Feeling Flushed

Stay at home moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, nannies, and child caretakers of any kind, 

How do you do it?  

I have been home, or rather, away from the camp/commune life, for like, five hot minutes (two weeks), and am slowly rapidly turning into a monster.  The frustration creeps in not even one hour into my day and continues careening along the path toward tyrannical madness until – mercifully for all of us – my head hits the pillow at night.  I feel so wound up inside that, if tugged, I might very well unspool the full amount of my pent-up crabbiness all over the floor, and probably wouldn’t have the energy to either explain it away or pick any of it back up.  Not only have I become a miserable body and mind to inhabit on my own, but I have been particularly miserable to live with, should you even dare to try to connect with me or suggest that we, I don’t know, talk about it. 

The last two weeks have been a whirling, spinning toilet bowl full of – you guessed it – misery. 

In the next turn of mental upheaval, I am faced with the reality that I am incredibly fortunate to be able to do what I do, to stay home with Milo.  I know, I know, I know that many parents are not able to be home with their little men and women, and I do, in my saner moments, comprehend that my daily experiences are enviable.  But, to be honest with you, it makes me feel a little bit like one of those six year-olds at the dinner table who won’t eat the asparagus-stuffed Gefilte fish you made them for dinner: 

Oh, there are starving kids somewhere? 

SO SEND IT TO THEM.  

I realize that this is a terrible, horrible analogy, but it’s the best I can come up with in my state, so please be gentle. 

In each day, there is most often the Good: Milo learning to point to the Dalmatian in his Curious George book when I ask him to show me where the doggy is; running into my arms with the full momentum of a tiny rhinoceros; giggles and giggles and more life-giving giggles at sweet, timely intervals.  But there is normally also the Bad:  irate cries when I take away the caps covering the screws that secure the toilet to the floor (a favorite of Milo’s, that on a positive, keeps me cleaning the toilets); kicking my legs/arms/everything everywhere during a diaper change while we are out visiting a friend’s house; throwing peas and spaghetti and milk cups on the floor and then somehow – in a miraculous cloud of impossibility - finding a large, heavy, pointed object to throw down on my head while I’m cleaning up the first three (a half-truth, yes, but then why does it always feel so pointy?). 

But really, he's the craziest cutest angry person. 

I am absolutely, positively sure that there are moms and dads out there who would almost literally kill to be able to partake of these daily rituals.  I know that you work intensely hard, and that you still feel the terrible pressure to be everywhere and everything to everyone, especially your kid(s), and I don't mean to belittle your case, even in the smallest degree.  But friends, in my world (because that's what i'm talking about here), there is also the Ugly.  There are diaper changes with the aforementioned flailing, kicking and throwing things, but also with fecal matter smearing all over your carpet, while you are suddenly battling the intense urge to pin your toddler to the ground and lock him in the cat crate while you take an extraordinarily long walk to the nearest bar and have a really, really, exceptionally strong drink, even if you've never had a drop of alcohol in your whole life.  There are days in which, unless your list is composed of:

“feed child

clean up after child [a little]

change diaper

try [and fail] to get child to sleep

feed child

change [appallingly rank] diaper

cry on the floor

bribe child to get through the yogurt aisle

feed child [donut holes] so he won’t fall asleep on the car ride home

fail to feed child dinner (because he’s eaten twelve donut holes already)

wrangle child into pajamas

put wild animal to bed, twice

eat a pound of chocolate

step on approximately five thousand small toys

go to bed way too late”,

you won’t be able to check anything off.  Laundry?  Nope.  Dishes.  No way.  Exercise?  Bahahaha.  

Wait - did you really think you could do that?

I realize that I am writing this in a state of moderate frenzy, so forgive me when I ask to take it all back in a week and tell you how much I love my life (because I do), but in a world that tells you that your value is bound to how productive you are, and because I have foolishly bought into that mantra, there are days when I want anything but this job.  Anything.  Commercial dishwashing all day?  Yes.  Hospital laundry?  If I don’t need to talk to anyone, sure.  Stuff envelopes in an office??? Ohmygosh, yes.  Some days I would give almost anything to feel productive.  

But for now, in the midst of these good/bad/ugly days, I plan to simply keep changing my list to look like the above, so that I can actually check some things off, thankyouverymuch, and to do my best – my very not-good-enough best – to keep up with my son, and to smother him with an excess of love and hugs so that he would never guess that his mom is justthisclose to completely losing her marbles. 

Of Spilled Milk and Modern Warfare

Wednesday's lunch was rough.  Broccoli seemed to be flying everywhere and Milo was repeatedly dropping his blue sippy cup of milk off of the ledge of his high chair table, generously spattering bubbles of sticky fluid on the wood floor that comprises his messy, ever-increasing domain.  A domain I had, not two hours earlier, vacuumed and mopped.  Labor made obsolete in seconds by two tiny hands and a healthy lunch.  

POOF.

The mess had nothing to do with what made lunch so tragic.   What had actually sent me careening off course was the presence of that devil-headed bane of humans everywhere: 

failure.  

It set upon me like a guided missile, all of a sudden and seemingly out of nowhere, with a bang.

I rarely cry.  It is something of a point of pride for me, which I’m discovering is 1) prideful, 2) a little barbaric, and 3) more than a little graceless.  Well, while I was attempting to ladle mounds of blueberry yogurt into my son’s yammer, I was completely. losing. it.  

And he thought it was laugh-out-loud hilarious.  Point, Milo.

Backstory: I had booked an appointment at an optometrist.  They had an opening due to a cancellation the next day, and it was -gasp- on the exact day that my hubs was taking off – a miracle!  No need to inconvenience anyone [except my husband, again...]!  Huzzah!  I had been putting off the eye doctor for awhile, which I think was starting to drive Craig nuts, since I was talking about it every other day, and this opening seemed like providence.  

Could I make it?  

YES.  YesYesYes.

It felt like I’d won the lottery.

Until I realized that I didn’t know what day it was.  This took place on Wednesday.  Which I failed to realize.  Or rather, that my appointment was the next day, on Thursday.  Which is not the same as Friday.  Which again, I failed to realize.

Because I stay at home and don’t work and never look at a calendar because I don’t work and stay at home and have no purpose and can’t even keep a floor clean or remember that it’s Wednesday.

Ugh.  That’s when it got ugly.  I won’t go into the depths of it, because no one wants to experience that twice, but the bottom line is that I was feeling like a total and utter flop.   

Something I’m learning as I stay home with Milo is that the voices I have allowed to survive in my head are, in part, incredibly unkind.  We are always cultivating our minds, by what we plant and prune and water, and I have allowed a split crop of self-pity and nasty self talk to take root.  I don’t think I am alone.  You might be a dad or mom at home, like me, or perhaps you are working full time, or are single, or unemployed, or retired, or married, or divorced, or widowed, or like grape soda or run a circus, or run a circus while drinking grape soda – which, I don’t know, sounds sort of great.  Regardless of your circumstance and role, I have a sinking feeling that you also beat yourself up every now and again.  

Or again and again.

Today I remind myself, and perhaps, you, that what I need more than a clean floor or a full schedule is a serious helping of grace, accompanied by a wake-up-you-crazy-person slap across the jaw.  

The world is full of ammunition.  Full of smooth stones named comparison and pride and lies.  

And as we walk among this weaponry, some of us choose to throw these stones at the people around us.  Others carry them in our arms until the burden is so heavy that we can’t walk.  

Good glory, child.  Put. down. the. weapons. *Smack*

Newsflash:  We will never be enough.  Not for this broken world.  

Never busy enough, or put-together enough. 

Not witty enough or perceptive enough.  

Never attentive enough or organized enough. 

Not rich enough or selfless enough.  

Never fit enough or well-read enough or relaxed enough or patient enough or exceptional enough.

So quit playing by the wrong rules.  Cry when you need to cry.  Scream sometimes.  The world does not need another person who is too crippled by fear and self-loathing to function.  It needs you.  It needs me.  It needs the character that you have and your smile, and my hands and my voice.  It needs your love and your listening ears and my laugh and my feet.  It needs us to clean up the rubble so that the next person can walk in the clear.

Handlettering work by the amazing Jessa B..

I will need to wake each and every morning and remind myself that this is still true: today, tomorrow, and the 20,000 days after that.  But it is necessary for me, and it is necessary for you.  

Because that broccoli is coming, baby, and we'd better be ready.