Somehow nothing’s perfect, even when everything is as it’s supposed to be

I’ve been so indecisive about my emotions this week. The weather’s been rainy, and so have I. I feel a sour melting of my heart with every wish for bedtime, for alone time, for peace and quiet. I love my kids, I do. But it takes a special lens to find joy in the every day, the every need, the feeding, cleaning, teaching that is my every moment when I am at home. There is solace in work, even if I often loathe the tasks that are stacked before me, or the sheer volume of space it takes in my mind to contemplate numbers and compute balances the way that I do. (I’m a bookkeeper of sorts.) I wish I could access my positive streak more readily, and consistently. I wish I could stop more frequently and take joy in the moments of simply existing. In this place. That is motherhood. That is three kids. Three effortlessly beautiful boys.

In this small moment I understand my friend Jenna’s desire to move to a warmer place, where living outside in the free and open is more attainable. When it’s wet and cold outside I feel stuck. And it’s not a cozy feeling like a snowfall or a howling wind. It’s damp and seems to mute everything inside of me. I know it will not last, and for that reason I still love living in New England. But I can imagine a year full of warm enough days, in a house with 10 acres of canopied land and a stream running through – my boys running through their lives muddy from dawn to dusk, and my mood always lifted by time and sun and circumstance. By stepping into that dream I feel free and clear from all these negative emotions.

And I think about our real summers full of long, bright days of funny, squinted smiles and too-cold sprinklers that make you squeal. I look toward a range of perfect days when I remark five hundred times on how nice the weather is, and isn’t it just perfect, and it couldn’t be a better day.

But no matter how dreamy the weather may be, I still have to feed my kids and clean them up, I still have to work, I still have to pay bills. I still have to figure out how to balance all this and remember to take time to feed my soul, and clean it up.

Cobwebs and old tears: wipe them all away.
Forgiveness: learn to give, and to receive.
Love: share freely with others, and with myself.

I don’t need anybody getting the wrong impression, least of all myself. It’s not as though I don’t relish in the little delights of character that come from my children. Of course I do, and I’m usually saying, “Dan, Dan, look at this, look at Max, look at Ethan….DAN!” Okay, so eventually he may turn his head, but the moment has usually passed, and I’m sad because I know I’m the only witness to that miraculous/hilarious/silly/fun moment, and the truth is, my memory is steadily failing me. There’s only so much room up there for all of their quirks and accomplishments and I don’t have the time or motivation to write it all down. I can barely manage a grocery list. Okay, I can’t. I can’t even manage a grocery list.

So the first, and heavier, half of this contribution to Momalom is not untruthful. It’s about the big picture, I guess you could say. When I look at a day from start to finish I feel like I’ve already been drowned in the dirty dishwater. So I can’t look at it that way. I can’t wait for bedtime to come. I can’t think like that because it makes the part from when I open my eyes in the morning to when the kids close theirs seem too long and too lost. And really? It’s neither. A day: so short. One day, one moment in time really. It shouldn’t find itself lost in the mix of weeks and months and years that pass us by in a flash. It is, somehow, quite different from yesterday, and tomorrow. But damn if it isn’t just so hard to really FEEL that way when you are in it, and all alone, the only parent in the room, or the house, or the yard. When you call your sister because it’s the only way you know you’ll be able to laugh, and turn your mood around.

And finding a balance between the weight that is the responsibility in my life and the dream that is a nourished soul is most difficult. I don’t believe that we have to give everything up. That just because this time with our kids goes so quickly, and that soon we’ll be crying at graduations and weddings, we should put other parts of our happiness on hold.