn on the dryer last night. Huh.

The bummer is that I just finished my coffee and this is as alert as I’m going to get until tea time.

There are emails to answer and things that must be researched and decisions that have to be made. Follow-up phone calls and a deadline or two looming. Dust and laundry don’t stop for anyone, and children that just ate an hour ago are still going to ask about the next meal in less than ten minutes. (You feel this, too?)

Aside from the daily agenda, there are so many other things we want to do: grow veggies, harvest herbs, and learn about wild plants growing under our nose on our property. We have forts to build and needlework stitches to practice and several sewing projects in the wings. There are stories to be written and journals to be filled and a million books on our shelves beckoning for a snuggle in a sunbeam on the couch with us.

There is this longing…and you know all about it. I know that you know, because we talk about it often.

And He knows, also, because we talk about it often, too. And He’s right there, reminding me to breathe. Wait, and listen…and He says, One thing at a time. Slow and easy. Take it in small, simple chunks. Little steps.

I corral the little wanderers back downstairs where I can see them. We get math and dishes going simultaneously, and I start stacking plates and bowls and saucers on the counter. They can wait right there.  The laundry can wait. Grammar and spelling can wait. This is life just-one-or-two-things-at-a-time, and I am running, and I can’t do it all at once any more than I can put all of these dishes away at once.

It’s still morning and we are in the thick of it, in the midst of teaching arithmetic, putting away silverware, stepping in a puddle of water, cleaning up a spill with our third dishtowel of the day, stacking pots and pans in the cabinet, throwing my wet socks in the washer, finding someone else’s dirty socks on the floor, putting those in the washer, putting away the last of the dishes, putting new dirty dishes back in the dishwasher, planning lunch, and – ohmygoodness! I just remembered. There’s a child on the potty.

Whoops. I’m pretty sure she’s done by now.

Slowly the list gets checked off. Lots of things wait until after naptime, after bedtime, until tomorrow. Sometimes they wait until next week. But what has to get done is done, and it doesn’t have to be in my time frame.

Or other people’s time frames, either. We finally turned in work samples this week that were due three weeks ago…and then received a gracious note from our contact teacher (who is the sweetest ever) gently reminding us that we could turn in the progress reports any time, as well.

Oh, my word. Completely forgot about those. Coming right up…

I emailed them twenty minutes ago. High five.

Anyway. It’s afternoon, after assignments, everyone is playing. Most of the kids are outside, and Mattie and I are watching Gus attack his nemesis...the dangerous, the loathsome, the terrible…the tiny...lego brick.

It is a lesson on the inefficiency of frantic motion. Watch with us: The ferocious tigah stalks his prey…

Gus crouches, springs at the lego, sends it flying as he skids across the hard floor and – wait a minute! – stops abruptly to lick his paw. Idly looks around again and yowls, confusedly searching for his enemy…aha! Discovers it hiding under a chair. He winds up for a pounce, but suddenly hesitates when he hears us burst out laughing, and stops to look at us with an expression of sudden dignity. We are uninteresting, though, and he remembers the lego piece, leaps on it, and tries to eat it. The dastardly foe is cunning and somehow escapes – our hero races across the room and bats it around the corner, but in his ensuing attempt to follow it he tragically discovers that while the front half of his body is willing, the back part of him is weak…and he spins out, careening wildly, while the lego beats a safe retreat under the piano, never to be seen again.

No matter. He gets up and shakes it off – the enemy has been vanquished from his kingdom and he is victorious.

So much effort, so little accomplished.

I don’t want our days to go like this, though: driven to distraction, frantically spinning, reeling, careening, and then hesitating when I hear the reaction of others. With the front of me willing to start a project, but the back part of me too weak to follow through.

Let me focus. Think for a minute. And then take just the next step.

A step moves us forward, but spinning wheels stay in the same place. We don’t arrive at the mountain top in one leap.

And then he bent his own neck and put the chain upon it, and at once his head was bowed to the ground with the weight of the Ring, as if a great stone had been strung on him. But slowly, as if the weight became less, or new strength grew in him, he raised his head, and then with a great effort got to his feet and found that he could walk and bear his burden.

– JRR Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings

He tells me to focus, and go slow. It takes small steps to conquer the mountain. We may have a musical prodigy on our hands, but we are going to have to learn English first before we astound the world, for crying out loud.

We make it to lunchtime. One child is already excused, one child is in the bathroom, and four children are at the table. It is six dishtowels later and I’m cleaning a puddle of accident to the tune of four children simultaneously requesting seconds, to be excused, to get a drink of water, etc, and Mommy yells a friendly PSA from the bathroom:

“WAIT. YOU CAN ALL WAIT FOR AT LEAST THREE MINUTES. DO NOT SPEAK TO ME UNTIL THE TIMER BEEPS.”

I confess I didn’t actually set a timer. I am the timer, and I refused to beep for several minutes.

And we finally got the dishes done. See?

P.S. Coffee cups don’t count.