That’s what I need to be doing. Writing checks. Figuring out why our checking account is off by $92.55. Adjusting budgets to maintain ourselves until the next payday. Ordering flowers for my mother’s birthday. Folding the latest pile of clean clothes to come out of the dryer.

All sorts of things that I am not doing at the moment.

I will, I’m sure, soon since I won’t be able to sleep well with some of that looming over my head.

I try to play hookie and it only ends up biting my psyche in the ass and I end up dreaming about all sorts of whacked out things – tornado’s exploding my home, sinking to the bottom of the ocean in my sweet car, fighting with my spouse while searching for my lost cat.

And then I think – everyone needs to play hookie every now and again, right? Just to keep from having an aneurysm or hypothermia of the heart or misplaced morals?

I mean a real, extended period of time without administering to each and every one of my deadlines, responsibilities or shoulds.

Will it count if I plan it and make sure I have taken care of all that shit first?

I’ve been thinking lately about how old souls really are and if their age can be quantified like our bodies’ ages – with simple math and a counting of days against the changing seasons.

There are times in my life when I have felt my soul to be very young. Not necessarily that my soul hasn’t traveled through numerous experiences, more that it has not yet reached beyond some unknowable threshold of the aging process.

I have had a few moments in time where the calm and peace of my soul existence lets my body (including my brain) understand the certainty of forever and always.

Walking through an easement on a sunny, sunny day when I was ten and sensing God’s presence with every part of my young body – nature’s fresh honeysuckle perfume, dazzling vibrancy in the trees, earth and sky, melodious symphony of birds, bugs and breeze, taste of dryness in my mouth from the warmth, and every tissue of my being prickling with delight and awe. I knew then my soul had experienced all of this without reference to time and would continue to do so even if my body forgot.

Which it did.

Until I held hands one night 20 years ago with the man who would become my husband. I saw our hands interlaced as more than a familiar glance. We’d held hands before and they fit together somehow.

Then again, years later, lying in the hospital bed, womb still full of our son I have always known and recognized when we met. I may have been a terrified new mom but he was (and is) all things constant and growing.

Once more, at the birth of our daughter, the intense agony of being separated from her even if only for a few hours as the doctors believed an artificial warming lamp could do a better job than me. We’d never been apart before and each minute stretched longer than I could almost withstand.

In these moments, I believe my soul to have aged exponentially in relation to our current theories of time.

In the years of days that have blazed by without notice or conscious memory tracking, my soul age changes so minutely that it is unrecognizable to my human brain leaving my body to make up the difference.

That leaves me with a 43 and 1/2 year old body occupied by an indeterminately ageless soul.

Where’s the app to ascertain my real age from that?