We were cruising down the highway this weekend after yet another seemingly endless day of activity,  all of us worn out and lost in our own thoughts. All of a sudden, Colin out of leaned out of his carseat, heaved Dex’s arm onto his lap and began gently gnawing on it. He repeatedly rolled his eyes and pretended he hated the taste, then pulled the arm back towards him possessively to slobber all over it and say, “Yum!” Their laughter was so contagious, within seconds all of us were hysterical, especially since it was evident that Colin was not simply reacting to someone else, but instigating all of this. Then Neve began to sing that Queen song, “I want to ride my bicycle,” and all of us joined in at screech level, Colin “la-la-ooh-ing” since he doesn’t exactly speak yet.

And as we sped along, sun shining, laughing and hollering, the mood among us growing ever lighter, I thought, “Holidays and graduations and birthdays are fine, but this is a moment I want to remember. This is the power of the five of us. This is our family at its best.”

This weekend, my daughter said to me, “Mom, I have a challenge for you.”

“Alright,” I said, a smirk on my face. I was sure I could rise to whatever she had concocted. 

“Go one week without wearing any black.” I stared at her. “Except for shoes and your coat,” she said, waving her hand dismissively.  You can’t help those.”

I slumped against the bed. “Is it that bad?

Neve sighed in what could only be exasperation at my lack of self-perception. “Mom, the world is a colorful place, why do you wear black all the time?”

I looked down at my outfit. Black pants. Long sleeved shirt –black. Clogs—you guessed it—black. Only my socks had some pattern, and then were grey and black.

“I like black.”

“No you don’t. Nobody likes black. Would you paint the walls black? Would you buy Colin black clothes? Would you buy me black clothes?”

Did I mention she’s 9? 

“No,” I admitted. “It’s not right for those things. But it’s right for me.”

She flopped on her back on my bed. “Come on, Mom. Give it up.” 

“It hides stains.” I was getting defensive. “It looks dressy and casual. I can go from work to getting Colin and I don’t have to worry so much about what he is going to wipe on me.” 

“Mom.” Neve sat up ramrod straight and yelped. “Give. It. Up.”

“And the best part is I don’t have to think about what I am going to wear. I just –“

“It’s not like it’s that hard to match clothes! Gosh, if you don’t want to do it, just say so.” 

FYI: Today I am wearing a dark purple sweater and blue pants. And brown shoes, thank you very much

It has been another week of challenges in a winter fraught with them. My mother is back in the hospital, and while she is mentally and spiritually sturdy, but her body is giving out. There are options for her treatment, and we are pursuing them, but there are many threads to keep track of and, frankly, I am having a hard time weaving them all together right now.
It always seems that we get one area of life, one relationship, one crisis resolved, and right on the heels of that satisfaction comes a flood of problems. Partly it is an extension of the fact that Tom and I come from large families and have jobs that require us to interact with many individuals on a daily basis: with so many players, the dramas are in constant rotation. But I can’t help but wonder how much we bring upon ourselves: if you are known as a problem-solver, guess what? People come to you for solutions. The path to our door is clear and well-marked, and well, we keep the light on.
We usually keep each other going, and fill each other up. But now, we are both so depleted, we’re unable to do that very well. It takes all we’ve got to stay up for our kids and our jobs, when in the back of our minds, all sorts of scenarios are running. At the end of the day, we collapse into bed wordlessly and hope things will get better.
And experience has proven that it will. Maybe not tomorrow or next week, but soon. All that pain and anxiety breaks down, dissolves and repairs itself eventually.
And  when that happens, we will breathe, find something stupid to laugh about and ready ourselves for what else lies ahead.

I spent the weekend alone with Colin, and it was a rough one. He’s clingy and fussy right now, and it brought back memories of the extraordinary loneliness I felt when Dex and Neve were small. And it made me recall the best piece of parenting advice I ever received.

It was a dark, bleary day at the end of a winter much like this one—it seemed the snow and slush would never go away. I had relied on our daily walks to the park to keep us all sane and balanced, but it was cold to go outside. How the hours loom in front of you when you realize you’ve another day stuck inside with toddlers. I was out of energy and ideas, I was worn out and worried – about my kids, about ever pursuing my career again, about all the ideas ricocheting around my head would never make it onto paper. I was there, but not present; I was a conscientious mom, but I didn’t know what to do with my grandiose longings.

I had wanted to be somebody. I wanted to do something big. Lord, don’t we all?

But it is difficult to remember your unique talents when you are in the toddler trenches. How easily your world shrinks, until the kids’ bodily functions, weird obsessions and demands are the focus of your day. There are parents who handle all of that with grace and ease, but I’m not one of them. My psyche had become a leaky toilet — functional, but moving towards a really unpleasant mess.

At some point, my mother called that day, and I found myself complaining to her about feeling so drained. I generally avoided moaning to her about my mothering issues since she’d coped with a lot more kids and a lot less help than I did. But on this day, she heard me out, then said, “Well, no one’s going to rescue you.”

My self-pity shut right off. “Huh?”

“The only one that can make your day better is you, dear,” she sighed. “You need to plan one thing every single day that you look forward to, or you will drown.” I could hear her taking a sip of her tea. “It’s how I survived twelve years of toddlers.”

“Wait a minute, you were stressed?” I was scrambling to re-assess this information with what I knew of her. Even though she’d been a professional before having a slew of kids, she’d seemed to adapt beautifully to being a mom. You know, the born-to-the-task type. “But you made it look so easy.”

“Oh, by the time you came around, I had it all figured out.” It was true, she had something going on almost every night when I was little. “All that volunteer work was my socializing. It was great fun, we had a lot of laughs. And,” she added, “it kept me from feeling like a dolt.”

I laughed. “That’s exactly it. I feel like a dolt.”

“Okay, dolt,” she replied. “So what are you going to do today?”

            Every day, her challenge still rings in the back of my head.