Motherhood Never Ends

Motherhood Never Ends

I awoke to light outside, meaning I’d overslept my alarm. My two little cherubs awoke soon after I did, so I had to forfeit my morning ritual of making peanut butter toast and French-pressed coffee, which I nibble and sip while writing.

Instead, still groggy-eyed, I changed my one-year-old’s diaper, and we went downstairs where my husband was making oatmeal. Soon afterward, he went down to the barn to work.

I tried to work as well on The Divide, the sequel to The Alliance, which is due to my publisher in three months. This was a mistake. My daughters, at first, played happily on the bottom step. They were so adorable with their bedhead hair and coordinating pink and purple pajamas that I felt inclined to leave the table and take a picture of them.

My three-year-old reached for my phone. I let her have it. She scrolled through the pictures, showing them to me and to her younger sister. Then she came to a video I’d taken of my husband this summer: batting gnats and bedecked in swimming trunks he’d worn seven years ago on our honeymoon in Hawaii, he looked pretty grouchy while putting one of our butchered meat chickens in the homemade plucker.

She came over and handed the phone to me. “It won’t work,” she said.

I looked at it. The video was playing but there was no sound. I pushed the buttons on the side, but I already knew the volume setting was messed up.

I handed the phone back. “I can’t fix it,” I said.

My daughter dropped the phone (hence the volume situation) and cried, “No! I want to watch!”

I picked it up and looked at her. “You can’t,” I said sternly. “It’s broken.”

She came running for the phone, and I held out my arm, blocking her from it. She fell and burst into tears.

I scooped her up and sat at the kitchen table. Her tears dampened my pajama top. I stared at my laptop’s blinking cursor. Fifty words written so far, if that.

After bathtime, I put my one-year-old down for her mid-morning nap, and then focused on getting my three-year-old dressed. She didn’t want to wear anything with a tag, and unless I wanted to take scissors to all of her apparel, this left her without a stitch of clothing.

I said, “I’m taking a break,” and walked into the bathroom.

I closed the door and sat down on the lip of the tub, but I didn’t shower. Instead, I just sat there with the winter sun streaming through the window and prayed. I prayed God would give me the wisdom to navigate my daughter’s High Sensitivity without making her so accustomed to special treatment, I decimated her future.

And then the sun illumined the orchid sitting on the shelf, the vase’s broken shards softened by an orange and purple scarf. This summer, wind came through the open window and knocked over the vase like it’d been knocked over numerous times. But this time the vase broke and scattered dirt across the floor.

I discovered this, hours later, only because I found three wilted orchid blooms in the bottom of the grocery bag lining the trashcan and then a dusting of dirt next to the tub.

I asked my daughter about it. She shrugged and lifted her little hands. “It fell. I cleaned it up.”

I needed to remember moments like that during the other, harder, moments. I needed to remember that my children come first, not my career, and if a job has to suffer, I don’t want it be motherhood.

The door opened now, my daughter stepped in. “I’m taking a break, too,” she said.

She sat down on the step stool in front of the sink. We looked at each other in silence. Mother and daughter, my firstborn. My first chance not to mess up. But there is grace in forgiveness: forgiving her for her temper tantrum and forgiving myself for not being fully present. I smiled. She smiled back, and then continued to sit there as I showered, telling me what to wash.

She hollered, “You done, Mom?!”

I winced, thinking of my one-year-old taking a nap. And then, peering around the shower curtain, I saw my three year old’s eager face framed by its still-damp, dark-blond curls.

I thought: No, I’m not done.

Motherhood never ends. And I wouldn’t want it any other other way.

Have you ever had a morning like mine? Please share. Motherhood needs company. 😉