Despite my very best intentions today, I got overwhelmed. Ironically, it all began with the brrrriiing of my phone.

I thought I’d be smart about things. Start the day off right. Despite the snow, I took a trip to the grocery store shortly after 8 am. Taking it easy down the aisles, I reviewed my shopping list, compared prices, and carefully placed my purchases in the shopping cart. I even walked slowly to my car, ignoring the swirling flakes that were ruining my hairdo. For a moment, I even stopped to breath in the carbon dioxide-laced air of the parking lot, gratified about my decision to take it easy this morning.

As I came back to the house with all my groceries, I spied the UPS man parking behind me. “Oh, let it be my manuscript!” I almost cried, overjoyed that I had smartly cleared my calendar for the morning to take it as it comes. Seconds later, the doorbell rang. Sure enough! Package from Macmillan! I signed the cold monitor of the delivery man’s device, then took another deep breath.

How lovely! I’ll just put away these groceries and…riiiiiiiiing! The phone jostled me from my controlled reverie.

It was my friend, wondering where I was.

“Is it Thursday already?” I could feel my practiced calm being effortlessly replaced by the all-too-familiar panic of the overscheduled.

“Um…yes….” Cold silence on the other end. I quickly placed down the UPS package, tossed the rest of the food into the fridge and raced over to my friend’s house, whom I had promised to brunch with a full week before. How could I have known seven days ago that I would need this morning to breathe? I entered her house with a smile and a hug.

That was the moment when things surreptiously fell apart, as if by slow motion. The children seemed to come home early, even though they arrived at the same time as they always do on Thursdays. For the rest of the afternoon, I raced, pounced, and raged against myself, wondering what had happened to the sovereign, placid person who had stepped foot in the grocery store nine hours before.

Despite my very best intentions, I failed to keep the calm I had so desired. And my book manuscript is smiling at me, reminding me of the power of slow in all its glory, that I too am not immune to the stressors of life. Next time I’ll make a better choice to look at my calendar before I smugly think about how well I can manage things. Lo! To err is human. To forgive, well, you know…!

I was in a local “lifestyle” store the other week, standing stock still, looking at a phone that reminded me of the lovely, heavy black “old school” phone that we had when I was little. You know, the one with the rotary dial that, when you dialed 911, took such a long time for that 9 to rotate. No wonder North America didn’t stick with the British emergency code of 999 - the emergency would have been over before the dialing was done.

So, there I was, in a trance (yes, I’d been up all night at a birth), thinking about my low-tech childhood in the ’60s and ’70s, how I skipped to elementary school in my skirt and walked through an old door marked “Girls”, and how my parents decided that it was totally unnecessary to have any of the new high-tech things that were starting to come into the stores (they made it through the Manchester blitz in WWII, so they could do just fine without, thank you very much). 

I remembered that we shared a party line (Watergate for kids), had no answering machine, no voicemail, no calculators, no computers, no videos or DVDs, no recording devices, dishwasher or washer/dryer. We just had one little black and white TV with rabbit ears, a clothes line, and a hand cranked mangle to make life easier. Our car was so slow that we had to have a police escort whenever we drove through our local tunnel. Mine was truly an “old school” childhood - life was slow, and time was our ally.

I finally realized that people were starting to notice me, staring at the old black phone.  But, I didn’t care.  I was in my post-SlowBirth zone.  I walked out of the store, and started to remember the birth that I’d been at through the night, and the day before, and the day before.

Seeing the phone had triggered a memory-tumble, which ended at some multi-coloured cut-out letters pasted onto a window at Women’s Hospital - “I DO IT OLD SCHOOL - ASK ME HOW”. I had kept those words in my head as I helped a client through an almost 48-hour unmedicated, uncomplicated “SlowBirth”. After 31 hours at home, hours of showers and dancing, walking the dog, giving/getting back rubs and marching the hallway, we had finally headed to the hospital. 

At the labouring mum’s request, the tools at hand were our hands and eyes and ears and wisdom (other than me, my client and her husband, “we” also included our nurse and the family docs who had the guts to turn their eyes away from the clocks, and go “old school”). Time, on this day, was our ally, for we needed a lot of it to accomplish this woman’s goal. The high-tech equipment didn’t seem to know how to behave with us. The blood pressure cuff kept pumping itself up even when no one was there, and that brand-fangled-new monitor didn’t work as well as the older doptone, so it was turned off.

Things were kept as simple as possible. We left linear time. The mum was dancing in the shower, rocking and rolling on the birthing ball, just one contraction at a time, one breath at a time, listening to music. To get rid of a puffed-up cervix (kind of like a fat lip) at 9 centimetres, we had her lie on the bed with her feet higher than her head (no epidural necessary) and gave her LOTS of encouragement. We used hip squeezes, hip shakes, swirling and spiraling, visualization, trance-inducing techniques, foot rubs, squatting, kneeling, walking, tears, hands, eyes, and love, liberally (then repeated). Her body’s endorphins helped her to sleep and dream in between contractions.

This amazing labouring woman drew on all her past life experiences (with the aid of a few sherpas), and did what all women have the power to do, climbed the highest mountain ever, and birthed her baby with arms outstretched to touch his body.

And when that baby came, it was pure joy! No exhaustion, just sparkling laughter and smiles and a giggling shout of, “I’m as high as a kite!” (love those endorphins) and an eager, wide-awake little boy who came out with his meaty fist stretched to the sky. Ahaa! That was the culprit! His little hand had slowed things down.  By taking it slow, and using time as their ally, this little man and his mum had worked it out.

When the bustling pediatrician came later to say “Hi”, she actually bowed down before the new mum, saying “I am not worthy.” The doctors all agreed that, if any drugs or technology had been used, it would have been a different story.  Mum and baby would have been in the OR, having a cesarean. All the nurses on shift that day were in awe, knowing that there’s a new initiative in our local hospital to reduce the intervention and cesarean rates by encouraging low tech/high touch birthing, and wishing that they could have seen how it was done.

I am in awe of the couple at the centre of the whirlwind, this vortex of birth. I thank them for trusting in birth, for trusting in the body, for trusting their baby, and for trusting me to calm their spirits and their wild eyes, whenever I’d say, “It’s fine, it’s normal, you are safe, you can do it, just take it slow.”

On this day, I think all three crossed the portal, the “Old School” way. They had discovered SlowBirth.

I’m trying out something new. I’m suspending my impatient, directorial style of parenting and replacing it with a milder form of mentorship. Fully recharged after eight days in the Swiss Alps, I delved into an online parenting course (that I’m admittedly reviewing for someone) and discovered you can actually create a lot more calmness by asking a simple question:

Whose problem is this?

Yes, we all want our children to achieve greatness: if not Oprah Winfrey status than at least head-of-the-class, top-of-the-world, straight-for-the-executive-suite kind of greatness. I’m kidding. Sort of.

Some of us are more ambitious than others. I’ll readily admit I have high hopes for my smart, charming daughter and my entertaining, athletic son. But more importantly, whose life is it, anyway? If my kids don’t do their homework, who suffers? Other than the possibility their lives might emulate the cast of the movie, Failure to Launch, it isn’t really our problem when your kids make bad decisions. Ultimately, they have to deal with the consequences. We only think we do.

Think about it. When was the last time you got in trouble for your child’s poor grades? Or bad behavior at a restaurant? Many of us parents wear the cloak of guilt if our kids act up, and there are people who are more than happy to remind you what a bad job you are doing raising those hellions. Guess what? We can’t control them. But we can control our response. Act out of the ordinary, and your kids start to notice. Mine have.

Fresh off Lesson #3 from today’s parenting course, I jumped into it with vigor.

“I’m bored!” my son whined.

“Oh, what are you going to do?” I asked.

He was stunned.

Normally, I offer helpful hints, tips and tricks to avoid the Boredom Monster. After he recovered from his initial shock, my son said, “I think I’ll call Anton.” He quickly got distracted with something his sister was doing, then proudly announced 30 minutes later that he decided now would be a good time to call his friend. They made a playdate. After a quick peck on the cheek, he was out the door.

My daughter, who tends to challenge me wherever I go, looked me squarely in the eye and said, “I’m doing the rest of my homework after dance class.” She laid out a sensible plan. “Sounds like you know what you are doing!” was all I said. Another stunned silence ensued. No bickering? Commanding? Bossing around? I smiled sweetly and wished her good luck. My daughter looked about her, put on her shoes, and left for Hip Hop.

Fast-forward a few hours. The kids came home. My daughter dilly-dallied. It started to get late.

“Oh, didn’t you say you were going to read outloud?” She claimed she already had. When I reminded her she had said she would do so in front of her father, she had no where to go. “Are you going to read now or after your shower?” She started to squirm. I could tell my calm, question-based parenting was started to sink in. It really is her responsibility to make certain things get done in her life.

Freedom rings in the form of a question. Got to love the New Year!

Holiday shopping in department stores is not something I enjoy, especially around the holidays. My husband was gone for the weekend, and my son was in desperate need of a new pair of jeans (he had managed to rip the knees of three pairs in two weeks). So we thrust ourselves into the throng of unnerved holiday shoppers, despite my dislike for all things consumerism around this time of year.

We rushed up the escalator to avoid the jammed floors. A lady pushed Sophia off at the top, which I did not see. Had I witnessed the pushy woman, I would have told her alllll about my upcoming book, The Power of Slow!

At the top of the next elevator, we saw a young man struggling with the contents of his broken paper grocery bag. Spring onions were getting sliced by the stairs, and no one stopped to help him. I pulled the newly purchased jeans from the bag and handed it to him.

“Would you like this?” I asked him. A bright grin beamed from his dread-lock framed face. “Thank you!” My kids stood in awe.

“You are soooo nice, Mama!” they cheered. A lump entered my throat. I hadn’t thought twice about helping someone in need, and they noticed. They actually noticed!

Normally, it feels as though our kids pick up on all the wrong things we do: the white lie on the phone about why we cannot attend yet another Tupperware party; squeezing a lemon at the traffic light; cursing when you bang against a lampost with your fender. But there are also golden moments when they see you do something right. The next day they reminded me that they wanted to give away some of their toys to children in need. We packed it together, sealing it for delivery the next day.

During the holiday season, we are particularly susceptible to forgetting the importance of balance and that our lives are a journey, not a race. Thankfully, my children are a constant reminder to pack my passport to Planet Slow and to leave that race number behind.

All good things must come to an end. Didn’t someone say that once? I suppose it is the yin and yang of life. You can’t have one without the other.

As I watched my retirement savings plummet by 65% this year, I got to thinking about what’s truly important in life. Was a fat 401(k), and all the sacrifice I made to build it up (including stressful jaunts to the daycare center to pick up my daughter, then four months), really worth it?

I think so.

You might find that shocking, but without the gain, and loss, I experienced, I wouldn’t have the comparison I have today. I may not be living high on the hog, but I’m as high as a kite (in the non-amphetamine-induced sense of the phrase). Why? Because watching the look on my daughter’s face as she comes home from school after getting a super grade on her test means more to me than a plump retirement, and more stressful jaunts from point A to point B. I’m investing in the future in a different way. It’s the type of investment that can never be affected by the stock market.

And that’s a very good thing indeed.

The morning routine with kids can be hectic, especially when it doesn’t get light in Germany until well after they have to be at school. The one-more-minute-of-sleep urge was so great for me this morning that they actually got up before I did.

That’s when the tension began.

“It’s 7:15,” I growled, sporting my mismatching pj’s as I entered the kitchen.” You have fifteen minutes before you need to leave the house. What do you need to do?” With bed head and morning breath, I started commanding my kids around before they could even answer.

Not very slow of me.

I was a little nervous because today was the first day that my seven-year-old son, Jackson, would be home alone for an hour between school and soccer practice. I worried if they got off their timeline by even a minute, the whole house of cards could come tumbling down. I watched my nine-year-old daughter don her clothes for a full five minutes. My husband nearly had to peel me from the ceiling.

But here’s the winning moment. As Jackson struggled with the clock to know when he should leave for practice, his sister lovingly wrote the numbers down on a card. She captured time, with bright lilac Crayola, and showed it to him.

It looks like I have a lot to learn about my relationship with time after all. Thankfully I have great teachers who embrace slow even when their mother does not.