Any views or opinions expressed in “#MomLife” are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Watershed Voice staff or its board of directors.

My son asked if he could ride his bike this morning. I said, “Maybe later.” Of course, later never came. 

Do you ever wonder where later has gone? I often think it goes to the back of the closet and gets lost with those Christmas gifts you forgot you bought. As an adult, later seems like something small and trivial. As a child, later seems like something you’ve wished for but it never happens. And that makes me mad. 

When and how do we become maybe later people?  

Why do we keep saying maybe later but we never do it? Why do we keep pushing things aside for later and then forget about them or just ignore them? Is it a matter of time constraints or are we doing this to ourselves on purpose? 

I think the answer to these questions is mom life. The chaos of being a mom makes you a maybe later person. I used to think it was OK to push everything off until the last minute but as I get older I have realized that life is not about the things you wished you did. It’s about the things you do now instead of later.   

What exactly is later? Later is riding that bike up and down the sidewalk hours after you asked. Later is finally cleaning your room after your parents asked you 50 times to do it. Taking that trip. Meeting that friend for coffee. Later is now. 

We moms need to remember that life is happening whether we make time for it or not. We could learn from children by taking cues from them. We need to stop saying later and start saying now. 

I wonder how saying maybe later to our children affects them? Is putting things off and never following through showing them that later is actually procrastination? I don’t know about you but I’d rather my children not follow in my footsteps when it comes to procrastinating. 

I spend way too much time on social media and one thing I’ve noticed recently is the COVID-19 pandemic is changing the way we live. We no longer have to say maybe later to playing with our children, teaching our children, watching our children. Later is now. 

As a mother who juggles many different roles it is easy to forget about things you’ve said maybe later to. But luckily for me, my children don’t forget anything. So tomorrow when my son asks to ride his bike, I think I’ll say “OK, let’s get that bike out” and make “maybe later” a thing of the past.

Steph Hightree is a hot mess mom who is fueled by stress and too much caffeine. She is a Three Rivers native who talks about the good, the bad, and well, everything else about parenthood.