A weird thing happened to me a few weeks ago.

G had a prior commitment that had been on the calendar for weeks. However, the night before the event, an old friend called to say that they’d be passing through our town on their way back from a fishing trip, and they wanted to stop and say hello.

Of course, fishing tales ensued, and by the end of the conversation, the short stop to stay hello had turned into an overnight stay to check out some of our local fishing holes. When the wonderful husband asked me if G would be able to go along, without hesitation, I said, “sure.”

Me saying “sure” was the weird part. I could tell from the looks that both the WH and G gave me that they weren’t expecting me to agree. The two of them couldn’t decide if they should run away with their good luck, or make sure they’d heard me correctly.

Finally, G cracked. “But Mom, don’t I have that thing tomorrow night?” he asked tentatively. I told him not to worry about it, I would change his RSVP and that he should go fishing and have fun. As he ran off to pack up his fishing bag, the WH asked if I was feeling all right.

“Did you just back out of a commitment?” he asked, incredulously. I had done exactly that. Even worse, I had allowed one of the kids to back out as well. Oddly enough, I wasn’t feeling guilty about it either. Even before the pandemic, it had been a few years since we’d seen our friend, and even though it was just a quick fishing trip to the same hole that G had fished a few hundred times, I knew he would have a memorable evening out on the lake. After a year of very unmemorable evenings, it wasn’t a very hard decision to make.

A few days went by, and I was back to rearranging the calendar to have five people in five different places at the same time, trying to figure out how I could juggle everything. This is another muscle that died off after it wasn’t used for so long. Previously, being in two places at the same time seemed to be a skill I’d mastered. Now, I couldn’t make the equation of two people driving and three people going to events balance no matter what I tried. Finally, I pulled one activity out of the lineup. Immediately everything else fell into place. Sure, the one thing I dropped was the thing I was supposed to be doing, but oddly enough, I wasn’t upset about missing it. In fact, I felt relieved. Turns out, I hadn’t really been looking forward to doing it, but it was another commitment I’d made, and I felt like I had to see it through.

This may not seem like such a big deal to you, or you may be horrified that I’d broken commitments. Normally, I never would have considered backing out on someone, or I’d be just as horrified as some of you might be. But, here’s the thing: in neither situation did the earth stop spinning. I have to admit, I was a little shocked. At that very least, I’d expected an angry phone call or text, but it was crickets. G ended up having the excellent time that I expected he would, and after spending an evening bouncing between my kids’ commitments and thoroughly enjoying them, I took a look at my schedule and got my prior commitment back into the lineup.

As life has gotten back to normal, as I’ve gone right from work to activity after activity, as I’ve filled up the gas tank a few times a week instead of once a month, I’ve surprised myself at the number of times I’ve started to say “no” to things, or in some cases, “yes” to activities that I would have never considered before. Part of me has been thinking that this is me resisting a return to activities that I don’t quite trust to be safe for my kids. Another part of me has been thinking that maybe this is the new me, actually able to say “no” to things. Yet another part is justifying this as being summertime, and I’m just trying to get some down time. And, still another part knows that this is only temporary, and once school and all the fall activities hit the schedule, life will go back to being the same crazy, overscheduled circus that it always was, and this year will be in the rearview mirror.

As registrations are starting to open up, I’ve been trying to have thoughtful conversations with the kids about whether or not this is really something we want to add back into the schedule. Of course, I had to make it clear that staying home playing video games all year wasn’t going to be an option, but I’ve been encouraging them to think about trying new activities, or passing on activities that they may have started when they were younger and no longer really interest them. It has been interesting to follow their thought processes, and while the calendar doesn’t look any less packed, it does look different.

The other weekend, steady rains wiped out our plans, and I had a quiet weekend at home to catch up on housework and a few other errands I’d been pushing off. I ended up crashing on the couch for part of it and finishing a book I’d started reading a few weeks ago, before things really got going again. I really appreciated a break in the action and started thinking about how much I will look forward to rain days, and snow days, interrupting our schedules again. Then I remembered that it doesn’t take a weather event or a global pandemic for me to just say “no” to an event, or “yes” to a lazy afternoon of fishing.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.