Tag: parenthood

Living with Purpose

A mothers day tribute

Blooming and Becoming

It was the fall of ‘91, or somewhere thereabouts. I was 4 and my brother 8. She was nearing her 33rd birthday. Just one year older than I am now. It was the year she began her associates degree at the local community college. She was working down the road and raising us.

I vaguely remember the old electric typewriter and various “heavy” books strewn around the trailer that we lived in at the time. Because at five years old, the only thing you know about college is that it’s where your mom sometimes goes at night. And the books are heavy.

It was the summer of ‘93. I was 6, my brother 10 and she 35 (give or take). It was the year she graduated from the community college. I vaguely remember a party in the front lawn. It was hot and I remember all the adults commenting about it, in the way only adults can. To me, summer was summer. Macrame folding chairs, picnic tables and my cousin with her “hippie friends”, dot my memories of that day. Which is saying a lot, because I really only have a few graspable memories from my early childhood.

I weave the dotted memories with the stories I’ve been told to create a decoupage of my past, creating an image in my mind of what it must have been like. Except, I don’t have many stories about this particular season of my mother’s life. She has never been one to talk much about herself. She is and always has been the keeper of everyone else.

I can clearly remember my grandmother being at the front yard celebration that day. I remember her blazer with the raised shoulder pads and I can still smell the Mary Kay on her face. She was the one who explained to my why I wasn’t attending the graduation ceremony— I would have more fun running around the park with the neighbors. She assured me with a kiss that they would be back shortly. That I remember as clear as the sky was that day.

But for the life of me I can’t remember my grandfather being there. Was he there to see his youngest child get a degree? Was he as proud as I imagine him to have been? He must have been there because he didn’t pass until September 11 of that year. A date that took my mom only a few moments to reply with. But of the year in which she started school she could not recall.

She’s just that way, never making much of what she does, what she has accomplished. So I will make much of it for her.

You see, in the midst of this scene is a single mother schlepping her children to and from baseball and ballet. A single woman who worked full time, with two young kids. She was navigating the college scene and the dating arena. She was unclogging toilets and unfreezing pipes. She was making dinner and making grades. All the while, I can scarcely remember a night that she didn’t tuck me in. In the midst of it all, she created a legacy of a bedtime blessing— a quick chat, a hug and a kiss, and just one more glass of water—that lasted through my teen and young adult years. Like I said, the keeper of everyone else.

It was the winter of ‘94 and she had just landed an office job. Good hours, decent benefits and a consistent pay. That was nearly 25 years ago.

As a young child I couldn’t possibly understand or even know what it all meant—her choice to go back to school, her commitment to finish, her newly landed job. But I knew how it felt.

I knew how it felt the day when I paid a quarter for my school lunch. I can still see myself at the end of the cafeteria line. Keenly aware at the time of everyone around me. Nervous pride in my heart and a smile that I could not contain. It didn’t occur to me, or even really matter, that 25 cents was still significantly subsidized. All I knew is that we were not in the same place we were the day before.

I know now that the pride I had in my heart that day was not so much about the money but about her. She had moved us up. One rung on this ladder we call life. She was trudging ahead.

The years passed. The shifts and the pay changed. But the job remained the same. The grind. Day in and day out for 25 years. Something virtually unheard of in my generation.

There have been deaths and births, weddings and divorces, graduations and job losses, sickness and health. Amidst it all for 25 years she has made a daily fifty minute commute into the city. She has lived a certain life there, that I know not much about. All the while being the glue to our lives outside that cubicle.

And now that chapter is ending. The hard work has paid off. Now she gets to live but one life. No longer is there the work week and the weekend. Now it’s just life.

Here’s to you mom.

You were the age I am now when you started your career journey. I can only hope that in 30 years, when I am the age you are now, I will have as much love to look back on and as much life to be proud of.

May you live that life. You’ve earned it.

Living with Purpose

Lack of Sleep

Blooming and Becoming

Sleep and the lack thereof

I rolled out of bed at 5:40 (because if I have any hope of peeing without audience or gulping a cup of coffee in silence, it has to be done at 5:40am).  I quickly contemplated what I would wear for the day.  After a quick mental run down of our days plans, I half-slurred to myself, sweatpants. Which seems to be par for the course lately.

This particular morning, deep sleep had eluded me nearly all night.  I foolishly went to bed too late for someone of my age and circumstance.  11:40pm, I think it was when last I looked at the clock.  I’d like to say that I was up spending much needed quality time with my husband or that I was fueling my soul with the Word.  Or at the very least taking in some restorative “me time”.   But fact of the matter is, I was wasting precious moments.  I traded precious sleep for just one more scroll down the Facebook feed.  And while, I guess you could say it was “me time”, it was anything but restorative.  Or smart.  I’ve read enough to know that screen time is a “no-no” right before bed.  And I know myself enough to be aware that I probably should avoid it anytime after about 8pm.  I read somewhere once that those sweet and precious hours from about 7pm-11pm are the most trafficked and most addictive hours to be sucked into the internet world. I know this.  Yet I still found myself fascinated by everyone else’s world while contentedly ignoring my own.

Until about 12 am that is.  20 short minutes after surrendering my phone to the charger and laying down my head, I was jolted awake by shrieks from the (not-quite) baby.  At 16 months I think it’s fair to say he is a full-blown toddler.  Yet still a baby.  My baby.  

I lie there a moment while my body catches up with my brain.  Trying to muster the energy to heave my over-weight and over-burdened body out of the bed.  The mental debate begins, If I wait just a minute longer maybe he’ll ‘self-soothe’ and fall back asleep.  But then 1 minute turns to 5 and I am dangerously close to dozing back to sleep.  Yes for those of you wondering, when you have been awoken with screams nearly every night for last 16 months– it is entirely possible to doze off in the midst of your child’s screams.  Even now, in hindsight, the mental debate looms, knocking on my heart’s door…I should have just let myself go back to sleep, maybe he would have exhausted himself and we both would have gotten some sleep. 

But I know better.  I know that for the last 496 days (give or take) my sweet son has out screamed my own resolve to ignore those screams. 

Nevertheless, I heave my feet to the floor and with a huff just loud enough to let my husband know that yet again I am tending to the baby, I head to his room.  I know what he is seeking.  It is that thing I worked hard to break him of at around 10 months and then gave into again shortly after because of a tumultuous vacation that strained our entire families sleep cycles. 

A bottle. At 16 months, he is long past needing a nighttime bottle.  But oh does he want it.

I know I will give in. I know I will give it to him. And I immediately feel torn.  Like trying to avoid a bad habit but knowing you’ve not the strength to do so.  I console myself by saying, at least it’s no longer formula, just warm milk.  But the guilt hits before my feet hit the floor.  Am I doing the right thing?  Or am I taking the easy way out?  Is there ever an “easy way” when you have a difficult tempered child.  Because let me tell you, this screaming does not resign itself to only the wee hours of the night.  Perhaps that is why I often give in and give up in the darkness of his room, because I have dealt with screaming and hitting and thrashing ALL DAY.  All while trying to properly train a 3 1/2 year old, besides. 

This is all new territory for me.   And I don’t know what I am doing.

My first-born was and is an entirely different temperament.  They all are, I guess.  At least that’s what I am told.  And while he was physically active and exhausting, the mental and emotional strain was not nearly at this intensity.  But don’t compare them, you must not compare them.  The mental dialogue continues.

So it was on this particular night and most other nights dotted  throughout the last 64 weeks.  Sleepless nights that have turned into weeks, that have turned into months that have become well past a year. So after soothing the baby and yes giving him a bottle, I returned to bed.  Half asleep and wholly deflated. 

Just as I had come to peace with my decision and surrendered to the “survival mode” that is currently my life, a half hearted comment from my husband ignited my brain once again.  “You would have never done this for our first-born,” he said. 

Wham. That hits me with nearly as much force as the baby’s screams. He’s right.  And just like that I am awake again.

Was I a better mother then or now?  Was I doing the right thing then or now? Am I giving in to a baby’s demands or giving up on preconceived ideas of how I should handle that baby.   Why do I seem to be okay with the latter but not the former?  And so the mental interrogation continues.

When it feels like I have no answers and I don’t know what to do, I’ve learned to surrender to the One who does.  Here’s the thing about Jesus, he often told people what to do, but not necessarily how to do it.  I believe, to leave room for his Holy Spirit to lead and guide and take care of the “how”.  So all I can do now is, “Trust in the Lord with all my heart and lean not on my own understanding; in all my ways submit to him, and he will make my paths straight.” P (Proverbs 3:5-6)…and hopefully my nights quiet.