Defrizzling the Frazzle

Men travel faster now,
but I do not know if they go to better things.
-- Willa Cather


Families are moving too fast these days. Speeding through life from one activity to another with hardly a thought as to what we’re doing for whom and why. I am as guilty as the next mom: rocket mom or alpha mom or stay-at-home mom or working mom or single mom or married mom. Step-mom or Stepford mom. We’re moving too fast.


We come home at the end of the day—after playgroups and errands or chauffeuring our kids between school to activities or ourselves between work and home—completely exhausted. Frazzled and overwhelmed. Too tired to cook. Too tired to talk. Too tired to appropriately engage in our families. My personal end-of-day fantasy is that someone would bring me over a warm roasted chicken (every night would be just fine!)….and put it my mouth and chew it for me, too.


I have few answers. Only one tiny step in the right direction. I am committed to spending (at least) one night during the week eating dinner around my dining room table with my husband and children. With wholesome food on china plates. Candles lit, cloth napkins in our laps. All sound machines turned off or unanswered. I am committed to sitting down and enjoying the company of the people in the world who I am most in love with.


For stopping—and the key word here is “stopping”—to eat with my family is one of the highlights of my week. Taking at least one night out to pause between the regularly-scheduled stuff—the tennis and lacrosse practices, violin lessons, errands and homework—is a difficult maneuver to pull of with any regularity. That bewitching end-of-the-day thing—dinner and time with the spouse and the kids—is oftentimes an impossible feat. It’s so sad yet so true. We live in frenzy.


I know I am not alone. I hear it everyday. From almost everyone. Neighbors and colleagues. We frazzle at simply being female. In fact, I read in our church bulletin about a new class being offered on “the frazzled female.” The chord has been officially struck.


So let’s make a pact together—every one of us—that we shall try to stop at the end of the day. That we will force ourselves to slow down. To cook a little. Rest a little. Read a little. Talk a little. Perhaps do the dishes together as a family. Perhaps sit by the fire and relax with your spouse. Perhaps do some needlework or crossword puzzles. Draw or scrap.


How about we all take this week to reflect on what we need to do as mothers to get ourselves to a “place of quiet.” To reflect. Enjoy the simplest things.


Elizabeth Kubler Ross passed on this bit of wisdom as she reflected on the things that she had learned from people in their last days:


"Not one of them has ever told me how many houses she had
or how many handbags or sable coats.
What they tell me of are tiny, almost insignificant moments in their lives --
where they went fishing with a child
or mountain climbing trips in Switzerland.
Some brief moments of privacy in an interpersonal relationship.
These are the things that keep people going at the end.
They remember little moments that they have long forgotten,
and they suddenly have a smile on their faces.
And they begin to reminisce about the little joys
that made their whole lives meaningful
and worth the living."


Especially during this week, Holy Week, enjoy your days with those you love.


Carolina