Seize the Day!

People always tell me "Enjoy it while it lasts". Referring to the fleeting childhood of my offspring, presumably - but in a bigger, carpe diem interpretation, I take it to mean that life is too precious, and we need to LIVE it. 

I read an article last night, which was shared on Facebook, "it's their day, too", and it was superbly written. Plucked at my mother-heart so intensely, I think every parent/carer needs to read it. It needs to go viral, in all honesty. 

I promise I'm about to join those two thoughts- bear with me? 

This morning, my son and daughter began busily unpacking my cabinets, and giving me a concert with the saucepans and containers. I was tripping over them, trying to make lunches, fielding what seemed to be a zillion questions. You know, just normal stuff. And then, before we left the house, one daughter cleaned up the blocks, including the Very Special Mega Blocks Computer Construction my other daughter had made. We were a bit pressed for time, and she needed to build it again right then, right there. It absolutely could not wait until after school, no matter how I phrased the suggestion. 

In retrospect, and considering that article - building that VSMBCC, it was part of her day. Both times. I could have simply begun putting the others into the car, giving her a couple extra minutes to finish rebuilding. What would it have cost me? I was so fixated on my own agenda, that I forgot about hers. The very thing I get annoyed most about, I was doing to her. 

This morning, my son was busy composing a symphony. My daughter was busy building. They were doing their job, and doing it well. Just because it's play to me doesn't make it unimportant. 

Why don't we encourage children to "seize the day"? 

When do we stop taking play seriously? I watch my children in their play - whether they're singing, drawing, building, digging, swinging, jumping - and they are working hard at it. They take as much pride in learning how to swing independently as I do in a sink with nothing in it (this is in fact an urban legend; it's never happened for me). Why does that have to change? Is it just becoming an adult which makes us a slave to the "to-do"? For that matter, why does the "to-do" never contain things like "make sandcastles with son" or "blow bubbles with daughter"? Why does our Achieve-o-meter require tasks to be done, like "clean shower" or "scrub toilet". I'm not saying that those things aren't important, but I think my point is that I don't want them to be ALL-important. I want to more often seize the day - their day - by loosening my grip on my own. Life IS precious, and fleeting. Too much so to waste on a to-do list which, let's face it - will NEVER be over. I've got four children, and there will always be dishes to wash, laundry to do, weird smells to seek and eliminate. There will not ever again be another today. A day in which they learned how to make music on saucepans, a day in which they built this computer (twice). 

Here's to seizing the day, friends. Theirs too. 

xo, Sarah