Do you ever say this phrase to your children? “I’ll be right there, lovey, just after I finish…” You fill in the blank. Right after you finish making dinner, emptying the dishwasher, making a phone call, checking your facebook live feeds. You’ll be “right there,” but how do we even define this term?
My husband’s from Africa. We joke that often he’s on African time. When we lived in Zambia, I learned the local usage of the phrase, “Just now.” I remember Jeff Phiri, one of the bush camp’s staff members, saying to me, “Madame, I’ll meet you in the kitchen, just now.” Crazy American that I was, I expected “just now” to mean “right now,” and I stood there peeling carrots with a dull knife by myself. But in Jeff’s culture, “just now” meant whenever he got around to it. It could mean in five minutes, or it could mean after he finished the twelve other tasks he needed to accomplish.
I still haven’t gotten used to my husband’s practice of “just now.”
Especially with children, this concept can be maddening. And I don’t mean to us, I mean to THEM! Lately, I’ve been trying to be better about working on MY time instead of on THEIRS. How frustrating it must be to Luke, my two year-old, when I tell him to just go play with your cars for five minutes by himself, that mama will be right there. What if “right there” turns into ten or twenty minutes as I’m busily trying to throw some laundry in the dryer and finish a thought-provoking blog post? What if “right there” means that we don’t even have time to play bumper-cars-hit-the-dining-room-wall because Mama is frantically trying to fit too much in to one day?
I’m going to try to be more conscious of my use of this phrase, “I’ll be right there…” Instead, I’m going to try to just BE there in the first place.
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Oh the guilt! It’s sooo hard to stop whatever we’re doing to just play, especially if there’s a baby whose screaming tends to trump Penny’s requests. I do the best I can, but try harder to respect her end of things. Too often I want her to stop whatever deeply absorbing task she’s engaged in to get her teeth brushed, etc, RIGHT NOW! I try now to give her 5 minute warnings (’cuz, dude those teeth have got to be brushed). I like to think I’m helping her to respect my need to do things by showing her that I respect whatever it is she needs to get done. Be it a handstand, drawing, or dance number. Last week she told me “5 minutes, Mama. I’m a princess about to get married.” And I gotta say, I really enjoyed waiting those 5 minutes watching her twirl round and round in a pink “ball gown.”
I just did it!! Too funny. “Maaaaawwwwwm, when will you be finished?” “In moment honey,” I replied. So, I’m getting off the computer and going NOW.