My daughter is obsessed with the car wash. Mind you, we haven’t been to the car wash in weeks, although we pass one every morning on the way to day care. It came up in conversation out of the blue the other day, and now it’s All Car Wash, All the Time. Somewhere in her toddler brain a switch flipped that said, “Figure out the whole car wash thing.” So she talks about it incessantly. I admit, the conversation is rather boring. “Car wash, g’ car a bath,” she declares, or is she asking for my agreement of the car wash’s purpose? This is followed by “See car wash.” I explain that we will see the car wash sometime soon. End of conversation. For the moment. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Today she held up a matchbox car when I picked her up at day care: “Car wash, car wash, car wash,” which I repeated back to her (what else is there to say?), and when that failed to satisfy her: “CAR WASH!” Clearly I had not adequately unlocked the mystery of the car wash. Or perhaps I hadn’t praised her sufficiently for figuring out that this matchbox car is a smaller version of a real car, one which does indeed go through the car wash. Anyway, she’s working on it. Whatever the reason, whatever the timing, it is time for her to work on it. At home, at day care, and in the van, shuttling between the two, her brain is working hard on car wash.

I’m reading the book In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honore. Highly recommended for people addicted to hurry, and you know if you are. The point of the book is not to do everything at a snail’s pace, but to discern the proper tempo for each activity. Last night’s bedtime chapter dealt with work—not only the need to work less (and create more time for leisure), but the need for reflective spaces in the midst of work. If we are constantly driven by deadlines and efficiency, wringing as much productivity out of each moment as possible, then there will be very little breathing room for creative solutions and visions to grow. I thought, well that’s interesting, and I tucked the dustflap in between that chapter and the next, and went to sleep.

Then this morning (and it seems so obvious as I write it), without thinking I signed off on the Christmas Eve bulletins to be printed and didn’t remember until later that there will be a baptism at the late service, but by then the bulletins had already been run off, so it was a mad dash to the Christian bookstore to pick up new bulletin covers so we can run the whole thing again tomorrow.

Then this afternoon (get ready for more painful obviousness), I made the long trip to the Naval Hospital to visit a parishioner, and if I’d actually called beforehand I might have been able to time my trip so as not to coincide with his doctor’s appointment, but instead it coincided with the Young and the Restless on a tiny TV in an empty hospital room as I waited around for him to return and then finally had to give up.

What a frustrating, pointless day, I fumed (beware, incoming projectile, hitting me upside the head), and it wasn’t until my daughter had obsessively yelled “CAR WASH!” for the 50th time that I realized that maybe (I could've had a V8!), I need to flip the switch in my brain too. Maybe I’m not supposed to put the book away and fall asleep and not think about it until it’s time to read the next chapter. Maybe I’m supposed to “Figure out the whole Slow Work thing,” and I’m supposed to formulate some sentences about it, and try out some new concepts, and talk about it with others; and I’m supposed to do it while I’m at home, and while I’m away, and while I’m shuttling between the two.

So, that is what I shall do. Smart kid.