I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I realised life had returned to its pre-pandemic, non-stop, go-go-go, never-ending rush from one thing to the next, but it might have been somewhere around the moment I stood over my daughter at her friend’s birthday party while pleading with her to shove cake into her mouth at a faster rate.
We needed to go. We always need to go. There’s always somewhere else to be. Now. Hurry. We’ll be late. No time for the toilet. You can tie your shoelaces in the car. Take the cake with you. On a paper plate. Crushed in your hand. Don’t care. Just move, move, move.
It wasn’t always like this. It wasn’t like this as recently as a few months ago, when there was nothing to do and nowhere to go and we had all the time in the world. I have found myself developing a creeping nostalgia for the quietness of the lockdowns. The stillness. The requirement to stay put. The circuit breaker from the rush.
A trip anywhere was an adventure. Not just that, but you needed permission to travel outside your area. If you and your family were lucky enough to be well, then hitting the road for an authorised reason reminded you of being a kid wandering an empty school corridor during class time.
Remember how busy we used to be, we said at the time. How overscheduled? How stressed? We said this during the very first week. We talked about how much of a rush life had been before. How loaded the diaries were. How much we did. How much the kids did. How much time was spent trying to be somewhere, trying not to be late, trying to get from one from place to the next to the next.
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When this was over, things would be different. We wouldn’t go back to that full rush. Just half a rush, maybe. We’d leave the lockdowns behind but take their lessons with us.
Not a chance.
“Remember when we said we had all been doing too much?” someone said to me during the week, which gave hope that it wasn’t just me looking for air. The machine cranked back into action, the gears turning and gaining momentum until they broke free and were once again running furiously.
The sport came back. The activities. The traffic jams. Work kicked back in. Life too. It feels as if there’s always something on. Always somewhere to be. Sometimes everywhere and everything all at the same time. Everyone is playing catch-up, so the days are full again, the evenings devoured, the weekends stuffed.
Until, far too predictably, I’m once again urging one of my kids to hurry up with the birthday cake because we’re going to be late for the next thing.
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Or I’m at the bottom of the stairs, jacket on, waving the car key at nobody in particular, demanding to know why everyone isn’t ready to go. We’re late, and if the kids aren’t downstairs in 30 seconds then I’m going to leave without them so help me God.
I never leave without them.
I’m aware that much of this relentlessness is a privilege of having children. It’s a further privilege to be able to give them a choice of what they want to do, what they’d like to try out, of not wanting to say “no” in case you miss the discovery that, for example, fencing was the thing they were born to do.
I know too that there is so much to enjoy in the stretches between rushing around, especially when on a sideline somewhere, huddling against the chill, watching a game, seeing your kids running around and enjoying themselves. Shouting “C’mon” in encouragement rather than as a plaintive cry for them to hurry the heck up.
The drive, the stress, the hunt for parking is behind you for an hour. Sure, what else would you be doing on a Saturday morning, you say. That’s a privilege I wouldn’t want to give up — even if there’s no doubt it would all be just that bit easier for me, and I’d have a bit of extra time in my life, if the government would allow eight-year-olds to drive themselves to things every now and then.https://twitter.com/shanehegarty
