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I’ve been having a lot of trouble starting this post.  How can I summarize years of work and a whirlwind weekend of b’nai mitzvah events into a few short paragraphs?  I kept jotting down things I wanted to remember on post-it notes that I stuck inside my notebook.  The look on my friend’s face when she dug her hand deep into the candy basket and gleefully chucked enormous handfuls of gummy candies at us while we were dancing on the bimah after the ceremony.  Or the kids pressing their foreheads to mine after I gave my speech, their arms tight around my back while Josh pressed us into a group hug.  Or our friend who married us getting up to lead the end of the service in order to provide that connection between where it all began and where it’s all going.

I can write down moments but I can’t capture the whole thing.  I mean, it’s huge; it’s too big to hold.  To have all these people you love in the same room, cheering your kids on, supporting them as they work towards this enormous, life-changing event.  To know all the times your kid has said “can’t” and then watch them obviously “can” it in the moment.  It leaves you aching that you can’t capture it; that you have to just experience it and let it go.

I feel like I’m coming out of a fog.  For months we’ve been cocooned in preparation for this event.  We translated their Torah portion and dived into the etymology of the words.  We wrote speeches and planned parties and tried on many pairs of high heels and gave up a lot of other activities in order to be ready in time.  Now it’s over and we all feel a little lost, like we’re trying to remember what normal life feels like when we don’t have this big event looming over us.

When I started this blog, the twins were giving up their bottles and moving to sippy cups.  Now they can perfectly chant long passages in a foreign language.  One day I will probably refer back to this post and state that they are now going to college or have won the Nobel Prize or solved all the world’s problems.  (Yes, I think my children are the most wonderful, creative, brilliant people on earth.)  Life keeps moving on.  It will break your heart if you think about that too much.

The weekend was one of the best weekends of my life; to see the twins shine like that.  To accomplish something huge and in turn become more of who they are.  It’s hard to come out of it only because it meant so much and they did so well and had so much fun.  The fact that we’re struggling to find our footing is just testament to just how heavy the moment was in our hearts — in a good way, an anchor, holding us and making us sure of something we now know we know.

While we were out Saturday night, we encountered a zombie walk.  All the kids rushed to the window of the party space to observe the adults dressed in costume.  (There was also a dinosaur.  I’m not sure how dinosaurs fit in with the whole zombie theme.)  It was a moment that reminded me of college or my early 20s; a time period where I would have dressed up as a zombie and moaned down the street.  Now I’m more likely to crawl into bed and read a book about zombies.

It made me think about a recently re-run New York Times article about making friends past 30, because that’s the real thing that caught my attention with the zombie walk.  The people with their arms flung around each other’s shoulders, walking in twos or threes.  There were no single zombies, no lone undead dragging themselves through the street.  Marching in makeup is clearly an activity that requires friends; the more the better.

The article states:

In your 30s and 40s, plenty of new people enter your life, through work, children’s play dates and, of course, Facebook. But actual close friends — the kind you make in college, the kind you call in a crisis — those are in shorter supply.

As people approach midlife, the days of youthful exploration, when life felt like one big blind date, are fading. Schedules compress, priorities change and people often become pickier in what they want in their friends.

So acquaintances keep coming — and maybe you only need an acquaintance to join a zombie walk — but the friends are few and far between.  We spend the vast majority of our social time with people we’ve known since high school or college.  We’ve added a few close friends in the last few years because our kids are all friends.  But even that has slowed down.

The article does a great job outlining why it’s hard to make friends, and what has changed from the college years until now.  It’s not just the low-hanging fruit you’re thinking about like difficult schedules.  It’s about you job or how much you earn coming into play.  Or whether your colleagues are also your competitors.  It’s an interesting article.

Definitely worth reading before the next zombie walk.

Wrote this ahead of time because I knew I would be busy today.  Because I’m busy, I’m not watching the new season of Stranger Things.  I also didn’t get a chance to watch last night’s episode of Dirk Gently (which I’m sort of relieved is released one episode at a time like a normal television show.  I love it so much, and I want it to last as long as possible.)  We’re also woefully behind with Marvel series; only one episode into the Defenders and we haven’t even started Iron Fist.  You can be fairly certain that you won’t read spoilers on this blog unless you are even slower than I am with tapping into the zeitgeist.

Part of it is a lack of time and a lack of desire to see things first.  I want to see them when I’m in the mood to see them, not when I’m told by online magazines that I should see them.  Part of it is a desire to savour.  If I really like a book or a television show or a movie, I don’t want to consume it quickly.  I want to experience it as slowly as possible to stretch out the enjoyment.  It annoys Josh to no end that I pause movies in the middle so we can pick them back up the next day and continue experiencing the piece.  And if I really love a book, I will start another book at the same time and then have one book become my main book and the much loved book become my special treat book.

So are you a binger or a savourer?  No spoilers for Stranger Things, please!

My friend has been trying to get me to use a grocery shopping service where you order what you need online and they deliver it to your door.  It sounds lovely in the sense that I could “shop” at 6 am before the store technically opens and have the errand off my plate for the rest of the day.  It sounds awful in the sense that I am a control freak and need to hold each item and decide whether it feels like the “right” box of cereal or a cucumber that will feel correct in my sandwich.

(Don’t worry if you’re annoyed with me right now.  I annoy myself, too!)

There is this idea in sociology of time famine; having too much to do and not enough hours to do it.  I am currently in a time famine due to the B’nai Mitzvah, and I know once we’re a few weeks out from this life-cycle event, things will return to a normal pace.  It feels like it has consumed every free second in our lives for the last six months.  Even when I’m not doing something for it, I’m thinking about it.

The solution to a time famine is to put resources towards time-saving measures.  Spending money to buy time.  If you were sick, you’d pay for a visit to the doctor.  If you were hungry, you’d pay for food at a grocery store.  Yet while I see the logic, something stops me from spending money to buy time.  Hiring out what I can hire out so I can apply my time for something else, even if that something else is a half hour of down time.

It’s not like you need to have a lot of money in order to hire out something time-consuming.  But an article I found on time famine stated:

“In Vancouver, where we ran our main experimental study, we asked 98 working adults, if we gave you $40 to spend on the weekend, what would you do with it?” she said. “Only 2% reported that they would spend the money in a way that we would classify as being time-saving.”

It would never occur to me to spend the money on something time-saving.  I’d buy a book.  I’d go to the movies.  I’d spend it on a new pair of jeans.  But I wouldn’t think to put it towards a grocery delivery service, laundry service, or cleaning crew.  Even though those things make more sense considering I don’t really have time for a book or movie right now.  (I always have time for jeans.)

I’m not someone who needs a high level of time affluence.  I like being busy, and I’m not very good with down time.  I am a project-oriented person; the moment we close out the last of the B’nai Mitzvah stuff, I’ll take on something new as a focus.  But there is a point between time famine and time surfeit when you’re just time satiated.  You have just enough time; not an uncomfortable amount in either direction.

Do you pay for time-saving services, and which ones do you think are actually worth it?

I thought I’d make an excellent butler when I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day back in high school.  While I sort of suck at keeping an expressionless face, I’m excellent at being silent for hours at a time.  I enjoy keeping things neat and organized.  No one remembered me at my high school reunion, proving that I am good at being invisible.

But I recently read an article about what it takes to be a butler.  The instructor (because, yes, there are butler schools) posed a question about your child at the hospital and asked what you would do.  “If your answer was ’I would leave,’ this life’s not for you.”  Touché.

Still, I love this thought: “A happy butler is a Buddhist monk in tails, taking pleasure in the duty itself. Serving, but never servile.”

If I had a couple of thousand lying around, I would send myself to butler school to see if I have what it takes.  Maybe they’ll teach me how to keep a straight face.