Bird by Bird
The laundry basket looks like one gigantic time-leeching entity. I think I even see tentacles. When my clean laundry is piled so high that it begins to creep out of the laundry room, it is time to call forth the wise words of author Anne Lamott. Lamott’s brother needed to write a report on birds and didn’t know where to start, Lamott’s father said, “Just write it bird by bird.”
In her book by the same title, Lamott advises readers to take really large tasks and break them down. She applies her mantra to writing, but it works for my laundry basket as well. I envision Anne Lamott shaking her head at my overflowing clothes, and without scolding, simply saying, “Kathy, just take it shirt by shirt.”
Life overflows too. The pile of bills and forms and PTA volunteer sheets that sits by my phone looms like an approaching storm. Sometimes I take the stack and put it in a kitchen cupboard so I can’t feel its damp discord. It is easier to avoid laundry or bills than say, raising a teen or arranging summer schedules. But eventually big tasks must be tackled.
Instead of pulling up to Wal-Mart and audibly groaning as I envision the next hour I’ll spend dropping everything from cilantro (that the cashier doesn’t know how to ring up) to baby wipes into my cart, I think of the task in smaller quantities. I reduce the acres of Super Wal-Mart to individual aisles. I stop picturing the mega store as a parasite, sucking my precious day away. I get through the drudgery, row by row and cracker by carrot.
The enormity of our days can bury us, if we let the pile win. Just this morning at Starbucks I heard a woman sharing her pile with the barista, “I’ve already been to one school meeting and now I have to go back to another. Then I have to take my mother to the doctor and get my kids to three different activities after school.” Her tasks ganged up on her like a basket of angry squirrels. Independently each task is no big deal, kind of fuzzy and cute. She had 24 hours today and it sounded like all stuff would fit in. But she let the squirrels bare their tiny teeth.
At this moment there are probably about 124 tasks I could be doing. If I wrote them all down, I’d probably change my mind about being an adult and watch reruns of “The Golden Girls”. I’ve stopped trying to conquer my huge piles and endless lists. It feels better to hold small, soft tasks in my hands, knowing they can’t bite.
