At nine o'clock in the morning, after the school day out-the-door rush, our house is profoundly still. I can almost hear it sigh and settle into a biding state of clock ticks and refrigerator hums and the muffled chugs of the washing machine. The cats and I move quietly, methodically, and rarely speak aloud. Walking through empty rooms strewn with damp towels and wadded clothes, shoes and papers, dishes and books, I am reminded of traversing the seashore at low tide. My four children, like the tide, have shiftedòtemporarilyòout of my reach, leaving their flotsam and jetsam behind. The day stretches before me like a wide, deserted beach.

This is a solitary time for me, the kind of day I fantasized about when my children were young and constantly in my arms or underfoot. For twelve years I had monitored young children and gotten breaks only as long as a toddler's nap or a preschool class. I was absolutely unprepared for the shock of being on my own for four to six hours at a time. Suddenly, I am lost and bereft in my empty house.

During those early years I yearned for quiet hours of uninterrupted work. Sometimes I missed the freedom to come and go without having to accommodate little companions or arrange child care. When I imagined life with all my children at school, I pictured myself slipping naturally into my pre-motherhood patterns as if they were old, familiar shoes. However, accustomed to constantly interacting with my children as I went about my daily work, I experienced an intellectual vertigo without them. I berated myself for having the attention span of a gnat because I could not focus on a project without periodically leaping up to check the dryer or make a phone call or load the dishwasher. A four-hour block of time simply felt unwieldy after years of operating in ten-minute intervals.

Even the concept of productivity was a struggle. Surely, now that I had all this uninterrupted "free" time, I could keep up with the housework, take on additional volunteer responsibilities, cook better meals, become physically fit, read those books stacked by my desk, make all of our Christmas gifts, and produce some marketable short stories. After all, my children were in school "all day" and I was "not working." However, as the labors of caring for small children ebbed, the new challenges and obligations of caring for school-age children surged.

Our afternoons and evenings changed. Ballet lessons, soccer practices, and Girl Scout meetings kept me running from the time I picked the children up from school until after dark. My husband, who usually was home earlier than I, became the regular dinner cook. The evenings were intense: homework, chores, piano practice, arguments, phone calls, showers. I was back to doing two or three things simultaneously amid frequent interruptions. My "internal mother monitor" would prompt me to break away from the laundry or a stack of paperwork: "Have you finished your math?" "Where is your lunch box?" "Did you call your coach?"
If my mornings and early afternoons are low tide, the late afternoons and evenings are certainly high tide. At nine o'clock in the evening, our family life is in full swing with wave upon wave of activity. My growing children continue to need diligent supervision, compassionate counsel, and prompt conflict intervention. They also need hugs, transportation to the school skating party, and advice on writing a proper bibliography.

As our after-school hours and weekends have become busier and more structured, I have shifted errands, meetings, and appointments to earlier in the dayòleaving me very little of that "free" time, after all. I have been able to make some time for writing projects, aerobic walks, and occasional lunches with friends, as well as volunteer work that supports my children's schools and activities. Mostly, though, I do what I can to make our lives run more smoothly and efficiently. I write grocery lists, round up library books, coordinate calendars, and clean the kitchen. In the quiet, over a sink full of suds, I can ponder and puzzle through our current dilemmas or simply work out the details of our increasingly complex daily life.

As any clam can tell you, it is not easy living in an intertidal zone. It takes a hard shell and a good grip, especially when society claims that children who are in school all day need so much less parental time and attention. But school hours are shorter than work hours, and our children attend school only thirty-eight weeks each year. Then there are absences due to illness and appointments, as well as field trips, classroom plays, and Invertebrate Lab Day in the fourth grade.... My daytime flexibility is a significant advantage for our family.

Meanwhile, the morning and early afternoon have flowed past and I feel a rousing slosh across my toes. A moment to discern the rhythm of the surf, to catch a few deep breaths, to wonder what on earth that might be bobbing on the next waveòthen, plunge!