How to Write a Paragraph on a Sunny Spring Afternoon

It’s 3:32pm. You want to do some writing this afternoon, so you zip the last jacket and shut the door to the backyard, making sure the kids are on the other side of it. Your eardrums are relieved to pass on their laughter and screeches to the rest of the neighbourhood, and you hope the birds don’t mind.

You open your computer. Your finger is poised over the power button when you decide a cup of tea should accompany your writing time. You fill the kettle, drop a bag of earl grey tea into a striped ceramic mug, and add a few things to the grocery list hanging on the side of the fridge while the water boils.

After pouring the steaming water into your mug and carrying it the short distance between the kitchen and the dining table, you sit down, and press the power button on your computer again. While the computer wakes, you open your pink spiral bound journal and select the purple ink on your rainbow pen. With the backyard in view, you are (finally) primed for simultaneous writing and parenting. Except the kitchen is also in view, and you notice the haphazard pile of dishes stacked on the counter. If you don’t start the dishwasher now, there won’t be clean plates for dinner. You decide to do just one more thing before you write.

You stand, bracing yourself against the twinge in your knee, and you head back to the kitchen.

You open the dishwasher, a dirty plate in hand, to a cloud of steam and a load of clean dishes. You will also have to unload the dishwasher now, but not before attending to the little person with the tears in her eyes at the patio door requesting a glass of water and some moral support in the wake of the third or fourth sibling fight of the day. You settle the fight, send a plastic cup of water outside, and turn back to the dishwasher.

Standing in front of the kitchen window, you reach between the dishwasher and the cupboard, stacking plates and mugs, glasses and bowls, forks and spoons. You toss a casual request to Alexa for your favourite classical piano artist: perfect writing music.

At 4:02pm, thirty minutes after you zipped the last jacket, you close the cupboard full of clean dishes, scan the backyard, and see the glass of water you passed outside a few minutes ago is now a bowl of mud. You gaze at your computer with longing. It looks lonely, but not as lonely as the clean clothes you remember have been sitting in the washing machine for most of the day. You will need an empty washing machine in a half hour for three sets of clothes when the muddy children come inside for snacks.

So, you descend the basement stairs, and rush through a damp laundry sniff and switch to the dryer, to the soundtrack of pounding on the patio door. Expecting to referee another fight, you are a little relieved the child only wants to show you the paint brushes she and her sisters have fashioned from sticks and the masterpieces they’re painting on the walls of the playhouse in streaks of brown.

The clock on the microwave says it’s almost time for them to come inside, and you realize you haven’t even thought about dinner.

You give yourself permission to leave the dishes next time.

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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Permission Slip."