To Routines

First, for the babies.  We tend to call them schedules: sleeping, feeding, bathing, walking, napping. Please let there be napping.

We tried a napping schedule. The sheer effort it took to get the baby to sleep, the 40 minutes of dancing to Jimmy Cliff, to try to get those little eyes to make those long slow blinks, the sleep so very fragile, we gave up. Naps more than 20 minutes were a surprise party; certainly nothing we could count on.

Our routine was no routine.

Until 5-day-a-week school. Maria drove morning carpool; she had waffles to coax him into the car. He would have prefered to stay in his room with his Transformers and dinosaurs. She’d get him there and I’d get him home. And every day we would have popcorn and hot chocolate. On cold days we built a fire.

We want to think as the kids grow older, we don’t need routine as much. Surely at 11 or 12 their brains can handle the hiccups in a day; they won’t be so thrown off by a misstep: I’m out of hot chocolate, how about cider?

We are wrong. In fact, it seems the older we get, the more we rely on routine. In a meeting at school, we quickly wonder if we are following Roberts Rules of Order correctly; when exactly do we call for the discussion and when is the vote? Who can vote and what is quorum?

Think of the chaos. The naps are gone, the popcorn jar is empty, and the chair has called for a vote before discussion. How do we recover from this? What else is just on the brink? When do we know it’s over and how do we tell it’s time to move on?