Rebuilding Another Today

It isn't just my muscles and joints that are starting to seize up and become less flexible the more I age. My thoughts, ideas and actions are becoming somewhat immobile too.

I thought I was pretty good at learning, adjusting and going with the flow.

I can keep up relatively well with the changing technology within my little world. I adapted to a new computer, an iPad, a smart phone, PVR and digital cable box within the recent past.

I keep a bookkeeping job on the side and I learn as I go along, adapt my ways to the ways my boss likes things done and I think I'm doing a decent job. She keeps asking me back, anyway.

I write to keep my thoughts well oiled and lubricated. Some of those words may be better kept to myself but I am afraid for the day when this brain of mine snaps. I may need to leave clues behind in case I ever have to be glued back together. So I let the words come as they may.

I run my little daycare and think I'm doing okay. Then ... a new one year old enters the room and everything I thought I knew about kids and how to handle new challenges goes out the window.

"One" is hard. Yet it is easy. One year olds seem to have the essence of being the sun and the rest of the world revolves around them. Which is easy when you look at it from their point of view. But very, very hard when you have three other "suns" in the same solar system and one "planet" (that would be me), tending to each of these unique rays of sunshine and trying to help everyone co-exist within one small world.

Yesterday? Was a lesson in futility. Everything I did was wrong.

Thankfully one to three year olds sleep. It gave this old "planet" a chance to regenerate itself, regroup and try it all over again a few hours later.

Things went better after a two hour reprieve but they were far from perfect.

Children are mirrors of the world as they see it. It is unfortunate when the two year old mimics the one year old and instantly "forgets" all he has learned. A little boy, who can count well into the teens, sings the ABC song (and knows his letters!), recites animals and the sounds they make, recognizes colors and is so smart it makes my head spin, has started talking baby talk to our little one year old and is back to putting everything in his mouth.

It has only been a week. Rome wasn't built in a day, but it was destroyed in a matter of hours.

I'm seeing "Rome" falling all around my feet and I'm scrambling to hold it together. 'Tis one of the challenges of running a daycare.

I suppose this offsets the lack of stimulating conversation within my day. As I sat down and tried to "talk taxes" with an expert in the field last night I felt my brain matter melting into a hot molten puddle of lava. "I don't talk after 6:00" I explained, "And I spend my day in the company of one to three year olds. Please excuse me ..."

I am picking up the rubble of yesterday and taking what I learned to rebuild another today. It is really all we can ever do.

May you build a better today than yesterday within your own little empire.