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I would’ve eaten the marshmallow

I am not a patient person. You know that famous psychological study where kids are told they can eat one marshmallow now or get two if they wait? Yeah. I’d have eaten the marshmallow immediately. Boom. No hesitation. It was delicious, suckers! No regrets.

I would have eaten the marshmallow without waiting not because I don’t believe in the power of patience, but because I don’t trust the promise…

What if someone else swoops in and eats it first? What if I wait and get nothing — who even are these people in white coats standing in for Mrs. Brown? How did they get in our classroom?? What if there’s a fire drill at marshmallow school and I never get the second one?! Who’s feeling pretty silly now, Monica?!!

Better to take what’s here now, right? YOLO. Or maybe it’s FOMO. Either way, I’m GO GO GO GO. I’ve always felt the clock ticking in the background. And that shit is loud.

Driven, not necessarily slow

And yet, I’m also, admittedly, wildly driven. I am the kind of person who gets a dopamine hit every time I check something off a to-do list. I make one every morning. Sometimes I add things I’ve already done just for the satisfaction of crossing them off.

I was the goody two-shoes marshmallow kid too, in some ways — the one who waited because she wanted to be the best at waiting. I like rules, timelines, gold stars. And for the most part, this impatience-meets-ambition combo has served me well. I’ve gotten a lot of shit done.

Then came Alice

Enter motherhood. Or, more precisely, enter Alice. This tiny, chubby, beautiful lil boss baby has thrown a full-body wrench into my carefully structured time management machine. From 7 p.m. to 9 a.m. Monday through Friday, and 24/7 on weekends, I am not in charge. She is. And she doesn’t care about my lists.

Some days I get things done in 15-minute increments. Other days I throw the entire plan out the window. My schedule bends and reshapes itself around hers. I used to be the one who decided when I eat the marshmallow. Now she does.

Learning to sit still 😐

Yesterday, as naps grow more dramatic and less instantaneous, I sat rocking her for hours. Just sitting. Still (unless you count the rocking). I don’t think I’ve ever been that still for that long in my life. And, to my surprise, I loved it. Later that night, I rocked her again before bed, even though she didn’t need it. Even though I had other things I could have been doing. Even though the list was sitting there, unchecked.

A few months ago, this would have been unthinkable. When she was a newborn, I adored holding her — this long-dreamed-of joy made real — but I hated the do-nothing of it all. Watching TV while she slept on me. Letting whole days blur by. My body was still reeling from a C-section, and for the first time in my life, I was completely physically reliant on others. It was disorienting. A mind fuck, honestly. I do not miss that time.

Turtle energy and the slow burn

Somewhere in this haze, a friend mentioned “turtle energy.” You can guess the idea. Patient and steady progress etc. etc. The turtle’s slow and steady pace teaches us to embrace the journey. Little steps. Big results.

Ugh. Annoying. Not her, of course. The message. Slow and steady? Say it ain’t so!

My reaction of wanting to put my fingers in my ears like a child myself (I can’t hear you lalalala) is, of course, how I know it is a message meant for me.

Becoming the turtle

I’m trying to “turtle.” Every day I try. I remind myself that I am not wasting time when I do nothing but sit and rock my baby. This is it. This is life. This is everything. As we watch cars go by and lightning bugs fill the air, I remind myself that turtle time is still time. Still progress. Just taken new form.

And, slowly of course, something is shifting.

I say no to things I don’t actually want to do. (Imagine!) I resist the itch of impulse (the good fight I’ve been waging since getting sober). I defy Immediacy Culture — which art critic Anna Kornbluh writes about in her book “Immediacy, or the Style of Too Late Capitalism,” a heady tome I’ve been reading for months now (lol).

Because, ironically, it takes time to unlearn urgency.

Life, layer by layer

This shift shows up in the studio too. On weekends, when it’s just Alice and I, we make our way up there eventually. She watches. I paint. Kind of.

I’ve spent literal weeks just painting the fluorescent orange base of my next piece. One I originally (ha!) thought I’d finish by the end of June. But Alice and I, we’ve both grown to love the repetition. The rhythm. Layer after thin layer, this orange evolves. It is starting to glow.

I’ve always thought of orange as the color of a woman who knows your secret. Now, as Alice and I watch each coat transform the last one, I think maybe orange is the color of a woman who knows the secret:

To turtle it.

And to eat the marshmallow.

If you do life well, there will be time enough for both.