【推荐3】When my son finally started school around the age of four, I felt as though I’d been promoted to the new position of School Parent. It was an unexpectedly challenging role, one without additional benefits, or a raise for that matter.

As a direct result of starting school, there were the surprisingly unpleasant changes to our schedule. As parents, we were ill-prepared for the troubled time we had trying to get used to the practice of school.

Gone were the carefree days without plans and plenty of time to kill. This included playing imaginary games indoors or hanging around outside whenever the weather turned nice. Getting to school on time meant becoming the ‘hot mess’ mum often seen in movies. I was rushing kids out the door, forgetting lunch boxes and losing car keys.

As a huge morning person, I tried my best to ensure that school mornings remained calm and slow-paced. I prepared as much as possible the night before. But it still felt like we were in a rush, which I really hated.

The trick, I later discovered, was to cover up my feeling of anxiety. I chanted to myself “Do not rush him, no one likes to be rushed” while helping him get through his morning routine and tasks in a timely manner. Whatever frustration (沮丧) I felt about how slow he was moving, I wouldn’t let him know it. I even didn’t allow anyone in our house to say phrases like, “Hurry up, we’re going to be late!” Our common goal, was not just to get our son out the door in time for school, but more importantly prove that mornings can be relaxed and enjoyable, rather than a horrible start to the day.

Of course by the time summer holiday came, our family had grown wise enough. In what felt like the ‘longest shortest time’, we went from anxious and confused, to calm and confident once again. We were far more prepared to have a smoother start to the new school year.

【推荐1】A few years ago, my husband Matt offered to get me a digital piano for my 41st birthday. Matt knew that I had taken piano lessons as a kid, but stopped doing so in the seventh grade. I was at the age when I would rather go to the mall with friends than play the piano on the weekends.

I was game for a digital piano, but skeptical--I wasn’t sure I was going to play it that often. However, Matt was persistent. He reminded me that I’d mentioned wanting to play the piano again, so he bought me one and set it up in my office.

To be honest, I had only made half-hearted attempts over the years to take up various hobbies, mostly craft-related ones like knitting (编织) and cross-stitch (十字绣), to relax. But nothing really stuck.

Then, two years ago, I had a baby. The piano became even more of an afterthought as I became consumed by the challenges of parenting. I had enough on my plate, I told myself. There was no point in adding another thing that was probably just going to stress me out.

But recently, my 2-year-old son had figured out how to turn on the digital piano and loved to bang on the keys. Seeing him play so joyfully, I thought maybe I could take piano lessons and help him to prepare for the music world.

I started lessons a couple of weeks later, and it turned out that I could handle 15 minutes a day.

Sometimes, I could handle 40 minutes. I found myself completely immersed in playing the piano. The repetition calmed me. Going over difficult parts in each piece I was learning was incredibly satisfying. To my great surprise, at age 44, I have an actual hobby now, and I really look forward to performing together with my son one day.

【推荐2】At Christmas last year, Cathy Wood’s family home in Manchester was disturbingly quiet. Her daughters, 19 and 21, were revising for exams. She says she and her husband “hardly saw anything of them…I was a bit fed up.” Bored and frustrated, she bought a 45kg bunch of secondhand clothes, without knowing what she was going to do with it.

Wood, a former teacher of English, has always loved clothes. At university, Wood hung out with the fashion students and sewed her own new romantic outfits. Wood, now 62, enjoyed shopping for vintage (老款) clothing and had even discussed getting a shop with a friend, but the rents put them off. A week or so after the bunch arrived, she booked a stall (货摊) at West Didsbury Makers Market.

Standing at her first market stall was a wholly new experience though. “It was very different from teaching. You need just the right amount of contact with people.” Wood sold four pieces at her first market, which paid for the stall and left a small surplus (盈余). Now, she sometimes returns home with 30 empty coat hangers. But it was the contact with customers and fellow traders that she found most rewarding. “It’s a lovely environment. You chat and get to know each other. I really enjoyed it.” she says.

Sometimes, in quiet moments on the stall, she takes out her mending and thinks of her mother and grandmother. “My grandmother taught art and crafts, and both she and my mother spent a lot of time with the sewing machine, teaching me to sew,” “What these clothes do is transport me back to different times when things were easier for me. They give me a pleasurable feeling. Nostalgia (怀旧) can be a good thing in that way.”

After she stopped teaching, she “started to feel like a non person”, she says. The market stall “has given me status in my own mind to be part of the community, contributing something, to be somebody people talk to, somebody people smile at.”