Our routine is a lubricant that flows into the wheels and cogs of daily life and provides, if not complete smoothness, then bearable vibrations as each day combines itself into its siblings to form first a week and then a month and then, eventually, a whole year. With the passing of each week in that year, we look to the structures of our established daily routine to give us balance, a sense of control, and understanding as each day's adventure unfolds.
Any actual control we feel we have is merely an illusion. Life brings us challenges every day. Some are major challenges, some minor, some life-altering, some merely pesky but they all diverge from the routine we depend upon. I have come to believe that the routine in my life gives me some comfort when the day turns rough, because, soon it will be lunchtime, or I will clock out for the day, maybe tonight is date night or homemade pizza night, or bedtime is near, when I’ll slip into bed with a nice cup of peppermint tea with honey and a good book to smooth the way into sleep. The seemingly fixed nature of a schedule, especially during the week, really helps me to face the current moment, understanding that regardless if I'm almost fighting dangerous members of the public, or merely cleaning up chairs from a children's event, ‘this too, shall pass. ’
Each day really is like a snowflake, and the schedules and routines we keep are arbitrary, aggravating, and sometimes, downright restrictive. As we make plans (the best laid ones mentioned by the poet Burns) for the future, we strike out into unknown territory, weeks, months, and sometimes years out, placing mental waypoints and milestones so that there is an event to look forward to even though the future has yet to be tainted by the rigors of the present. Such was our family vacation, as we planned it way back in September of ‘24. Well before we ever started packing our towels and swimsuits, we intended to coordinate everyone getting to a beach house we rented for a week of relaxing from routines and schedules.
Making a down-payment on a house on the sand for July, we fixed that moment in the future, but we still had months of routine to get through, so when the whole clan came for Christmas, we collectively looked forward to when we would be together again as a group in just seven short months. To me, way out there in future land, it felt nebulous, ephemeral, speculative.
As the New Year passed and everyone headed home, the longest January on record finally tripped over to February, discussions about “the beach trip” became a universal part of everyone's lexicon. We made plans, bought bathing suits and chairs, and looked happily into the future, trying to imagine what vacation would be like. Each week brought a seven-day subtraction between us in the current moment and the day of departure when we all headed toward the edge of the world where our little vacation spot churned through a family a week in the interim. As time passed, our daily routines began to develop a steady, vacation-flavored wobble.
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Devastating our normal, quiet routines, we crammed a lot into the weeks leading up to departure. It is stunning how fast time seems to fly when you look at it in the rearview. It is also astounding how far up the throttle you can jam the hours of one day as a deadline approaches. The planned things at work, like programs, meetings, projects, due dates and all the regular tasks do add some comfortable stress to the seemingly—in the moment—slow passage of time. Then there are the incidentals, frustrating customer interactions, lost children, broken computers, challenging research questions and almost fights with violent individuals.
Few weeks are ever as crammed as the week before vacation. With fewer than seven days left before everyone headed out to our common destination, it dawned on all of us that there were still a billion tiny things left to do on top of what was, for me at least, an arrestingly busy week at work.
Eight hours of what felt like running, screaming and weeping at work, followed by the horrid, creeping, predatory sense of all the preparation we swore to do in the intervening months (now passed) that remains undone loomed over us. Our lists became unpleasant hornets in our collective bonnet. Add the panic, pressure and inevitably changing plans that forced us to put in another five hours of cleaning, buying, and fretting, it's lucky we managed it all. By the time the Thursday before the Saturday we were leaving, we were all tired, frustrated, ill-tempered and really ready to throw up our hands and call the whole thing quits.
Then, as if the week and our emotions hadn't done us enough evil, Friday dawned and I had to, on top of everything else, take the pups to the kennels at lunch, attend an all-hands meeting, move 700 pounds of metal shelving and close the library. Meanwhile, Micki, who has off Fridays, ran seemingly endless errands, cleaned and packed, prepared for the middle kids and granddaughter to make a stop at our house overnight, got the cats sorted, made several “day of departure” lists and was still cleaning, packing and working on laundry when I skidded home. She was beyond exhausted. I jumped in to help finish the lists, that like a hydra, grew two more items for every one we checked off.
I still hadn't packed or done laundry, the car still needed to be laden with all of our things, and, as if the universe was putting us through Navy SEAL hell week, the Portland kids found out last minute that flooding in Chicago canceled their flight plans and had to scramble to get a new flight. Their updated itinerary meant they would be arriving way earlier at the airport near the beach than originally expected.
Our quotidian routines abandoned us and we were now zombie-like creatures, absently jamming things into a very small and overburdened SUV and unloading things from the mountain kids’ cars. We crashed hard. I don’t even remember setting an alarm.
We awoke well before dawn, ragged, groggy, punchy, echoes of the frenetic few days past still jittering our nervous systems. Details had yet to be ironed out. Our bags had to be jammed into the car. We had to get gas, stop for a biscuit and hot drinks, then race to the airport close to the beach. I will say that 70 MPH feels like snail power when you’re in a hurry.
Eventually, we made it, and we got the Portland kids and then, in a whiplashing and wrenching reverse of the previous week's panic-inducing pre-vacation madness, we suddenly had hours ahead of us before we could check into the beach house only a half hour from the airport. Unlike its overwrought predecessors, the day stretched out before us, full of promise and nothing on the schedule except waiting to move in and start the week. If you have ever jumped from a hot tub into a swimming pool, the somewhat invigorating shock is akin to what we felt.
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As usual, the first days of a vacation drag. They are so broken from the rhythms of the weeks prior that our brains are undone. Then, midweek, things kick up and soon it is the last day and we're back to thinking about packing and schedules. We consider when we have to check out, feel dread at needing to stuff the cars, hope to get in a final round of putt-putt, several final hours on the beach and then, sadly, with an ache near the heart, check out day dawns. We gave hugs all around, kissed the baby, and headed off to deposit the Portland kids at the airport, after spending some time wandering around in the oppressively sultry heat in downtown Wilmington.
Soon enough, it will be time to pick up the dogs, get laundry caught up, check to make sure the cats are still alive, and then try to settle back into non-vacation thinking. Then, we will begin making plans for our next family vacation, which won't occur for a year or more. Once again, a year feels like a very long time, indeed.
We'll stand it. There will be other weeks off, other holidays, staycations, weekends with nothing planned, moments of real peace in the meantime. There will also be days when, as if the universe loves to check if we still have the stamina and guts, we will have to face down violent individuals, come millimeters from a brawl, and then force us to sit through a budget meeting as if nothing happened and then go home and pack for a flight.
If time is an illusion, then I'm afraid so are our routines.
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