Does the ability to juggle come when a baby girl is born or does she acquire it? I took a few minutes to think about this because its not a subject that’s mentioned in the media whether its online or on the page, on the screen or on air. You can’t go online and put women juggling because all you’ll get is a list of some famous jugglers. Google doesn’t do metaphors. I have no idea why. Is it because it was invented by a man?
At the moment I’m juggling what seems like a hundred balls in the air. There’s a play, a novel, some mentoring, baking, reading and commenting, cooking, shopping, washing, ironing, thinking about how to fit a hundred pages of research into thirty seven or forty pages of playscript. Oh and how to fix the printer which has jammed. Which has to be fixed so I can print off my teaching plan for Friday. The half-written teaching plan which has to be finished by Thursday so I can fix up anything I don’t like. And do I need a new ink thing? I definitely need some more paper. And I need to put those yellow laces into the new black track shoes I got from the Shoe Clinic. Dream on.
I have to read some research on old roses and what is worse try and remember the salient points. Maybe I’ll change that aspect of the novel, make it something I already know. Like juggling.
I’ve already got a card playing game in the damn thing so I have to work out how four people play their hands, I have to work out what cards they’re dealt,who deals them, how individuals play them, who’s got the Joker, the Aces, and that little rag which will win the game.
I have to work out how to find the time to plant two plants which have been waiting for too long. I avoid looking at them when I go outside and as for the weeds I have long cultivated an unseeing eye when I glance in their direction. I was asked this morning how I got flat-leafed parsley to grow so luxuriantly and I said, ‘Neglect, I neglect them. I just mutter I’m too busy juggling when I go past the pots and they start growing like mushrooms so they won’t get chucked on the compost. And speaking of mushrooms I made a beautiful delicious lip-smacking mushroom sauce last night, full of cream of course. But delicious and I ate what was left over for breakfast. To give me strength to keep juggling.
I have to go out and check on the Lilliput Library. Someone or two have put books in it but no-one has take them. A friend brought some lovely, goof looking books around on Sunday and they’re still sitting on the couch. I have to do something about them. I got an email from the Labour History Project. My sub is due. I do it straight away. Otherwise I’ll be too busy jugging to remember it.
Juggling happens all around us and we take it for granted because we’re doing it too. I’ll tell you something you already know. Women are the best jugglers. And yes, baby girls are born with the ability to juggle. They must be because I’ve been doing it a long long time and no-one taught me. There are no teachers of the kind of juggling women do. We learn it by doing it. It starts when we try and chew on a crust, drink some milk, at the same time, choke, go red in the face and in that instant realise, as we still try and cram more bread in that we need to work out a way to do all these things at the same time. A lightbulb moment. And we get the message,
Just keep juggling and the world might slow down its reckless rush to hell in a handbasket.
