Attainable Joy

It was a tough morning. Our morning started at 3:30 when Jada woke up scared. I couldn’t quite surmise if she had had a bad dream, if she was simply scared of the dark, or if she was in some way uncomfortable. With her two-year-old molars slowly working their way to the surface, it could have been any one of these things. But Jada was too delirious, too upset to clarify what her screaming and crying was for. Even with me laying in bed next to her and eventually holding her in my arms, she couldn’t fall into deep sleep. She would doze, twitch, startle herself awake, and even still wrapped in my arms, would scream out for me. Finally, exhausted and frustrated, I turned on the lamp at 4:30.

“Look around,” I said in the gentlest tone I could muster feeling completely psychotic with sleep deprivation. “We’re in your room. I’m here with you. We’re safe. Now it’s the middle of the night and we need to go back to sleep.”

As I lay in bed, not sleeping, waiting for the sun to illuminate the space between the window sill and the shade, I thought about the weekend. Ryan and I got away for a few nights together for his annual partnership meeting. It was a wonderful weekend and the weather was beyond perfect with bright sunny skies, well balanced humidity and a temperature that daily fluctuated between 50 and 75 degrees. There was plenty of time to be alone, to walk and read and write. There was time for Ryan and me to relax, and to cut loose and have fun.

But I ran up against a tangible vibe that has become familiar over the years that I have become a regular fixture at these company events. It’s a vibe of judgment. The women on these things fall into two over arcing categories. I’ll give you a hint: one of them is not attachment parenting. There are the career women, those who were here because it was their conference and those who were here because it was their husband’s but who have their own impressive careers back at home. And then there are the wives, the women who have dedicated their lives to…being wives. Some raised children in their youth, some never had kids. But through it all they were home, to coordinate the cleaning people and the gardeners and to plan dinner parties and choose the caterer. There are a few women like me: young and raising young kids, who left young careers that they will someday return to, but there aren’t many of us. I am also a solid decade younger than the next youngest person on these trips which adds another sort of layer.

Put simply, there are not many women associated with this institution who I fully identify with. There are many who I respect and some who seem to respect me. But most of the women who would never have dreamed of putting their careers on hold to raise kids, can’t quite make sense of me, or they pity me. I actually respect their choices but the respect isn’t always mutual. As one mother of two who is a partner at the firm once said to me, “I just don’t find my children that engaging. It’s great that you do though.” As if I have such a low IQ that sitting on the floor making block towers and crayon drawings was enough to fully fulfill and satisfy my need for mental stimulation and if she hadn’t been so many times smarter than me, she might have done the same thing.

So I tend to leave these gatherings feeling a little bruised up. This time I came back with a more specific feeling. Something one woman said to me on the last night really stuck. She is middle aged and her husband is very successful at my husband’s firm and she’s still a really neat person. She said, “His successes are his. My successes are mine. You have to have your own life.”

I didn’t resent the comment, it just stuck with me. Indeed, I completely agree with it. And I am very proud of my successes. I am proud of the bright, funny and compassionate children I’ve raised. Their discipline and boundaries have been created and are directed almost exclusively by me based on the education I received in early childhood development. I am proud of the time I’ve taken to be a part of their early maturation. I’m proud of the hard work I’ve put into their healthy eating. Most of the time I don’t care that making your life revolve around children seems old fashioned and unimpressive to many people. Staying home with our kids was my choice and identifying as a feminist never meant to me that I should lose that as an option. And I’m proud of the time I make for writing, bringing some small semblance of balance to my child-devoted life. I am proud of the work that I am doing.

But her comment made me think about something else. As I lay awake shushing my two year old and murmuring promises of safety into her soft head, I started thinking about the next stage. I know that I won’t be one of those stay-at-home-lifers. And that conversation gave me a kick, a jump start. What am I going to do? And when?

After teaching one year in the public school system, I was glad I had gotten pregnant with Twila because before the end of the year I had sworn off public education. Some people said I didn’t give it a fair shake, coming in mid-year, pregnant, to a blend of fourth and fifth graders most of whom were taller than me, trying to get them ready for two weeks of standardized testing. The odds were not in my favor. But what was true of that classroom, that is true in almost every public school classroom, is there is a standard way of teaching—materials that have to be used to cover the given subject matters and very little freedom, or time to try anything new and different or even to slow down for the kids who aren’t getting it. I’m sure it takes a few years to really become a great teacher. But by the time I left at the end of the year, knowing I would be having a baby the following September, I couldn’t begin to wrap my mind around going back for those first few years.

All these thoughts tumbled around in my mind as I waited for sleep or the sun this morning. Finally sleep came sometime after 5am, just before the sun. At 6 Ryan left early to go to work and the garage must have woken up Twila because at 6:05 she bounded back into her bed, where Jada and I slept, looking for an adult. Deliriously I opened the covers, hopeful that we might all sleep a few more minutes, but she was closely followed by our kitty, looking for someone to give her breakfast and determined not to leave the tops of our heads until we did.

So by 6:15 I was brewing coffee and trying to keep my eyes open while the girls sat at the table eating their first course of breakfast. Knowing only one way to beat cobwebs of that magnitude, I put on a rigorous workout video and started the day sweating and panting. After a shower and breakfast part II, we were tight on time for getting Twila to school.

I rushed us out the door and started the car just in time to be about five minutes late. But as I put the car in reverse Twila suddenly waved a cloth bag in the air and shouted, “Mom, I’m the snack girl today!”

So at five minutes late we rolled passed the school and to the grocery store. After a quick decision of grapes and cheese sticks we were checking out. The exhaustion from my sleepless night was falling back on my shoulders having only briefly held at bay by vigorous exercise. I wasn’t tired, I was weary. My whole body felt the weight of sleeplessness. My fingers wouldn’t do what I wanted them to do and it was irritating me. So when my girls started chorusing for Tic-Tacs in the checkout isle, my blood pressure started to rise. I squeezed the cart passed Twila trying to get away from the candy shelf. In my rush, I backed into the woman checking out in front of me. She regarded my apology like it was a moldy piece of bread.

Finally it was our turn to check out. With shaking hands I tried to swipe my credit card and dropped it. Twice. Twila was asking for Tic-Tacs again. I sent her to the other side to bag our grapes. Just as I was signing the receipt with one hand and holding Jada in her seat with the other, I heard a collective groan and looked to see Twila approaching, head down and cheeks flushed.

All the grapes from one of the bags had hit the ground and were rolling in every direction. It seemed none of them had been attached to their stems, but were instead bagged like a sack full of marbles. The grocery store wasn’t busy. The only people around were the middle aged women checking us out, the younger woman in front of us and a man at the ATM a few feet away. Other than that, the grocery store was empty. But no one offered to help us. In fact, Twila’s embarrassment seemed to be highly amusing to the people who stood witness. They each stood back to chuckle at the hundreds of grapes that were scattered across the floor and Twila’s enflamed cheeks for a moment before turning back to what they were doing. I can’t imagine witnessing a stressed mom with two young kids facing a mess of that magnitude without offering to help. And for a moment, the vortex of bitterness that swelled in my guts was almost enough to consume me. I gave Twila a tight squeeze around her shoulders and asked Jada to please sit down and stay sitting. Even she got the severity of the situation.

Twila and I crouched down and started picking up the run-away grapes one by one. After a few minutes the task seemed insurmountable and I asked the checker who stood sipping a soda waiting for her next customer, if she had a broom. A few minutes later she strolled back with a broom even too dirty for a witch and a standing dustpan whose handle looked like it had been used to stir tar. She set it next to us and resumed her post. I focused on breathing deeply and not crying.

The floor was disgusting and it quickly become clear that these grapes were not going to be saved and it took all of my will power not to just leave them rolling in every direction and pull my kids out the door. But something made me stay and see the project through to completion. When we left, a good twenty minutes late for school already, I knew that I had modeled something more important than timeliness to school. I showed Twila patience in the face of aggravation. I showed her that we fix our mistakes. I showed her that even when people are rude and unhelpful we can still be calm and do the right thing.

After school I took a much-needed nap with Jada and woke up feeling like I could see again. I felt like nothing was insurmountable. And I felt better about my accomplishments too. I saw with clarity that maybe career women don’t judge me as harshly as I judge myself. Maybe the truth is no matter what choices we make we have doubts. And though I look forward to having a career someday, hopefully one that involves writing, I feel so proud of my accomplishments now. I feel so joyful at being able to be here with my girls each day, watching them grow, helping them discover who they are, showing them its okay to make mistakes and messes, comforting them when they get scared and yes, even sitting on the floor stacking blocks with them.

Now the sun shines through the open windows on this spring-feeling day in March as the girls play on the deck singing and scooping up melting snow with their hands. The sound of water running from melting ice dams sounds like a rushing river. And with the sun shining and the sound of melting, the smell of spring just around the corner, joy and accomplishment and success all feel attainable.

The Fuel That Keeps Us Going

I took an hour long nap yesterday. It was the kind of nap that passes only briefly through weird fitful dreams then drops you rapidly into deep and dreamless immovable, impenetrable, heavy slumber.

It was the kind of nap that is necessary, the kind that, if you don’t get it, will leave you un-functional. It was the kind of nap you take on the first day of your period. And that’s just what this was. After a lot of excitements at a new friend’s house that morning, and probably too many treats, Jada could not settle into a nap even though her eyes betrayed her desperate need for rest. After thirty minutes of my own eyelids dropping shut like the doors of a freight elevator only to be startled back open by a slapping hand across the forehead followed by peels of giggles, I asked Jada if she would like to go play with Twila instead of sleeping. Today, my rest was more important than hers. And that was how I found myself crashed to oblivion with a noise machine whirring away and the humidifier humming in my daughters’ bedroom.

As it always does, my self-care came at a cost. When I woke up an hour later, feeling much more rested but a bit less alert, I came out of my daughters’ room to find many things amiss. The first hint that all hell had broken loose while I was peacefully resting, was that the television in my bedroom was on, my closet door open, my dresses spread across my bed, and bits of orange peel were sprinkled all over my carpet.

As I sleepily surveyed the situation, two sets of tiny footsteps pattered down the hall to greet me. Jada was naked and covered in a light dusting from head to toe of what appeared to be whole wheat flour. But it was when I looked at Twila, that I gasped.

Twila was wearing the new dress that I bought for my weekend spring break get away with my girlfriend. The dress I bought but had not yet worn, the dress I asked Twila to leave alone, the dress whose tags were still on. The dress had large, wet-looking spots all over it.

Suddenly I didn’t feel so sleepy. With a few choice words, I carefully removed the dress and replaced it on its hanger, promising Twila that we would discuss this later. I then made it very clear to them that if there was anything not as it should be in the kitchen, I wanted it put right—right now; before I came out there.

“Okay,” Twila agreed lifting her palms to me as she stood in my way, “okay, mom. Just wait here, okay? Wait here.”

“Wait here,” Jada agreed, lifting her hands in the same way.

I was happy to wait. I brushed my teeth and found my warm socks. The snow was beginning to fall in big fluffy flakes that blew in great plumes with the wind. The sky was a thick, high grey.

I stared at the snow, wrapping my arms around my chest. I felt cold, and tired like I do so often lately. Maybe it’s just February, maybe it’s all the tumult in my family of origin. Whatever it is, I often feel lately, like I could stay in my PJs, eating chocolate chips with the covers pulled up to my chin until the sun sets again. My motivation has been at an all time low these past weeks, my workouts have slipped to weekly efforts, just frequent enough to leave me exhausted instead of invigorated. Desperately I page through supplements and nutrients trying to find the missing link that would compensate for my low energy and my cloudy head, but such a supplement doesn’t seem to exist. I have to face the reality that this might just be stress, which is not so easy to correct.

After a few quiet minutes, the girls came tumbling back into the room. I’ll never know what they were doing out there while I was asleep or what the kitchen looked like before I came out because by the time they led me proudly down the hallway, the kitchen was spotless.

Each day Twila’s initiative and capability grows by leaps and bounds. I am unendingly proud of her. And I check myself all the more to make sure I’m not relying on her responsibility and compassion like a roommate or partner instead of an eldest child.

After helping Jada get dressed I agreed to let them play with flour (again) and set them up at the counter with cups and spoons and bowls. While they played I found myself staring out the window unblinkingly until I shook myself and forced my body to move towards the pile of laundry. I used to never stop moving, especially when the kids were distracted for a while. That was my time to start dinner, to pick up, to hurriedly sweep or vacuum or scrub something, or write a few sentences in my novel.

The house is growing clutterier each day and the laundry pile gets bigger and bigger before I get to it. Dinner time sneaks up on me at what feels like noon, leaving me searching the pantry and freezer lamenting the missed stop at the grocery store to get chicken or milk. The overall feeling is one of ‘not-on-top-of-it-ness.’

And the thing about being a mom of young kids is that you never really have time to figure out what’s wrong with you. You can’t just ‘get more sleep’ because each night is unpredictable. And you can’t make sure you work out regularly for a month to see how that feels because kids keep getting sick.

Is it too much caffeine or not enough? Am I staying up or sleeping in too late? Am I taking too many vitamins or not enough? Am I eating too much protein? Sugar? Fat? Starch? A mother’s health is a crapshoot with too many variables.

I even feel stuck in my book. In five years of writing every day, I have never had writers block. I always identified with Garrison Keilor’s adage that he doesn’t have time for writer’s block. And indeed I don’t but I was recently given a good bit of criticism about the book and it needs to be addressed and it’s not so major but the situation’s consequences will run throughout the entire book, its ripple effects changing everything so I need to make the right choice and I can’t seem to make it. So I feel paralyzed in that too.

But mothers have to keep going.

As I hauled the shop-vac upstairs to clean up the flour project while the girls were washing off an hour or so later, I thought about how the loneliness of a mother can be profoundly deep. Most challenges of a mother must ultimately be met alone. That’s something most of us figure out a few months into motherhood when our partners (if we have them) go back to work and our family stops dropping by to visit. In some families it takes days, for others perhaps years, but eventually every mother finds that point when she realizes it’s just her. Motherhood is really hard and it’s even harder to do alone. Even if you have really helpful people in your life, their help and support amounts to a drop in the ocean of demands on the primary caregiver.

The fear and anxiety that comes with this realization can be crippling. There is so much pressure each and every day. Aside from the really boring, basic but absolutely essential day to day stuff like buying food and cooking it, washing the kids, keeping enough laundry clean to dress them, keeping the house clean enough to be safe, and getting them to sleep at a non-neglectful time, there are the profoundly more important and far more complicated duty’s of the primary caregiver like comforting, nurturing, supporting, education, engaging in spiritual debates and discussions, and assisting in the endeavors, wonders and ambitions of our children. And then there’s self-care.

It’s easy to let self car fall well below the physical and spiritual demands of our children, but without it, our ability to parent effectively and fully, diminishes. It is the times that I am treated to solitude to write and to think, in the early mornings, or take needed naps in the middle of the day, that keep me smiling, or at least going after long hours—or days of helping caring for my children as they teethe and cut teeth, get sick and heal, play and fight, build and break down, negotiate and cry, sleep and wake up, laugh and shout, climb and create, fall and get up again.

So even if I have to write while simultaneously spelling out words letter by letter or listening to fights swell in distant rooms, or nap while flour is sprinkled on every surface and treats are eaten and snacks are spread on the floor, it’s worth the divided attention and the inevitable cleanup to have just a little time for myself. It truly is the fuel that keeps a mom going.

Me versus the Laundry

Four days ago I stood before the laundry chute in the basement. I felt a brief moment of reluctance before I released the eyehook and watched the hatch swing open, rendering its load onto the floor in a great heap. It reminds me of those office supply commercials where the files keep shooting out of a closet until the unsuspecting intern is buried. Except that I fully expect to be buried now. It’s amazing how quickly the wet towels, dirty socks, stained shirts and muddy pants of two children accumulate.

When I fold our laundry (a project that takes about three days and two nights) I usually encounter four of Ryan’s white tee-shirts, four pairs of his boxers, several pairs of my workout socks and tee-shirts, occasionally a pair of Ryan’s or my jeans. And the rest of Mount Everest that stands in the center of our bed is little kids clothes and bath towels. Bath towels that were dumped in the chute after having been pulled into a full tub of water, used to wipe up spills in the kitchen and syrup tracked down the hall, bath towels that were left in a heap in the bedroom, bath towels that were inadvertently urinated on. A couple of years ago Ryan and I talked about getting rid of all of our old raggedy towels and getting one new matching set. Where would we be if we had done that?

After separating the clothes from the towels (a job that takes a full day after dozens of interruptions to help break up fights, find missing toy parts and doll clothes, feed hungry kids and answer the phone) I wash about two to three loads of each: towels and kid clothes. Kids go through clothes faster than I go through coffee after a sleepless night.

This morning as I walked down the hall to the kitchen, creeping quietly in the dark of predawn trying not to wake any of my sleeping family members, I opened the laundry chute to toss my pajama pants in. A full chute greeted my pants right at the top, spitting them back onto the floor like a basket ball bouncing off the backboard. Well that’s what four days does to our laundry chute.

I joke with my girlfriends that laundry washing and folding could be its own full time job. I wouldn’t even expect a full time maid to be able to keep up with it. Not with all the other things there are to do in a big house. Luckily I like to clean. Cleaning and organizing has been a favorite pastime since I was a little girl and discovered the satisfaction of bringing deeper and deeper organization to my own long and narrow walk-in closet. I soon converted it into a sitting room with a singular light bulb hanging from a clothes hook and a bean bag chair on which I sat to write my earliest short stories.

But like it or not, it’s one of those things I tend not to have time for these days. My birthdaughter’s family watched Twila and Jada the other day while I went to the dentist and I was comforted and pleased to see a healthy clutter around their house. They are going through major remodels and everything is in flux. Sandy managed to make a beautiful lunch for us in the midst of crowded counters and five circling children ranging in age from two to twelve. As we talked I thought back to the first time I came to their house, just after Nicole had gone home with them and how meticulously neat it was. Not a dust speck could be found. Children have a tendency to take their toll on living spaces. And frankly, as a mother with any sort of life, something’s gotta give.

If I want to keep writing novels and doing a half-way decent job maintaining a blog, the laundry chute’s going to be full and the counters may hold a little more clutter than they used to before children were piling things onto them. Of course, I have been known to wipe down counters and vacuum floors as a means to crushing through a writer’s block, which is a technique I did not learn from Dan Brown but, really, who has time for inversion therapy? My inversion therapy is rolling around on the carpet with my daughters.

Twila and I were doing the Jillian Michaels Shred yesterday morning. When Twila got tired she crawled under me as I was doing walking pushups and something about the angle of my face (and probably the strain thereon) cracked her up, which of course, enticed the two year old to come check out the show. Soon we were all on the floor laughing as Jillian Michaels pushed us to work harder.

The life of a mom will always encompass the search for balance. I have been delighted in these recent months to see that it is not going to be an unattainable goal forever. Balance actually can be achieved, which is something I flat out didn’t believe a year ago. Now that Jada is two, talking, sleeping, playing with her older sister, there is time during the day for things other than holding, feeding, entertaining and comforting. When she gets to the other side of potty training—when she starts preschool for goodness sake, I’m not even going to recognize my life. What will I do with my time? How many books I’ll publish; how frequent the blog posts will be then when there are uninterrupted hours to write.

We don’t find a perfect balance every day. And of course, just when the routine gets settled, someone pops another tooth through or spikes a fever or pees on the floor, or dumps icy water over her sister’s head in the bath, and I’m pulled away from whatever I'm doing, shaking my head and sighing. But more and more each day I see them collaborating; I see them maturing and figuring out that it is more fun to play than to fight, and I see myself growing more patient and calm each day and subsequently, more fun. We do more things together yet there is more time to myself too in some magical paradox of time. Maybe it’s just that the time we spend is so much more quality when everyone is happy that they demand less of it, feeling satisfied by what they get.

And I can’t help feel—even as I am delighted for my friends getting pregnant with their second and third children—happy that our family is passed babyhood. It is wonderful, delightful, mysterious and magical to fall in love with a tiny person who only just popped into existence. But it is also wonderful to be less in demand.

Seeing Sandy with her three kids, now twelve, eleven and nine, I see what the next phase of motherhood looks like. It is astounding to have the preview of that stage in watching my birthdaughter grow into a young woman. She is tall and poised and mature, thinking about mature things and experiencing mature relationships; busy with her own life. In the blink of an eye my daughters, now small looking up to their grown-up brithsister, will be there.

So with that perspective, I creep into the quiet kitchen to make my tea and bring it to the office where, ignoring the laundry and the toys on the floor, I write in the dark, uninterrupted hours of morning. Because it’s for me. It makes me happy and it makes me a better mom to do what I love. And before I know it my little girls will have their own lives and their own families and aside from having my husband’s undivided attention back, I will also hopefully have an established writing career. The laundry can wait.

Aiming Higher

The grocery store seems to be a place of particular difficulty for me and my daughters. We shop at a small co-op south of the city, and that might be part of the problem. It’s a small store and the girls are very comfortable there. So comfortable that they feel safe wandering away from my cart, exploring the isles, helping themselves to samples and clearing shelves into their mini cart when they see a package that looks appealing.

But it’s getting out of the store that is the hardest. Something about leaving the co-op leaves me angry and snappy each and every time. I don’t know if this will sound as aggravating on paper, but Thursday when we drove down just before lunch to grab those few essentials that can’t be substituted at our local Super Target, the girls were in classic form (I wish I could say it was rare).

As I waited in the checkout line, they each ran off and came back with armloads of treats and vegetable scrub brushes and random supplements that seemed necessary because of their “cute” small containers. As a mom, I’m used to being begged constantly for stuff and I’m really good at saying no. But having to repeat it over and over as calmly as possible, with a smiling clerk asking for my card, then my ID, then my signature, and with a long line of impatient shoppers having to move out of the way over and over for my daughters each bringing their “needed items” to my feet and then having to move out of the way for me while I chased my daughters’ wiggly bodies back out into the isles, all the while trying to bag my groceries as quickly as possible so I could get out of the narrow check out (this is not like a Cub or Rainbow where the isles are equipped to handle long lines and big piles of groceries; its more like, well like a tiny co-op) was more than I could handle with grace.

Finally the unaccepted items are back on the shelves and I am madly bagging groceries and loading them into our tiny cart. The girls have circled back and are filling their hands with brochures from the table near the door. Patrons are tripping over them as they come in and the table is a mess of mixed up literature. Suddenly I am sweating and have to rip my coat off. I make threats at my kids and pick up my last bag a little too quickly. One handle rips and the bag falls on the ground.

The mixture of anger and embarrassment is a lethal cocktail when it starts pumping through your bloodstream and no one is more at risk from this altered state of mind than your young kids who may or may not have triggered the anger in the first place.

I spit and hiss something incoherent at them but this fails to rein them in. They want their mini smoothy drinks that they convinced me to buy. Not wanting to argue, I uncap and hand them over. Finally, my broken bag is re-bagged and I am heading for the door. I am reminded not unkindly that the mini carts can’t go outside. Instead of getting a bigger cart, I decide I can carry the four moderately heavy bags.

Jada is putting the smoothy on the floor, right in the isle where customers walk to leave with their carts and groceries, so that she can climb onto the motorized wheelchair for patrons who cannot walk the isles. They should make a two-seater for moms with small kids. I tell Twila to come with me and Jada to get down and pick up her smoothy. Of course, none of this happens. Twila wants to “help” me get her down. I tell Twila to let me handle it. Of course, this doesn’t happen. Jada is now crying and Twila is about to stumble backwards into Jada’s smoothy. I set the bags down and grab their arms a little harder than I need to. Everyone is watching, and I’m angry and embarrassed.

I’m angry because I feel like I can’t get my kids to listen to me lately. It seems they don’t take me seriously until I lose it and scream at them, which makes me feel awful because I want to be a calmer mom than that. And I’m embarrassed because everyone is watching me lose it with my kids, looking at me like I’m “that mom” and I know that in this moment, I am that mom who we look at and pity but also despise as she screams at her kid in the toy isle. We despise her because we know her kids are her own creation. She’s made them this way and now she’s punishing them for being what she created. We pity her because we’ve all been there at one time or another.

Right now, I am that mom and I can’t pull out of it because adrenaline is coursing through me. I’m hot and tired and I just want to get out of the store. I tell Jada not that quietly that if she doesn’t pick up her smoothy I am throwing it away. Because she is in the master testing age, she doesn’t even consider picking it up. Instead, she stands back, keeping her eye on the smoothy and me, alternatingly.

She’s not the only one watching. The whole store, it seems, has stopped what they are doing to see if I will make good on my threat. So of course, I have to. I swiftly march over and pick up the smoothy and without hesitating, drop it in the trash.

“NOOOOOO!” Twila screams as if her beloved puppy has been ripped from her arms.

Jada comes unglued and hits the floor.

With super human strength, I somehow scoop up four bags of groceries and a writhing toddler. “Come on, Twila!” I bark and drag us out of the store.

It wasn’t the worst time we’ve had at the co-op, but it certainly wasn’t the best.

The girls sniffed in the backseat, dejectedly. As I drove, my rage ebbing as I started to see the ways I could have handled the situation better. Hindsight is so much clearer.

Twila shared sips of her smoothy in the backseat. Jada thanked her each time. Their sweetness to each other always amplifies the voice of guilt in my ear.

When I had calmed down, I explained to the girls why the grocery store ends up feeling stressful for me: having them run off, having to look for them, fix messes, say no over and over…

As I explained, my voice got higher pitched and intense and I realized I was still a little angry so I lapsed into silence again.

Last week Ryan was home between Christmas and New Years. The best thing about this is that he gets to see how hard it is to be home with the girls day after day. The worst thing is that we have a lot of fun when he’s home and when he goes back to work not only are there tons of mundane house work to catch up on, the absence of his warmth and fun is sobering to all three of us. I find myself doing a kind of tap dance to show the girls that we can have fun, just the three of us, but then end up resenting the tap dance I have to do for my daughters to get excited about me.

It’s become a running joke that whenever we all play some kind of imaginative game, Twila’s the princess, Ryan’s the prince, king, night, Jack, from Jack and Annie…Jada’s usually a baby, a little sibling or an animal, and I am always and invariably, a witch. Even if the story doesn’t easily include e a witch, we work one in for me, so I have a role to play. And though I’ve been told by a friend who has two boys and always has to be a dinosaur stuck in the mud, to count my blessings, after a while, it’s hard not to take offense.

Thursday was a hard day. Tuesday Ryan went back to work and everything was chaos and consolation. Wednesday Twila and I were gone all day seeing Hairspray at Chanhassen Dinner Theater, which was AMAZING and fun but took absolutely all day and I came down with a migraine on the way home at 4:30 so Thursday was the first day that real life had to come back together. Piles of laundry had to be folded, lists of things had to get done, Twila’s Kindergarten application had to be finished, bills had to be paid, checks had to be deposited, groceries had to be scavenged and collected. It wasn’t the most chaotic day we’ve had, but it certainly wasn’t the calmest.

Last night as I made dinner and attempted to check in with my email, while simultaneously fetching healthy snacks for the girls who just can’t wait until Ryan gets home to eat, I rounded the corner too fast and drilled my rib cage on the corner of one of our tall, heavy chairs. It just about dropped me. The wind was knocked out of me. I thought for a minute I might have cracked a rib. But far from noticing, the girls kept shouting at me to get things for them, kept shouting at each other. I felt so hurt—overly hurt—by their insensitivity. I know their just kids and they probably didn’t see it happen. But it hurt my feelings anyway to be treated like some robot whose primary function is to serve them.

I stormed into the kitchen where crumbs were being swept onto the floor that I had just cleaned and I barked that I was hurt. Of course this was news to them.

I left the half-made dinner and went and sat on the couch.

A few minutes later, Twila left her snack and came and stood by me and I hugged her.

“I didn’t know you got hurt, mom,” she said.

“I know.”

Then she wrapped her arms around my head and patted the back of my head in that maternal way she does. “That must have hurt your feelings that we were shouting at you to get us water when you were hurt.”

It’s not a new phenomenon for Twila to parrot our parenting back to us. But when it’s a positive gem of parenting wisdom instead of helicoptering over Jada or threatening to put us on timeout, it makes my heart just about burst with joy.

Just then Jada came slowly marching out of the kitchen, her half-eaten bowl of corn raised up high, her characteristic mischievous grin, lighting up her face, “Happy chew you, chew you!” She sang to the tune of ‘Happy Birthday to You.’

Twila and I smiled as Jada marched forward singing to us. She finished as she arrived and Twila and I blew out our imaginary candles.

And it’s that moment that I will hold with me today as I start another day, hoping for more peace and patience and less aggravation. I quietly sit in the quiet peace of predawn, before anyone else is awake, readying myself for another day. And when I look back on yesterday, but also on this era in our lives, I’ll remember that moment instead of the frustration and tension and stress that permeates some days. And I hope that’s what my daughters will choose to remember too.