I Sprang Forward, and Broke My Knee

Time marches forward, not only in March but in all the other months, too. There’s just no stopping it.

In fact, I was recently reminded of just how quickly my body is moving through time, and the effects the passage of time has on my aging body. While skiing, I sprang forward while moving forward downhill, and sadly I took a pretty bad tumble (yes, it was a forward roll).

My advancing years have taught me to be generous with wiggle room when it comes to self-criticism and high expectations, so I kept my self-recriminations to a minimum; my body, however wasn’t as forgiving as my mind, and I tore my ACL.

And it wasn’t even March.

My grumbling (crumbling) body reminds me of the grumbling I heard just this past Monday, following the move to Daylight Savings Time. With the hour of sleep we lost moving the clocks forward, not only did I drag all day, but my kids were certainly difficult to rouse for school. All around me, folks were asking for second cups of coffee, and apologizing for rubbing sleep out of their eyes and from their attitudes.

Methinks it’s no coincidence that National Nap Day falls on the Monday after springing forward.

Speaking of moving forward as it relates to social progress, there’s been lots of grumpiness directed toward one Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, and recent author of a book-cum-social-movement-wannabee, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead. She’s been accused of lecturing women how to get ahead in the workplace even though she’s attained the rarified career stratosphere that usually includes support staff, somthing most other women don't have.

Sandberg’s forward-momentum titular words of advice, ‘lean in’ roughly translate to “be ambitious” in the workplace, according to the author. She’s been criticized for telling women they’re not doing enough themselves to get ahead in their careers. Sandberg has also been quoted as saying her book is about encouraging women to be more “self-confident,” in the face of criticism.

“’We call our little girls bossy,’” Sandberg told NPR. “’Go to a playground: Little girls get called “bossy” all the time, a word that's almost never used for boys. And that leads directly to the problems women face in the workforce. When a man does a good job, everyone says, “That's great.” When a woman does that same thing, she'll get feedback that says things like, “Your results are good, but your peers just don't like you as much” or “maybe you were a little aggressive.”’

Sandberg added, "’That means that as a man gets more successful, he is better liked by men and women, and as a woman gets more successful, she is less liked by men and women. But I want to be clear: I am not saying that men are too self-confident. That's not the problem. The problem is that women aren't self-confident enough.’”

Sandberg’s self-confidence led her to promote this forward-thinking platform. I, on the other hand, have a need to search out a little more coffee following the fallout from springing forward on the clock, and on the ski slopes. It will take a little extra java to help process having someone much more forward in her career and who has it all, tell me how to lean forward in order to get it all while I simultaneously try not to fall backward on the teeter-totter balancing between work-life and home-life.

No matter what we do, whether it’s move the clocks forward in Spring or fall backwards in time in the Fall, it’s most wistful watching the progress of time when it comes to our kids.

I was reminded of this after I posted a picture of my children on Facebook this weekend. They’d cooked dinner for my husband and me without any help from us at all, and I was boasting a bit about their sweet gesture. A friend from way-back-when commented that he couldn’t wait for his own daughter to do something similar for him, but she was not yet 3-years-old.

All I wanted to yell out to him was, “Savor every moment, it goes too fast!” I used to roll my eyes whenever a parent with more experience used to tell me that same thing. But I understand quickly time marches forward and there’s no stopping time.

That is, until the Fall, says the woman who fell, springing forward, before Spring, when we spring forward.

Now, about that nap…