Spring is my favorite season. I love the flowers and the new green growth on the trees. I love the sense of change and the culmination of so much. I love the fullness of everything.
But as a parent, wow. There is so much of it.
The other morning, I woke up and said to my husband, “Won’t it be great for us to have dinner tonight, all four of us together?”
Then I looked at my calendar and realized we had a concert that evening. It would be another night of feeding people either early or late or during an event, a night of scrambling to get everyone where they needed to be without forgetting anything.
I’m grateful for this time—and I love the games and the concerts and the evening events. I find myself remembering the days of the pandemic when we watched all our plans vanish into thin air. We are so blessed to be here and to have so much to do.
But some days I know I’m not balancing it all well. I’m always working or driving someone to yet another orthodontist appointment or trying to assemble what we need for the next event. The calendar is packed, and there aren’t enough minutes in the day.
The other night, we were sitting on the side of a field watching our son’s baseball game. They were down a couple of players, so there were only eight players covering nine positions. That meant one of our pitchers was missing, and two outfielders were covering a vast area of the field. The members of the opposing team kept hitting baseballs all over the place.
It was daunting. Our fielders couldn’t possibly be everywhere to catch any hit coming their way. I watched as the coaches would call out to them, “Move left!” “Back up!” “Go over toward the middle!” as they tried to put them in the best positions.
But the field was so large, and the other team had some strong hitters. It was too much, and the score reflected it.
Still, inning after inning, the boys took turns playing outfield without complaint. They would run out there, full of energy, even smiling and laughing a bit, ready for whatever might come.
They missed some plays. They made some great ones. And they kept going.
I sat there thinking that this is just how spring is. I’m making a few plays. I’m bobbling plenty—or standing there helplessly as baseballs sail over my head. Most of the time I have no idea where I need to be for whatever is coming my way, but I’m trying to show up—and be as ready as I can be. And I’m trying to hold onto the best moments.
If the spring is like this for you too, I hope you can give yourself lots of extra grace, hang on for the ride, enjoy as much as you can, and know it is just a season. And be grateful that whatever crazy end-of-year projects are coming your way, they might be easier than the fully-detailed church model my friends have to help their middle schooler create for his religion class. Almost anything has to be simpler than that.
When we look back on this spring, I imagine we will remember the concert performances that left us in awe, the baseball hits that made us shout and whistle from the side of the field, and the family dinners that we managed to sneak into the chaos. That’s assuming, of course, that we figure out how to have a few before June. I have faith that we will. Maybe May will be calmer than April.
Happy spring!
Copyright © 2024 Catholic Review Media
