Things were different when I was eighteen, I thought I had all the time in the world--and I was only invested in myself, I had nothing to lose. Now, with children who rely on me not only for practical reasons, but also to just be here, I have everything to lose. I often think that if I can survive long enough to see them married, then they'll be okay. I could drift into the sound, become a part of the backdrop of their lives, and eventually disappear like a puff of smoke, and they would be just fine without me.
But there's no guarantee that I'll last that long and so I must admit that lately I have this sense of urgency about me. It's the time, you see, it's pressing in on me. Stealing my breath. Just now I wasted an entire minute turning on Ratatouille for my two youngest. (BTW: No school on Good Friday, TV is allowed today according to my kids. Mom is outwitted yet again.) The stupid DVD producer guy set it up so that I couldn't fast-forward past some commercial. I literally watched the green line at the bottom of the screen tick off the sixty seconds as I pondered how I could have better spent that precious minute. That desperate feeling leeches into every part of my life. The last time my husband dared to ask me to go for a walk, it was almost perilous. I'm not sure how he survived it. I set out at this crazy brisk pace, comparable, I suppose, to one of those speed walkers you sometimes find coursing the mall. I was in a hurry, a really big hurry. There's no time, no time you see... I have turned into Alice in Wonderland's white rabbit with the pocket watch.
This is the very reason I have written so many books and not one is perfected. I've been afraid to stop, that I won't get these stories down on paper before I'm taken from this world. Five manuscripts written in less than a year and a half. The last two took about a month and a half each to complete. And they aren't short, I'm talking ridiculously full, complete novels. Approximately 85,000-95,000 words a piece. Those who have read my work, love it. If only I could slow down enough to polish these books, perhaps others will get the chance to read them too someday.
I would like to be around to see that. There's something about the idea of a reader breaking away from the terrible reality of this world, landing instead in my world, that I find slightly overwhelming. So I've put on the breaks, I'm slowing down, at least long enough to finish what I've started. Who knows? Maybe I'll even stop to smell a rose.
