Checkmate

Two roads diverged in a messy kitchen; and today, I...

was ducking into the garage to complete my third succcessful day of 20 treadmill minutes when Gavin said, "Hey Mom, how about I teach you how to play chess, then we play, then you teach me how to play mancala, and we play that, then I go to school?"

Errrh. Red light.
The mom clock did the math. Gavin's ideal to-do list was easily an hour minimum; while mine (workout, shower, dress myself and kids, pack lunches, unload dishwasher, clean up breakfast, lunch mess, and maybe last night's dinner?) was an hour plus. But we had 45 minutes until school started.

I looked at the treadmill, a recent addition to our family that came with that attractive pricetag of FREEEE! via one of my mom's elderly clients who no longer needed it for anything more than a playground for her cats. But after a quick feline spray down and garage junk rearrangement ceremony, this treadmill has replaced the donut shop as my morning friend--a place where I can meditate about swimsuit season at an incline of 15 and pretend I can't hear my three-year-old's demands for a 7a.m. ice cream cone amidst the thud thud of my Asics and duhn duhn of Bono's "Vertigo."

And then I looked at Gavin, with his mismatched pajamas and wild mass of bedhead hair that would soon be sprayed into a blond surfer shag. He was kneeling on a kitchen chair, arranging the knights on the checkered board on the table, left out from the night before when his father and I had decided that a game of chess might stimulate his brilliant little mind a bit more than his kindergartner homework. ("Which word rhymes with 'mop'? Duh, Mom, I learned this in preschool!") His lips were pursed in a pensive half smile as he eagerly tried to remember if the bishop or castle occupied the outermost space.

And there I was, the queen--able to move in any direction. With my sceptre, I could slide diagonally to the treadmill with an easily justified "I really don't have time right now, Gavin" or backwards to the table with a flagellant "There goes today's shower."

The pawns of rote accomplishment (shower-check, laundry-check, kitchen-check) moved in to battle with the pawns of motherhood ("You'll never get theses days back," "You'll never wish you had spent more time cleaning your house," "They grow up so fast.") One strategy--a smoother day game with immediate benchmarks, the other--an ambiguous forecast of hopefully less air time on the couch of my son's future therapist.

Two roads diverged in a messy kitchen; and today, I took the one less travelled by. Let's hope it makes a difference.