Have any of you figured out at what point we can say, “I’ve got this whole mom-thing”? Because I am six kids and almost nine years in, and, well, permission to speak freely? Somedays I feel like I might be going... whatever direction is the opposite of “I’ve got this.”
Exhibit A: The laundry. Our laundry situation is truly troubling. On any given day the pile in front of the washer is at least as high as my knee and the thing is, I feel like I am doing laundry all the time! I promise you I’m not lazy. I do laundry almost every day. It’s actually making me wonder if I am witnessing real life miracles as I watch the rate at which our dirty clothes multiply. There were two socks and five pants in that pile ONE HOUR AGO and now there are what, at least five thousand socks? I just don’t even know anymore, friends. Are my kids currently wearing clothes, sleeping in them, and wearing them again the next day? Well, I’m pretty careful not to see people we know two days in a row so no one will ever be able to prove that.
Exhibit B: My sourdough starter. It’s becoming clear at this point that this was ambitious. I mean, it’s not “let’s get a puppy!” ambitious, but everyone who said, “oh, it’s so easy!” was telling maybe half the truth. It’s not complicated; it is just flour and water, after all. But I’m going to go ahead and shoot straight with you, dear readers, because I love you: sourdough is not so easy. It needs to be fed, every day, which is somewhat demanding of it, if you ask me. I have friends who have left town and had people come over to feed their starter so it didn’t die—a practice I thought once reserved for fish apparently applies to bread, too. And then when it comes time to make your bread—there’s activating, then kneading, then rising, then waiting overnight, then some folding, and it’s only at that point you’ll even know if your starter was good enough for something we can actually eat. So you feed it and then wait and then monitor its bubbles and worry about if you’re doing it right, and then it goes through a period where the smell is almost unbearable and you think surely the consistency has gone off the rails, and there are no promises of what this starter will actually be like when it’s mature and basically, a sourdough starter is another child, and I really was good with the six I have.
Exhibit C: The hard questions. My oldest is asking me really tough questions and I don’t know what’s more important, to protect her or tell her the truth, and isn’t it frustrating that those things have to feel incongruent at all? Keeping up with the laundry and trying to impress my family with homemade sourdough are small potatoes compared to this, to the talking and the listening and the tension between “I don’t know” (which is often a lie) and “I’ll tell you when you’re older” (which frustrates her to no end) and “Ok, I’ll tell you all about what I mean by “bad pictures” on the internet.” It’s this part that I don’t got; this growth away from all that has felt safe and, yes, monotonous; but with monotony there is predictability, and I hate to be that mom but friends, we will miss that when it’s gone. I already am. My oldest wants to know if sex hurts, why someone would ever put something bad in your drink, if she should suck her stomach in more, and I’m here with my hands on her cheeks, looking into the same beautiful blue eyes of the toddler she once was and remembering when we she learned the words to “You Are My Sunshine,” and the “sh” sound was so long coming it always came out “my own-ey sun-sineeee.”
I guess what I’m saying is, I wish laundry and bread were the hard parts of motherhood.
A few weeks ago, when I visiting an old “frentor” (you know, those friends that are ten to fifteen years ahead of you in motherhood and have all the good advice, but you still invite them to your birthday dinner because it doesn’t feel like much of a gap in life at all), she was holding our six-week-old baby and couldn’t get him to stop fussing. She looked over to me and said, “I think he needs his mama”, to which I replied, “well he’s fed and burped, I’m not sure what he needs?” But, as I often do, I laid a swaddle blanket on the ground and wrapped him tightly, keeping the conversation with my friend going as I did. Then I stood up and put his head in the nook of my elbow, his head facing toward me just enough to help the paci stay in place, my right arm free to pat and rub his little back. After just a minute of bouncing and patting, he was calm and content.
My frentor stopped nearly mid-sentence, smiled, and simply said to me, “See, you knew exactly what he needed.”
Maybe friends, even when it feels like the laundry is never done and the homemade bread may never taste right and the questions are hard and the baby is fussing, maybe we do know what to do—simply because we will keep trying and keep praying and keep asking for help until we figure it out.
In it with you,
Katie
