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My mom likes to talk about when she was a child, going to her
grandmother's for Sunday meals. Her grandmother, she tells, was a little
slip of a woman who could wring a chicken's neck in a heartbeat and fry
that chicken up for dinner without breaking a sweat. Without the aid of
traveling to a supermarket, with no microwave in sight, and certainly
without the aid of Kentucky Fried Chicken, my mother's grandmother
served up the extended family and still had time to sit down and chat
for a spell. It makes me wonder where we've gone wrong. These days, with every
known aid known to exist; I still have no time to sit down and chat for
a spell. We were talking about it in Sunday School the other day, and
everyone seems to agree that with the advent of technology; we have LESS
free time than ever. Most of us blame our kids for the inability to ever allow a quiet
moment into our lives. I am guilty as well; I tend to run my boys in a
thousand different directions on any given day. And yet, compared
to most of my contemporaries, I barely have my boys involved in any
activities. Most of these moms I know are running their children to
three or four activities A DAY; and that is just after school! I'll bet
my mom's grandma didn't take my grandpa to gymnastics, soccer, piano,
AND karate after school. But to be perfectly honest, it isn't my kids that keep me from
taking a mental time out these days. We have made a pretty good effort
to keep some balance in their lives; we don't want them over stressed or
without free time. Add to that a driver among them, and I am in pretty
good shape. I am not one to knock myself out on a regular basis over meals, so
I can't say that killing the chicken has sapped me of time. My family is
just as happy with tacos as they are with gourmet fare, so I luck out on
that regard. So what is the big time vacuum? For me, it is the commitments I
make to myself and to others. Volunteering at the school might seem like
a great and worthy activity; and it is; but it is easy to let that slip
into very nearly a full time job. Couple that with working out, church
obligations and throw in a smidge of phone talking and email answering
and your day is over packed. One of the women in Sunday School swears that our lack of free time
is due to the cell phone. "Used to be," she said, "you'd
go out for a picnic or a drive and no one could find you. You'd have
nice family time." Not anymore. The cell phone brings the world right to that picnic;
and that's where it gets sticky. My hubby bring his cell phone on our
bike rides; he's been known to be settling an argument between my two
younger sons while we are pedaling up mountains. "But we lived so many years without them; it all worked
out." Another woman pointed out. I know she is right. When I was a kid, we went to the baseball park
for hours upon hours and if the world came screeching to a halt while we
were out on that diamond; I guess we just waited to hear about it after
the practice or game. It's hard to imagine now, when I can be reached at
virtually any moment of the day, any place, any time, that I could
simply stow the cell phone and go back to simpler times. Frankly, it scares me. My life is so caught up with all of these
time drains that I don't know how to scale back. The thought of changing
my ways seems more exhausting than continuing as status quo, so I go on,
the days passing in a blur of activities and technology. I also have to admit, quite honestly, that I don't think I could
kill a chicken. It's hard to imagine being hungry enough to go out there
and twist that sucker's neck until it was dead; pluck the feathers out
of it's body, cut and gut the poor thing, and then fry it up and
somehow, after all that, muster up a good conversation. I think I'll have to live with my utter lack of quiet time. And
leave the chicken killing to those nice folks over at KFC.
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