I find myself muttering frequently, “why are we all so effing BUSY?”  It’s ridiculous.  It takes 2 hours and 25 texts for 4 women to decide on a mutual night to celebrate a 50th birthday.  FOR.  THE.  LOVE.

I’ve been mulling it over lately and I realized that actually WE are not really busier, but our children are getting older.  All this “new” independence and ages and stages of childhood to adulthood brings entirely new agendas for each kiddo.  Truly it is more a matter of keeping up with all the different lives going on and slowly stepping back and letting them manage their own business.  Gone are the days of laying out clothes or choosing the blind eye to the ensemble hand-picked by independent young’uns and then off to whatever Mama and Papa had planned.  Period end.

Fast forward 18 years, now it is Mama and Papa with their activities and then each kiddo with their own activities.  Add it up and that’s a whole lotta colors on the calendar.  For us, at this point, some of those colors aren’t really our worry.  Some of the colors just involve a little bit of coordination and conversation but not true involvement on the parental unit’s behalf.  It is a strange new world.  One where I have finally decided that I will forego Open House because I have already been to High School, enjoyed it immensely and have ZERO desire to go back.  I do not want to re-live high school through my children’s activities.  This is where they begin to spread their own independent wings and start taking ownership of their business.  They dang sure don’t need me up in their grill stirring the pot of high school drama.  Sometimes that means they screw it up.  Sometimes we have to step back in and re-evaluate the way things are taking place and prioritize and time manage.  A few steps forward and a bunch more backward.  That’s how the baby bird learns to fly, right?  That’s also how we un-busy ourselves a little bit more.

And suddenly WE aren’t as busy, but our kids are starting to lead their own lives and it’s a little scary, a lot new and a whole bunch good.  I just need to keep repeating that to myself.