The Lost Art of Leaving Room

When I was a child, I walked quite a ways to school, not miles, have you, like my mother did, but about half a mile. I was a small child, who was never in a hurry. I walked from 40th Street and Sheridan South to 44th Street and Washburn to St. Thomas the Apostle School, the school I attended starting in the second half of second grade. I walked past Lake Harriet public grade school, where the kids would tease me for being Catholic, and past the bakery on the corner of 43rd and Upton which is now a yuppie flower and accessories type of store across the street from the other flower shop which always was a flower shop. I have fond memories of the once was bakery on that corner, of stepping in on November mornings when I walked to school with my sister and her friends and one of them would buy me a long john with cream filling. Now, that was a way to start the day.

Most of the time, I walked alone, and I walked slow. I dawdled, and this made me perpetually tardy. The word and concept of tardy for me however, meant nothing. This did not seem like a fault or a detriment to my learning and basically, I guess I just didn’t care. How can you rein in time? I was told I was impolite, that classes had started and I disrupted the class when I walked in late, so I would try to hurry, but it just didn’t seem to be in my genes. I would be approaching the playground, walking up what seemed like an insurmountable hill on Upton only to hear the bell ring, and watch all the other little children file into the building. It would be quiet by the time I arrived at the playground, and I’d make my way into the big brick building and find my class and take my seat, trying by this time to be inconspicuous.

I even got a reputation; soon as I made friends at school who walked my same way, they would tell me they couldn’t walk to school with me because I made them late. My dawdling was a bad influence, I guess. Early on I was trying to stop and smell roses, or gaze at the sky, or walk slowly by the bakery and catch the smells. I’d stop by the hardware display case at the glassware they sold, glints of glass sparkling through the window and imagine the gifts I’d buy my mom on mother’s day.

Eventually, I learned to be on time. I learned to show up to keep people from bugging me. People bugging me became as annoying as hurrying. I learned to do well in school, and leave earlier. Soon, I was walking a long way to school, to high school, where being tardy meant more consequences than just a slight reprimand or an exasperated look. High school, as I was taught, was more like the ‘real world’ where you had to buck up, be prompt and above reproach, in every way.

I took a lot of classes and graduated high school in three years. It was a hell for me that I decided to finish as quickly as possible. I believed I wanted to go to college, and so if this was the only way, well, I’d plow through it. Crowded hallways full of pushing kids and teachers assuming we knew nothing was exasperating for me, but I didn’t get to have feelings then, especially about where I spent the better part of most of my life.

In high school I learned the art of skipping. Skipping was an unexcused absence that you somehow found a way to get excused (or not). I learned to fake acting sick for a few days early in the week, making sure the teacher was aware of it, maybe requesting to go to the office saying I wasn’t feeling well, and then skipping the next day, having a friend say they were my mom, or sister and that I was home sick. It was a whole day, a whole day to myself, and if a friend skipped too, a whole day to go shopping or shoot pool or whatever we could find to do. Really, the consequences were minimal, and my friends and I were good students so what was the big deal? What is the big deal with time? Now that I’m finding myself overly busy, I have to ask whose life is this? What are the consequences and who’s going to look askance or be exasperated now if I’m late, or if I skip a meeting?

For a culture that puts a price on everything and measures the amount of pennies saved or spent on ‘special deals just for you’ I think we are overlooking the cost we pay for being overly busy. There is no monetary value assessed here, so maybe we don’t know how dear a price we are paying, but I feel it in my bones. I feel that the price I am paying for being too busy is losing the beauty of each moment; I’m losing the ability to be present for each amazing person that I encounter, because I’m too tired and distracted.

This means I’m going to have to somehow pare down what I’m trying to do, no matter how wonderful it seems to be, and learn to say no to some of the things I’m doing that seem ‘so important.’ I’ll need to take some time to decide how to proceed, how to slow down and get my own unique rhythm back, the one that has the power to both exonerate and exasperate and keep me in sync with my unique path in the universe. The one that allows me to leave room in my life to stop and look at the beauty of the city scape, to smile at a child, or to smell a warm bakery smell and take me back to 8 years old, feeling the warmth of sugary softness, bite by bite on a cool morning.