In Deep

The weeks are flying by in a blur of school-routines and regular life.  Sunday evening comes quietly with the preparations for the week... print calendar, organize homework, half-assedly plan meals, fold yet another load of laundry.  Then I blink, and Friday afternoon storms in, filled with amped up/burned out kids and two very long weekend days ahead.

Most days I feel like I have a decent handle on this gig... on the mothering, domestic, grown-upy stuff.  In the past few weeks I managed to not only keep everyone alive, I also made several batches of baby food, finally took those bags to Goodwill that have been living in the back of my car for who knows how long, and made an ever-so-slight dent in laundry mountain.  We even made it to Quinn's walk-to-school week every-single-day.  (Which probably shouldn't be something I feel the need to brag about, but involved getting everyone out the door twenty minutes early, for FIVE days in a row... so, yay!)

But then there are still these moments, the kind that sneak up & blindside me, where I feel like I am really just working undercover at this adult-in-charge thing.... and someday soon, someone will notice that I have no idea what I am doing.  Days when I bumble & stumble and just can't juggle anything else.  When I am crispy and brittle around the edges, and if husband or a kid makes some otherwise quite reasonable request, I snap.  Days when the rising certainty that everyone else is way better at this than me, can no longer be pushed aside.

The realization that I'M THE MOMMY still takes me by surprise sometimes.  Jumping feet first into this parenthood gig is such an epic adventure...the kind that no one can really understand until they are already in the middle of it.  There is no break in sight... no running off with the husband for a week in some undisclosed location... no sleeping in or pajama days watching movies and napping... no skipping making dinner just because I don't feel like it.  

And yet, there is such a deep, bone-level understanding that this is all as it should be.  That these kids I am in charge of are both my students & my teachers.  They make me question everything I have ever thought I knew about myself.  They re-define me in the world.  Anchoring me to a deeper understanding of what it means to be alive. 

There is nothing sweeter than seeing Quinn's face light up when he sees me at school pickup... or how tightly Remy wraps his arms around me when he hugs... or the way Soren's head fits just so on my shoulder.  They turn to me for answers when they are unsure.  For balance when they are unsteady.  For comfort when they come unglued.  What an amazing responsibility it is to guide little humans in this world.