Oh Dear.
I’m having trouble going through the airlock.
By “Airlock” I mean going from the time and space of being responsible for no small children to the time and space of being constantly responsible for a small person.
My wagon is draggin’.
Trying to get my head around being ON with my adorable son 24/7.
And I know-I know I know I know because it’s part of the job description for a 4 year old to frequently Flip Out over completely random things because ‘they want to be able to control their world.’- that he will be an utter nightmare for 48 to 72 hours after several nights and days in his Dad’s world.
He will meltdown if
1. I don’t park the car in the place he wants me to park the car(that happened last week at the aquarium. He screamed bloody murder in the car for 14 minutes).
2. if I don’t take my hair out of the hair clip(“Take your hair clip out! PUT…YOUR…HAIR…DOOOOOOOWWWWN!). Last week, he started screaming
3. Or, along the similar strain of my physical appearance, crying because I wouldn’t take off my bathrobe.(“Take OFF that bathrobe! And put on a short-sleeved shirt! That bathrobe doesn’t look good!”)
4. Food Preparation is always good for a trigger:(“I want to put more cinnamon on my oatmeal! I don’t CARE if you put a lot on! I WANT MORE CINNAMON on my oatmeal. And I will not eat ANY of this until I have more cinnamon ON. I will NEVER eat oatmeal AGAIN, if I can’t put more cinnamon on this oatmeal. Give me that cinnamon!!”)
So, while I love my life and I love my son and I love love love being a mother, and while I wouldn’t want my life any other way, I’m not looking forward to the constant negotiations using a calm voice: “I’m cold, K. I’ll take off my bathrobe when I get dressed.[ K cries, screams, yells] Sometimes we wear clothes to look good and sometimes we wear clothes because they protect us from cold and weather…” [scream,yell,cry])
“Take one bite of the oatmeal and then we can decide if it needs more cinnamon. If you put too much on, it won’t taste good and you need a good breakfast.”
I am so lucky to have these breaks. K’s Dad, is such a great co-parent! He is very aware and grateful for all the frontline work that I do and organizes his busy schedule, so I can have nice chunks of time off. Also, I rest easy because I know he actually plays with K and plans cool adventures to visit new playgrounds and/or beaches. Last week, he took K to visit a lighthouse. K was thrilled. It’s not like he has K at his house, sitting in front of a huge TV all day and then feeds him McDonalds every visit.(I have a friend who is dealing with that. her daughter came home, and said :”At Dad’s I just watch TV all the time. At Suzie’s[Dad’s girlfriend]I play a bit and watch TV.)” However, even with the thought-out productive visits with his Dad, it takes a while to transition from Dad world to Mom world. Thus the tsumami of meltdowns.
Long and the short, I didn’t quite get enough of a break. Is that bad to say?
Also, my office closet is still not clean and the flotsam and jetsam on the kitchen counters that I SWORE I would organize on this weekend off, is no where near organized. There is still so much fucking crap on two of my kitchen counters that I literally don’t have space to put normal things on them. By normal things, I mean the dirty dishes. The dishes are balanced precariously on the edge of the counters. Please god let there not be an earthquake. I was be so embarrassed if rescue crews saw my house like this. It’s so bad this morning that while I was in the living room, two cup clattered down onto the floor.Plastic, luckily.
I swore, while I had three days off, I would organize and Love my kitchen.
Because, I actually hate my kitchen.
It is charm free.
I love our apartment. We have beautiful views of our sparkling, hip coastal city and it is spacious and light-filled.
But not the kitchen. The apartment was build in the 30s so, the people in the kitchen were different from the people enjoying the view. Even though I think the kitchen should be the most cozy, the most light-filled of any room since it is where you do the sacred work of food preparation.
So, add to the charm-free and no love feelings, my clutter bug tendencies and BOOM you have a nightmare that attacks any calm achieved after a good night’s sleep and a hike in the woods.
And, as earlier stated I had resolved, RESOLVED that I would Organize the cabinets and counters so that, going into a big week of work, I would feel better about the kitchen.
But.
But here I am, on the couch, wanting to put a blanket over my head. Not only is the kitchen a cataclysm(general clutter, afore-mentioned dirty dishes filling the sink, and ridiculously full, smelly frig) but there are books and dust and old magazines strew all over the living room( another Project to cull and throw out the no longer needed books and back issues of the New Yorker that I will never read and, therefore, remain ignorant in perpetuity.) there is a Mountain of laundry on K’s bed that needs to be folded. Oh, and there is a suitcase out and opened because I wanted to start packing for our trip.
In essence, my house is unbounded chaos and it’s 9 o’clock at night. I am picking K up in less than 12 hours. So I need to sleep and be rested for the big week of Being a Great Mom.
This house, however, NOT the house of a great mom. Throw a couple, three, four meowing grumpy cats in it and BAM it's the home of a crazy person. A booth cartoon. Or someone on that reality show, “Horders.” I shutter when I think of that show.
On my gorgeous hike today, in the woods, along a stream with waterfalls and huge trees, smelling everything fresh, green and real, it was so easy to be a Great Mom.
Because when you are in Heaven, everything is easy and beautiful. And n Heaven, you are not in the reality of your unorganized apartment. (Sometimes my apartment is Heaven. No matter how it looks. After a bad date for example. Or on a sunny morning with K building a space station out of magna-tiles. Not so much today, however.)
And all the clean up seemed so manageable in the woods with the babbling brook and the sun on the back of neck. I felt like a Super hero mom there in the green sparkling glory by myself.
I am not ready to go through the airlock! I’m not ready to put on my protective gear so I can catch all the curve balls and wild pitches that the world and a four year old throw at me.
Not ready! I want to feel like a super hero without doing anything except walking by myself for a little bit longer.
Covers are over my head so I can’t see the mess that I, not my four year old, created. (I know too that if I don’t clean this shit up, the apartment will remain an un-cleaned up nightmare until I have another break.)
I’m sure you feel this too.
I loved that scene in Date Night when the Steve Carell character asked the Tina Fey character if she fantasized about an affair with any one. And she said something like: “No. I don’t. If anything I have fantasies about being alone. Going to a hotel and being in the quiet hotel room by myself. Eating lunch slowly. And drinking a diet sprite.”
Exactly.
I have no wisdom about the airlock, dearly devoted parents. Just know that when you are there, needing to transition from alone time back to kid/parent time, and all you want to do is not pick up a single envelope or magna tile off the floor and just watch reruns of “Mad Men” and/or hours of “So you think you can dance,” I am with you in spirit.
Well, wait, I guess I have two tricks for angst of the airlock. But—fair warning—the second is emotionally manipulative.
Trick #1 taught to me by my grand Consigliore, G, single mom to two amazing grown up men and owner of her own business. When you are becoming slightly overcritical because you, for instance, went to the movies/went out with a friend/went on a date/went for a hike instead of tending to the backlog of housework and organization and you are starting to slip down the vortex of calling yourself a bad person/parent/teacher/artist/ fill-in-the-blank, ask yourself these questions:
-Did you manage to feed your child?
-Did you get clothes on your child?
-Did you read to your child or have an engaged conversation with your kid?(A nice thing about being a single parent is plenty of opportunities for quality time.)
-Did you get them to bed?
-Did you get them to school and pick them up?
If so, then the rest is gravy! You have earned a break!! Because doing all that completely by yourself is no joke. You have earned a free pass when you do have a break to do absolutely nothing.
Plus, beating yourself up wastes precious energy that you will need while with your kids 24/7.
Here’s the trick #2 for the transitioning through the airlock: I was late coming to parenting. By ‘late’ I mean I was 40 when my son was born. Well, forty and a half but who’s counting? So I thought I was going to have to prepare myself for not having kids. And dealing with THAT, dealing with the constant heartbreak of not being a mom and seeing all my friends and family with their kids, is much harder than going through the airlock once in a while and seeing my boy who is always, always happy to see me.
So, when I want to put that blanket over my head and just watch TV and then sleep under the unfolded laundry, I sit down and take a breath. Then I send light and love to the women and men who do have that constant, secret heartbreak of having no kids when they wanted them. That prayer gets me through the airlock and then, I do find I have more patience(most of the time) and more breath for curve balls and the flailing kicks. But, hey, I also get more hugs.
And actually if when melting down, K manages to clip me with a kick or a punch, he goes right over to his art table and make me a watercolor.
And that is worth all the mess and chaos.
