The importance of routine in family life
Blessed routine! I say it - well, I write it - totally seriously. And yes, I know you're going to call me a party pooper, but I can not help it: I need a routine in my life for the simple reason that vacations, although fun, are real chaos and we are many parents who, in a low voice, we recognize the illusion that makes us return to school.
In fact, I believe that one of the virtues of motherhood and fatherhood is that it teaches you to greatly appreciate daily life. That of which we put X years, we fled like gunpowder because our life was what flowed slowly and stickily between the times of leisure and recreation.
Let no one misunderstand me: it's not that I do not like holidays, vacations and plans of all luck and color with family or without family. I love them and I have unbeatable memories of those moments. I love the family macrofiestas that are mounted in the houses, I am excited to have a lot of kids to the retortero having a great time, I go crazy all the traditions of this time, from the candles of the Advent wreath to the roasted chestnuts or the roscón de Kings soaked in chocolate.
The problem is that also I love the order and Christmas is anything but ordered. And the order is not a hobby or an obsession, but an essential requirement for a healthy coexistence in the home. The order is of many types and in all of them it is good.
The first is a physical order, the most obvious. We live many together in a house pulling a child. We touch a few square meters of housing and even less of cupboards. The parties are a monumental wear in this field. First, because who else receives the least gift from their Majesties the Three Wise Men of the East that the previous day did not occupy a space with its volume. Second because as children are 24 hours a day at home and we can not subtract school, they mess up much more. Sure, it's normal, they play. But they mess up. And they play, but they stain. And they play, but they get dirty. So this is chaos raised to the nth degree.
The second level of order that was already leading fatal is the order of schedules. It is evident that I get older, because I can not understand how young I was able to stay awake until the wee hours of the morning. Today, starting at eleven o'clock, it seems that my batteries are taken away from me and my greatest hope is to go to bed as soon as possible. Mine, because theirs seems very different ... The board game they just released, the movie that they wanted so much to watch, the television contest suitable for all audiences that some ruthless soul has programmed until the early hours ... This is a non-stop ... And I wonder if we will be able to go back to school and to work in the middle of such a mess.
The third plane of order is the mental one. And this is where the big circus is set up. In my house I have thought of putting directly an automatic door, like those of the shops or hotels, because here children and of their own come and go with surprising speed. As soon as I have twelve to eat, I have zero for dinner. So there is no one who plans a fairly decent shopping list. At night I count because not everyone sleeps here but they sleep more than they used to: cousins, friends, neighbors ... Total, a disaster.
And to all these I ask myself: how is it possible that every day of the "ordinary year", that which is included between the beginning and the end of the school calendar, we leave with almost total punctuality of home, breakfast, washed and dressed, go to school? Because at parties we never get it, and that without the pressure of ticking the clock ... I think the secret is that everyday life, with its repetitive routines, is a delight for family life.
