I’m watching my girls play soccer at practice and there’s a parade of legging-clad legs, shin guards, hair flapping.

It’s cold for March and their hoods are all up and I know the singular focus of foot to ball and the energy spent is something each of my three daughters on that field need, more than they know.  More than I know too.

It’s been a normal day.

The juggling that is this season.

A math lesson interrupted by a work phone call.  A conversation about a potential story from the field to the farm to the fromage – yes, it’s a cheese piece.  Hang up the phone.  Jot down a few reminders in the designated TRH notebook that I hope will make sense to me later.  Switch back to math mode with a struggling student who shares my times table issues.  Check London’s poem about poet Phillis Wheatley, offer corrections and praise and send Bergen to the kitchen to prep dinner because it’s his day for the task and because soccer practice in the evening train wrecks all pretense of our regular dining routine.

I’ll blink and they’ll be able to drive themselves to practice, but tonight I’m not blinking and they’re not behind the wheel.  There’s just Driver Me still.

They say women are good at multi-tasking.  I don’t know about that.  Less a talent and more a current prerequisite for the job title.

No one wanted to leave the house for practice tonight.  Me included.  It was too cold.  I almost caved but then remembered words like grown up, commitment, follow through.  Traits I need to practice as much as I need to instill in them.

It’s not usually the Giant that takes you down.  Some sort of fortitude propels you right then.  Usually.

It’s the mundane, actually, that gets you.

Tuesday.  Thursday.  Missed texts.  Late dinners.  Lost notebooks.  Miscommunication.  Like that cough that just won’t go away.

This weekend a friend told me words.  Words that she heard at a recent conference.

Do not despair.

(It would make a good tattoo.  It’s permanently that important.  Fine.  Then a necklace or a bracelet.  A post it note.  Whatever.)

Do not despair.

I’m writing in on my paper here in pretty cursive.  Not that you can see it that way now.

Do not despair.

Even in the mundane.  Maybe, for today, especially in the mundane.

Do not despair.

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