I'm notably poor at considering the future. The environment I grew up in demanded a laser-like focus on immediate surroundings and it made me a terrible chess player- I have no aptitude for planning moves ahead. My perceptions and reflexes in the moment are spectacular, but have no application outside the moment.
And as they say, when your only tool is a hammer every problem looks like a nail. I get caught up in the moment too often and forget there's another hour coming up, and another day, and all of them adding up to weeks and months and years.
When Fuss bedevils me with his current mantra Ma hold joo! I try to oblige, but I do sometimes get tripped up by my own nonsense.
In the moment, making that salad or putting that load of dishes away is a priority, but neither act has an institutional memory. The salad won't care that I prioritized its construction, the dishes don't care if I put them away this instant, or tomorrow, or never.
Fuss will remember.
And if he's like me, which everyone assures me is the case, all the time I did pick him up won't carry as much weight as the few times I was too aggravated or tired or 'busy' to accommodate him.
And these are the lessons you learn from children, to step out of your own room decorated with comfortable preconceptions and habits and consider life fresh, from their vantage, to think about the future.
Two years ago he was a squalling grub that one of us had to carry or rock or bounce 24 hours a day. Now he like to be carried, but he wants down and wants to run around on his own and sometimes he's awake and reading his books for twenty minutes before telling me to get up.
It won't be long before I'll be wanting to hold him and he'll be wanting to run off and play with his pals, like that hokey Harry Chapin tune.
So, this is a reminder to myself that the salad and the dishes can wait...Fuss can't.
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