In eighteen minutes, nap time will be over. Round two.
The second leg of the journey which has only been bolstered by a handful of M&M’s and the 102 minutes of mental unwinding it took for you to relax enough to enjoy these last 18 minutes.
But 18 will quickly become17, then 16, then 15....
So there is no relaxing. There is panic. And pressure. By the time your ears stopped ringing the sound of “Mommy, mommy!” and you realized you really were “alone”, it was already time to jump back in, at whirlwind speed, to try to accomplish everything you set out to do before the hours leading up to nap time left you dazed and unable to remember your own name, let alone your to-do list.
Might as well grab another handful of M&M’s, throw a few mini-Snickers in for good measure, and try to make yourself believe it won’t go to your hips if you just put a little hop in your step while you get the baby up and change her diaper.
Oh, you’ll survive until bedtime. Barely.
But you already know what comes after bedtime. Morning time. And then, you’d give anything for the days of your youth when you used to roll over and click the alarm clock off fourteen times. The incessant bahnnt bahnnt bahnnt of the clock was nothing compared to the deafening volume at which, “Mommmeeeee” comes blaring through the baby monitor. And there’s no shutting that off.
It’s in those first moments of the day that you come face to face with your true self. Your thoughts may range from suicidal to Super Mommy, usually falling somewhere in between. It’s then that you want to kick whichever relative, teacher, coach or drill sergeant who instilled in you a sense of responsibility and duty.
You know, just like you did before your chores, final exam, warm-ups or workouts that there is nothing ahead for you except a long, arduous experience that will leave you cursing somebody, or everybody.
There is nothing quite like the feeling of knowing you will be worked hard, yet never appreciated. That your sense of responsibility and pride in it is supposed to be its own reward.
Funny, in the midst of wiping yogurt from the little one’s hair, retrieving the motion-splattered spoon for the fourth time, and asking, as you close the garage door, why on earth your older one would walk out the door without their school backpack after having just been lectured about it yesterday morning, that sense of pride never seems to be what I’m feeling.
It’s more a feeling of staring at a bottomless canyon and swinging the pendulum between believing that at some point, the mist will rise from it and leave a breathtaking view, or throwing yourself off the edge.
Motherhood has a way of becoming “all there is.” You get up in the morning because you’re a mom. You make a somewhat healthy breakfast, keep a somewhat clean house, and feign a somewhat interested look because you’re a mom.
But deep down, okay, maybe not so deep, there is longing. Longing to sleep til noon, put on some lip gloss, run on the beach or sit quietly in your pjs reading a novel, or maybe even put on that little black dress before your hubby gets home. Anything to be unhurried, inspired, feel beautiful.
All I know is that for now, my 18 minutes is up, and 18 years still looms out before me. But I’m keeping a lip gloss in my pocket, just in case...
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