There are days when I want to quit. There are weeks when I want to give up. This has been one of those weeks. I know you have them too, remember, we don’t judge here. I am up to my eyeballs at work, exhausted when I get home, the kids are bouncing off the walls because it is cold out and they don’t get outside recess. In short, I am tired as a Mother!
When the kids are squawking at each other like a nest of baby vulchers, the laundry is piled to the ceiling and the dishes have STILL not done themselves, I wonder how I can push through. I walk through the kitchen, the same kitchen I just swept, and step on God knows what. The living room looks like the kids have had a miniature holocaust that involved the tiny carcasses of Strawberry Shortcake and all her friends, a Care Bear or two, some random Pokémon, and a few pups from Paw Patrol. The epicenter is roughly the center of the couch which also happens to have a crumbled orange residue on it. It is either the residue of a nuclear agent or some crumbled Cheez its. Can’t be sure based on the positioning of the bodies. Is there a CSI action figures division? Just looking at the chaos makes me keenly aware of the fact that I am tired as a Mother!
The tinies are doing their best to push every button on my Mom control panel and are only about three away from the big red one that throws the switch from sweet Mommy who tucks me in is here to oh, crap, Momleficent just joined the party. In short, I’m tired as a Mother!
I’m about as overloaded at work as I am at home. There are times when the paperwork seems unending, the staff and student problems are piling up, I’m already not hitting on all cylinders and then someone has a crisis that results in a 2 day time suck that should have been an e mail – with low priority. When I try to catch up from home, I have a little monkey determined to climb between me and the laptop to make sure I know he is in charge, not me and that work is encroaching into his time. The chronic chaos and preparation that is an international office are more reminders that I am tired as a Mother!
At the end of the day the house is a mess, the kids are worn out, and so am I, but you know what? They are happy, they are healthy and they feel safe and loved. I have put my energy into feeding them, loving them, being present in their little lives. I have learned more about How to Train Your Dragon, Pokemon, and anime than I ever wanted to. I have learned about Tiny’s friends, their day, and her friend’s lives. I know that having a box to put her Valentines in is more important to her than having a bag, so even though I have just enough energy left to choose between washing, drying and straightening my hair and covering a box in tissue paper with Tiny, I choose the box. I will always choose the box. I will spend my days, my time and my energy choosing her. That is why I am tired as a Mother, tired in a way you can only understand if you have these amazing little people to pull you out of your own misery a keep you grounded and focused on what is truly important. Is it the box? Absolutely not. It is what the box represents – time spent talking to and not at your child. Time that you will never get back. Being in the moment and knowing in the quiet moments what is important to her so that when the big moments come, she has a relationship with you that she can trust and count on, because they will come. But for now, I am content in my exhaustion. I wouldn’t give up one single moment of this life that Papa Bear and I have cultivated. I wouldn’t give up one minute of it for all the naptimes in the world. I will happily continue to be tired as a Mother!
