Next time you're found with your chin on the ground,
Just remember that ant
Oops, there goes another rubber tree plant
My weekends tend to roller coaster between anticipated relaxation, industrious housecleaning, and the dramatic tension of competing expectations.
My after-hours clients clamor for my services: “What’s for dinner?” “Look, Mama, I washed Chidawgo.” “Mom, can you guess which droid I am?” “Sweetheart, can you search Fruitless Mulberry? We need a good climbing tree.” And even Zydeco chimes in clearly, “Pleeeeeeeease play with meeeeeeeeee.”
Every time my kids ask me to play with them, I feel put upon. I want my time. And the reality of the undone mountains of laundry and dishes presses upon me. I’m sure other parents feel the same clouds of gloom upon surveying boxes full of Lego parts mixed with doll bibs, microscopic GI Joe hand grenades, Mom-I-Love-You scribbled on napkins, and tin-foil-glued-to-a-paper-plate creations too precious for trash, too crumpled for anything else. Am I supposed to ignore all this and just play with my kids? They think so!
And not just any kind of quality time will do. Expectations are very specific. I must strategize military attacks, practice light saber strokes, manipulate PS2 controls in such a way that R2D2 levitates across the abyss rather than hurtle screaming into the hot lava. Often as I sit attentively watching a child build spaceships or tuck a doll to nap beneath a dishrag, just trying to meld with his or her world after my work week, I face the recurring accusation, “Don’t you want to play with me? You’re supposed to be playing with me.” Although I’m right there on the floor, it’s not enough to spectate; I must animate small figures in each hand, making them fly or fight or sing in enough voices and facial contortions to exhaust Martin Short. If I pause to draw breath, the little prosecuting attorneys are at me again. Amplified by the one in my head.
I believe with all my heart that playing with my kids is of eternal significance – perhaps more than anything I do all week, and that’s saying a lot. So why can’t I muster up more enthusiasm for it?
To compound my angst, sometimes when I offer to play a game or read a book, my overtures are rebuffed. Today, as I attempted to insinuate myself into a game of matching picture cards with my 3-year old, she tactfully tried to get me out of her way. “You can play with me as long as you share,” she admonished, “but don’t you need to make dinner?”
I guess she told me.
You do realize, when I say in my blog profile, “Being a world class wife and Mom is my most important job,” I’m not actually claiming to be that. Not today anyhow, crushed beneath the awareness of my own imperfections.
Rather, that statement is a faith verbalization, calling the things that be not as though they are. Calling myself to a greatness I have yet to manifest.
Sarah must have felt pretty foolish hollering hubby in for dinner, “Dad of a thousand sons!” – that new name Abraham insisted she call him. The servants nudged each other and whispered, “They’re in denial about their fertility problem.”
Some struggle to conceive, others of us struggle to parent those precious, incorrigible “products of conception” for the next twenty to forty years.
I wrote my blog profile one Saturday morning, full of the fresh hope a dawning weekend brings. By Sunday night, my kid-tolerance sunk to a low level, again, I felt convicted and incriminated by that phrase, “World Class Mom,” taunting me with its unreality. I told Mitch I would delete it from my profile. “You just need to delete your attitude,” he retorted.
Of course, he’s right. (If Mitch is ever not right, I will blog the occasion in detail and go dancing in the streets.)
I grumped a bit, worked myself out of the attitude and left the profile as is. Meanwhile, I scraped the unburnt top layer of lasagna onto Mitch’s plate for dinner. Did I mention world class wife, also?
I might as well hitch my wagon to a star, even if I fall off backwards when it turns out to be a meteor.
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5 comments:
lol...You have a way of making the normal everyday life...sound like...well...everyday life. And I love it.
Can we ever live up to our expectations for ourselves? To our ideals? The point of our ideals and expectations is that we know which way to aim. If you don't have a target, it is certain you will never get there.
And...children are demanding. Leaches, I sometimes call them. Precious, but draining. And sometimes, for the sake of our own sanity and the sanitary condition of our homes, the playing must be set aside as the sinkload of dishes is washed and another load of laundry is done.
My mom used to do dishes by hand because it was certain to keep everyone away for fear they would be recruited to help.
Working moms especially have this tug-of-war. We tend to deal with whatever is loudest, the nagging child or the chaos calling us to contains it.
I can't imagine prairie mothers feeling torn between playing with the kids and taking care of the cooking and cleaning. The cooking and cleaning was a matter of survival, and kids were expected to entertain themselves. Of course, they spent 24 hours a day with each other, so there was no mommy guilt.
A world without mommy guilt! That's where I want my next destination to be. Instead of going on another guilt trip
Hi Beth! Thanks for adding me to your site. :) Thanks also for all your encouraging comments. (I still can't believe you and three others made it through the Algebra blog I posted! ha ha). Have a super day!
Hiya, Coz! I can so relate to all you say here, and several things made me smile and/or get a little misty-eyed. (Esp. the part about "I love you Mom" scrawled on napkins, and things that are too precious to be trash and too crumpled to be anything else.)
But you know, somehow it all comes out alright in the end. Can't remember what movie that was in--seems like it was Shakespeare in Love--but somebody kept repeating this piece of wisdom throughout, and I find it's true. The fact that we worry about being good parents is the biggest proof that probably we are.
Which reminds me of something our pastor said in his message today, actually off of the main topic--a reminder that the only really important spiritual jobs we have are to "love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and love thy neighbor as thyself." Not dot all the i's or cross all the t's--just those two very simple (though certainly not easy) things. As you yourself have told me many times in different ways, everything else falls into place when one's heart is right.
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