A Mother’s Day
5/1/2023 - Lynne Robertson
I work with a lot of young mothers and marvel as they juggle and navigate and triage and orchestrate – yet somehow still find a way to plan beyond the scenario they’re neck-deep in at the moment. In the perpetual laugh/cry tug-o-war, sometimes humor triumphs. Other days, it’s tears FTW. But generally, what I sense is a world weariness that’s more than sleep deprivation or physical fatigue. It’s utter exhaustion. The weight of life’s demands taking their toll.
It got me thinking about a typical mother’s day, which has a sometimes fluid, but more typically frenetic octopus-arm quality, going something like this:
Wake up.
Forage for food.
Feed the litter.
Scramble for presentable clothes. Theirs and yours.
Apply makeup while simultaneously rocking a bouncy seat with your foot, or fastening a back button for a kid who hasn’t yet mastered the life skill of back-buttoning.
Desperately search for a lost shoe, hair tie, homework assignment. Theirs and yours.
Pack already jam-packed back packs. Find mystery things squished in bottom. Dispose of mystery things without trying to solve said mystery.
Load the car.
Run back into the house seventeen times for forgotten items. Realize halfway there, there are three more forgotten items, still forgotten.
Make drop-offs with too-hurried goodbyes.
Battle traffic. Think-slash-say things you’d regret if young ones were still in car. (Spew non-niceties freely because they’re not.)
Spill coffee on your white blouse. More non-niceties.
Look for a Shout wipe, find none. Remember random sweater is in your bag. Doesn’t match. Doesn’t matter.
Arrive sweating at the office, trying to remember what your non-yelling voice sounds like.
Call, meet, negotiate and cajole for hours.
Panic that pick-up time has arrived seemingly hours ahead of schedule, and wonder who universally messed with the clocks.
Forage for more food.
Taxi to and from activities. Engage in small talk because that’s all you’ve got left. Big talk has clocked out for the day.
More cajoling in the areas of homework, music practicing, teeth-brushing.
Read a story, say a prayer, tuck them in – only to have them bounce back out at least three times with excuses you’re not buying, clever though they may be. More negotiating.
Tidy kitchen and trail of toys, sports gear, craft supplies. Write lists, pay bills, do laundry.
Collapse into bed.
Wake up.
[Back to top.]
I remember those mornings that completely blew up with unexpected disasters – power outage, lost permission slip, snow that piled up against the garage, impeding the door from opening and the endless, mind-numbing dawdling. Spending the day at the office doing more of the same, pushing through obstacles, soothing wounded egos, negotiating manufactured crisis, again foraging for food – typically something fast and nearby and loaded with something probably carcinogenic. Annnnnd scene.
A similar cycle ensued in the evening – parsing middle school drama (not the club in case you’re wondering), navigating PTO politics (ah, group dynamics), rushing against self-imposed deadlines (as if the actual deadlines weren’t pressure enough).
At least that’s how my days went. I was going to say it’s like running a gauntlet but realized I didn’t really know what a gauntlet was. So I looked it up:
To run the gauntlet means to take part in a form of corporal punishment in which the party judged guilty is forced to run between two rows of soldiers, who strike out and attack them with sticks or other weapons.
I’m in touch with that emotion – pretty much sums up a mother’s day. Maybe we’re not subjected to actual sticks, but dashing through the day’s obligations does indeed feel like a beating. And then there’s the guilt that piles on. All those things that didn’t get done, or said or fixed. Never enough time for reading or playing or being present in the moment. Or maybe I should say never enough time for just “being,” since the compulsion to be present in the moment can ALSO feel like an obligation.
Skip ahead to now, safely on the other side of that kind of daily drill, here’s what I’ve learned (all good news):
· Everyone comes out alive.
· Bruises, both actual and psychological, eventually heal.
· And while they might remember the yelling, they remember the laughter too. (And while the yelling’s not so funny in real time, it’s kind of hilarious later.)
It seems there are two ways to ward off at least some of the world weariness. 1), find some life in work, too, because you’re going to spend a lot of time living there. And 2) when you decide what to prioritize, do what my friend Kathy says, and focus on the ones who are actually going to visit you in the nursing home. (NB: likely won’t be your boss and co-workers, great as they are.)
So happy Mother’s Day, albeit a little late. And may you more thoroughly enjoy all your days as a mother. Even the ridiculous ones.