The time has come to expose it all.
I am going to lay it all out there for anyone to read.
I think I need to be brutally real and honest.
I am going to warn you– it isn’t going to be pretty. And you may end up not liking me much.
But I feel that is a risk I am going to have to take because I feel very deeply that writings on blogs are sometimes not honest. Well, maybe that’s not fair. The writings might be how the writer actually feels, but I am not sure that the writing shows us, the readers, what a day in the life of that writer actually looks like.
Which can be so very different, can’t it?
I have so many feelings about my children. I can sit here in front of my computer and think about each one of my four children and get a lump in my throat and feel my eyes start to moisten. I love them so much that when I think about each one, I feel that love so strongly that I cannot breathe for a moment. The love a mother (and I am sure a father) has for her child is the most beautiful, unquestioning and unconditional love that could exist. Of that, I am sure.
And although I feel that love in the quiet moments when my mind thinks about them, in the loud moments of my day, that love is not evident nor does it appear to be wrapped around what I say or do.
Rather, I find myself frustrated in most of my interactions with them, and, very often, saying things I should not say, things that I may regret later, and things that when they were three, four or five years old, I swore I would never say to them.
And yet, here I am, ten plus years later, breaking all the promises I once made, and forgetting all the oaths I once swore.
So let me share with you a typical day in my life.
My mornings start around 7 am. I am the first up and my husband soon follows. I often sit down at my computer to work, after getting my first cup of coffee, and my husband begins to wake up the kids, then goes to the kitchen to make their lunches.
My son gets up and, after getting dressed, comes down to the kitchen to have breakfast. He usually makes peanut butter toast if I have not made egg sandwiches, or he has a bowl of cereal. For the most part, he is like his father– in a happy mood every morning. You know what you are going to get with him.
My daughter is a different story. She does not like her high school and does not want to go to school most mornings. Thus, we are not sure what kind of mood she will be in when she walks through the kitchen door each morning. She usually appears later than her brother, and she rarely gives herself enough time to eat breakfast. So she grabs a protein bar to eat at school during first period.
Some mornings, when she walks into the room, we know by the look on her face that it is best to steer clear of her. Say little and keep a wide berth. But other mornings, she is fine and she greets us cordially. The worst days, though, are the ones when she comes into the kitchen already angry with someone.
A few mornings ago, she came into the kitchen yelling that she had to get to school early. However, she had not told anyone that she needed to go early, so no one was prepared to leave at that time. Lunches were not ready, Dad was still wearing pjs, I was working on my computer and Ryan was still eating his breakfast.
She lost her mind, yelling at everyone to hurry up, getting angrier if anyone tried to ask her why she hadn’t informed anyone about going early.
She blamed everyone else. Nothing was her fault.
Somehow, we should had known and been ready to go when she wanted to go.
The morning was no longer peaceful, and everyone was now upset. When they left for school, she was almost in tears because she was not going to get there any earlier, and her dad and brother were angry that she had yelled at them and frustrated that she would not accept blame for what had happened.
And that was only the morning.
In the afternoon, this same teen became angry with her father because he did not agree with her on something political. She would not let him speak or defend his position. When he did try to talk, she talked over him, getting louder and louder, and interrupting him. Finally, when he laughed at something, she felt he was laughing at her and she began to cry. She yelled an insult, then stormed out of the room and up to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
I had just arrived home when this was going on, and I chose (for once, I think) to stay out of it. I have been talking to my daughter about maintaining calm when she feels herself getting agitated as well as speaking to my husband about keeping his voice level and not raising it during an argument. I wanted to see how they could do without any intervention from me.
It did not go as I would have liked. After she crashed out of the room, I stood in the kitchen still putting away my groceries. No one said anything for a few moments, until my son asked what had just happened and I said I wasn’t sure. Dad began to explain, and I, in my end-of-the-day fatigue, said I just wanted to start making dinner.
Which is what I did.
But a sadness hung in the air.
A feeling of how much longer would this go on stood between us all.
And I felt what I try to keep at bay tiptoeing into the room– hopelessness.
I wanted to cry– for perhaps the fifth or sixth time that week. I wanted to just sit down on the kitchen floor, bury my face in my hands, and cry.
Because I just didn’t know what else to do.
When dinner was ready, she came downstairs, filled her plate and took it back up to her room. Her father, brother and I ate together. I finished my bowl of Bolognese and went upstairs to check on her. I knocked on her door, which was locked and is not supposed to be, and she let me in. When I asked her why she had not joined us for dinner, she said that she was in the middle of writing something for her literature class and she wanted to finish. I allowed it. I knew it was an excuse, but I let it go this one time. Eating together has always been a routine in our family, but that night, I decided to give her a break.
That night I went to bed early. The weight of the day was just too heavy to carry around any longer. I climbed into bed after saying good night to the kids who were still awake and laid my head down on the pillow, telling myself that the next day was going to be better.
But I knew it wouldn’t. I knew that the challenges we had faced that day would still be there the next day and the next and the next.
And I thought about my families with young children that I serve, and how they might be feeling very similar feelings as they climb into bed each night.
For ultimately, although we don’t often talk about it, we are all going through it, aren’t we?
We pass each other in the grocery store or walking in the park. We might even accidentally bump into each other as we turn and look the other way. We say “excuse me” and go on our way, each of us eventually reaching our destination, lives so very similar yet seeming so different.
We eat our dinners, watch tv or read a book or play video games, or even, some of us, get together with friends. But at the very end-end of the day, we crawl under our covers and our lives are not unlike everyone else’s.
As a matter of fact, they are just so much the same.
