Please don't send me one more email about getting ready for
the holidays.  The
"holidays?"  It's September,
school just started, and we're still getting into the swing of homework,
lunches, the morning routine, not to mention learning how to spell all the
teachers' names.  We signed up for
varsity basketball, league soccer, tap, jazz, no hot lunches.  Tutoring and girl scouts have already begun -
got to keep the second grader busy and out of trouble!  Having worked in higher education for 20+
years, I've always loved the beginning of a new school year.  It's fraught with possibility and
excitement.  What will we learn this
year? There may be a scraped knee, a fragile friendship, a new interest in
boys.  It's not winter yet, it's not
Daylight Savings Time, it's not even October! 
Please give me time to enjoy this new beginning.  There's still Halloween and Thanksgiving
before the "holidays."  In
every store,  as soon as the school supplies
are marked down to half price, the Halloween merchandise appears.  And was there always so much Thanksgiving
stuff, or have I forgotten since last year?  Do I really need Thanksgiving tea towels for
one day a year?  Halloween and
Thanksgiving aren't what they used to be. 
Halloween, the most benevolent of holidays when children go door to door
in their neighborhoods and strangers give them candy has become taboo or worse
yet, dangerous.  Thanksgiving has become
tarnished by the inconvenient truth that more often than not, rather than share
a meal with our Native American brethren, we slaughtered them.  Still, I want to linger in the change of
seasons, for even here in southern California there is a noticeable chill in
the air most evenings, along with Santa Ana winds and the inevitable brush fire
warnings that accompany this time of year. 

What's the rush?  All
these reminders and great advice to pre-plan for the holidays so as to minimize
my stress have stressed me out!  We rush
through our everyday lives, it seems.  The
pressure to plan, schedule, organize, bolstered by the ever-present iPhone, has
made us a nation of futurists.  What if,
what's next, and when?   We are always
planning or at the very least, thinking about, the next big event.  We've been counseled to plan our outfits,
school lunches, and dinners in advance. 
Get out your calendars, add all the year's events, plan your vacation
early, buy now for summer 2013!  Full
disclosure: I've been unemployed for a couple of months.  I have the luxury of time and the leisure to
plan day by day.  Add to that, the fact
that my father has been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.  As all too many people know, there's nothing
like a little cancer to make you slow down and re-evaluate your life, its
meaning, its worth.  In many ways,

however, this time has been a gift.  As
each day goes by, I appreciate the time that I have to attend to things that I
had long since forgotten or avoided. 
Last week I worked up  sweat while
cleaning out the garage.  I must have
been 'in the zone' because before I knew it, three hours had passed.  There is value  - and pride - in taking care of the little
things, most of which were put on the back burner as I valiantly juggled
working motherhood for years.  I may even
enroll in a mosaic class, something that I've always wanted to do, but darn
it-  the classes were always offered on
weekday mornings.

The past few months have taught me that to cherish time, for
it is precious, cliché as that may be. 
And yet, I yearn to go back to work. 
The solution? A sabbatical for working parents.  Wouldn't it be great if every seven years
every working parent had a few months off with job protection to do everything
or nothing at all?!  Like much needed
vacation time - and employers recognize the value of a vacation time - it would
serve to renew people's energies and commitment to their work.  Sometimes we need to step away from the
computer in order to gain a fresh perspective. 
Imagine what a few months could do!

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So I can wait for the holidays; please don't stress me out
by telling me how I can avoid stress three months in advance. For now, all I
want to do is make sure we have the correct, color coded notebooks for 8th
grade and buy a few new decorations for Halloween.  Even my teenage daughter won't commit to
having a Halloween party just yet - maybe just pizza on the pumpkin plates that
I bought on sale last year in my plan-ahead, be-prepared working mother mode. 

The idea of a sabbatical for working parents may be a pipe
dream.  Still, the notion of a 'time out'
or simply having the mental space to think about all the things that we neglect
or never make time for - there's value in it. 
Life is short.  It's high time we
made time for our families, ourselves, the long-suffering back of the garage.  And if you find the perfect pumpkin pie
recipe, please wait until after Halloween to email it to me.