I was reading the blog of a writer I admire, and she said something that struck me as so very, very true. She’d just celebrated her first Mother’s Day, and remarked on the way that life necessarily narrows and deepens when you have a child, just at the time you start to wake up to the preciousness and magic in each day.

Here’s what she wrote:

“I feel this thing … and that is a frantic desire to DO EVERYTHING. To fit six or seven lives into my one life, not end to end, but side by side. I want to have the hiking/outdoors life, the arts and crafts life, the beautiful lifestyle/decorating life, the garden life, the thoughtful book reviewer life, etc, etc.”

Don’t you know just what she means?

Like every parent, I try to cram these six or seven side-by-side lives into one box. My schedule is like a cartoon suitcase, stuffed with things that feel very necessary, yet liable to burst at any point.

I get up at 5 or earlier every morning—this early because I’m trying to expand my career in a certain direction, and the only way I can carve this time out of the day is to do it when everyone else in the family is still asleep.

Then I exercise, get the kids ready for school, walk them there, go back to work, pick them up, take them to lessons or programs or appointments—every afternoon, there’s something.

Then we do homework, make dinner, play music, read books, get ready for bed—and start the routine over again, unless it’s one of those evenings where I go out for assorted evening events that theoretically will help me achieve those challenging and elusive career goals.

Even weekends are packed.

Lucy’s started taking acting classes. Physical comedy, specifically. Would you like to learn how to pretend to slip on a banana peel? She will show you. Then there are the school birthday parties, visits with the extended family, and other assorted things that pop up.

I know there is such a thing as not doing all this, and there were definitely times in my life when I slept in and strived less. That, alas, is generally associated with the times I was the least happy. I slept because I literally couldn’t get out of bed.

So I’m glad for the chaos, the busyness, the different dreams that we’re all reaching for. I don’t want to get to the end of my life and wish I’d tried harder at anything. I want to be spent. Sucked dry. Like one of those festive wreaths made out of ears of corn, only I’d rather not be hung out for display.

This doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t want and need a few entirely unplanned days.  And this is why, when Adam kept asking me what I wanted to do for Mother’s Day, I had only one answer for him: “Dunno.” 

Partly it’s because I didn’t want to think anything up. But also because once something is on the calendar, it becomes another thing you have to do. Lack of spontaneity can give even something really fun the whiff of a chore.

So after I had my breakfast in bed (toast with a HUGE glass of milk, carried upstairs by Lucy and Alice with much debate because Alice’s end of the tray was lower than Lucy’s and the milk kept sliding around and sloshing on the toast), I took a leisurely shower—itself a rarity.

Then, because it was a jaw-droppingly beautiful day, I decided we’d hop on a ferry and go to Bainbridge Island, which is about a 20-minute ride from downtown Seattle.

“What do you want to do there?” Adam said.

“Dunno,” I replied, even though I did—there’s a great bookstore on Bainbridge. That’s pretty much what I always want to do, but I was keeping my options open, as open as the sky overhead.

[ibimage==241==Article-Inline-320wide==none==self==ibimage_Image-Right]I snapped a picture of the girls on the ferry, and it might be my favorite ever. They’re leaning against each other, their arms interlocked. The wind is playing with their hair, and their expressions say everything you’d ever need to know about their two very different personalities.

Getting a photo like this—one that I can look at when my kids are at school, one I’ll still want to look at when they’re grown and gone—isn’t something you can plan.

It’s just one of those things that happens when you’re in the right place at the right time, doing something you were meant to do, even if it wasn’t on the calendar.

Sometimes, when you’re trying to cram those six lives into the space of one, you have to remember to leave some holes. Because that’s where you find the one life you’d choose above all the rest—under a warm, blue sky with the people you love most.

For Mother’s Day, we did end up visiting that bookstore. And a coffee shop. And a candy store at which the girls bought a half-pound of fudge meant to last at least a week.

The fudge, alas, lasted less than two hours, which explains why, in ferry line on the way home, they were hanging out the windows of the car like Mardi Gras revelers, and Alice kept commenting on the delights of the “fresh ocean breeze.”

All in all, it was a perfect day. One I couldn’t have planned if I’d tried.