It is evening, it is morning, one day.
In the barely-there light of this morning, sun not yet even dancing with the horizon, a baby (fine, fine, a 5-year-old) traipses into my room, and with the pre-dawn light peeking through the blinds, she exclaims “Mommy! Mommy! MOMMA. My tooth? It’s wiggly! I have a wiggly tooth!”
And out she prances, not even expecting a response, just needing to know that I heard her.
So, I think, this is how today is going to go.
I roll out of bed. Coffee. Book. Couch. Onward.
The day proceeds with much of the same: A discovery of a frog on the front porch, a skinned knee from a run-in with a tree in the backyard, counting to seven every time we walk up the stairs. Magic Treehouse and neighborhood pool and swinging in the backyard. Yogurt for breakfast and more yogurt for lunch, requests for ice cream for dinner.
Then?
It is evening, it is morning, another day.
I’m awake before them this day, on the couch downstairs. The day will go my way, I think. No, I declare it: The day will go my way. I need my time. I need time for me. I need to think like an adult and create like a human and have space and time and, and, and.
The footsteps begin, a little too close to 6:00am for anybody’s comfort, and in they come, one by one. Each tired, each run ragged, each carrying their own version of heartbreak, so in of course also comes the bickering, the name-calling, the straight-up on the floor wrestling. Someone’s hair is pulled- a low blow, I think- and the downward spiral begins.
So, I think, this is how today is going to go.
Sideways before I even get a say.
This day, the one that I had declared to go my way, continues with much of the same: Nothing goes right and everything goes wrong and the girls let me know in each of their own ways. The three-year-old screams, the five-year-old hits, the seven-year-old cries and says she misses Daddy. I lose my patience and I never seem to find it again. I don’t know how we’ll get through and I feel like I’m going to crumble and I look at the clock and it’s only 10:32 in the morning.
I had wanted to write, I had wanted to work out, I had wanted to clean up the house. I had wanted to run errands, I had wanted to have a coherent thought in my brain, the list goes on. This day though, their needs are trumping my needs and I get no say. What I try to accomplish gets interrupted, what I try to accomplish gets interrupted, what I try to accomplish gets interrupted.
I look over at the kitchen counter and see the clementine I peeled as a pre-breakfast snack. It came undone in such a way that it was one long single spiral. When I set it back down on the counter, it resumes it’s perfectly spherical shape as if nothing had happened to it, as if you never would know that it was actually empty inside.
When it first happened, I thought it a thing of beauty, a work of art. My, I marveled, look at how it springs back into place, an orange-tinted masterpiece.
Now I look at it and it feels a little like this day, and I cannot even help this thought crossing my exhausted and battle-weary brain- a little like motherhood sometimes: Outside, a thing of beauty, one glance and you’d never know anything had happened to her, but look a little closer and she’s actually empty inside.
It is evening, it is morning, another day.
—
And the days go on and the world keeps spinning around and around. The magic and the mayhem both reach epic proportions in their own right. I empty myself for them- again and again and again, if you must know- and sometimes I have it to give and sometimes I don’t, but they need it the same so I do it the same.
Before I became a mom, I kind of thought that it would be one solid upwardly moving linear line- I grow and learn as they grow and get older, the proportion of my ability and love and bandwidth grows with each child, each birthday, each lesson.
What I’m learning though, is that motherhood is much messier than that, really. It’s a topsy-turvy, back-and-forth, confusing, circular rollercoaster full of nuance. It is overwhelming and magical, painfully exhausting and unbelievably rewarding, I need space but I want to be near them, my heart might burst at any given moment whether from love or from frustration.
It’s everything, really, and what I’m saying is that it’s impossible to categorize it in a way that is neat and tidy. The ebb and flow of emotions erases any sort of clean lines, playing games with a desire to define motherhood in one way. Hard? Yes. Good? Yes.
At the end of the day, this is what I know is true: It is but a poem and a prayer.
We’re walking down the sidewalk and Mae reaches up and grabs my hand, safe and secure and it is all love, love, love.
Poem.
We’re running late and nobody has their shoes on and I can’t find my keys and I snap and they cry.
Prayer.
Brennan helps me make pancakes. When she eats them her eyes light up and she says “Momma. These are delicious. I think it’s because when I was stirring them I poured in extra love.”
A poem and a prayer. Every ounce of it.
What a wonder this life is.
The poem.
The prayer.
All of it.
So I begin to actually pay attention, I go through my day, the hard ones as well as the good ones, whispering to myself this is a poem and a prayer- which serves to take away any shame or condemnation and simply allows me to move forward- and suddenly I see the love everywhere: When I clean Cheerios off of the floor and when I gather neighbors in my home for dinner and when I breathe deep instead of yell and when I fold the laundry and when I allow us all to create something out of nothing using tinker toys and play-doh and when I speak in love and when I show them love and point them to love as our firm foundation.
What I’m saying is that the abundant life, the sacred life, the good life can be found in the most unexpected places and it begins and ends with love.
The question is this: Would I trade any of it? The wild or precious or excruciating or ordinary moments? Not a one.
It is evening, it is morning.
Another day, drenched in love.
Do you see it?
Beautiful my friend. I needed this today. Thank you.
So glad it encouraged you right when and where you needed it. So much love to you.