Embracing...

Every now and then I realize this chaos is fleeting; that one day our very loud and very busy home will be silenced and we will call our grandchildren begging for visits but in the meantime, I am allowed to wonder what the hell is going on here.  I see so many social network posts about the kids...how adorable, how smart, how precious these long days are but can we have a day of honesty here once too?  Is it too much to ask that moms especially tell it like it is?  Some days we are fucking tired.  Tired.  Overwhelmed.  Our house is a mess.  Our bills are late and our car looks like a family of hamsters set up shop in there.  That no, I don't want to see Chipwrecked and no, I don't want to steam organic mung beans into a frothy shake that is "so good for them!".  I don't care if it's an hour past bedtime and the non hemp cotton, non flame retardant pajamas don't match.  Chicken nuggets and a go-gurts for dinner won't kill them.  Gasp...

Do I love my kids?  Passionately and unabashedly.  Do I love being a mom every second of my life?  Do you love what you do every second of your life?  Well then, why should I?  Gasp with a hand cup over mouth...

Okay let's so be honest here.  If we all just told it like it is, we'd be so much kinder to each other.  It IS hard, it IS life sucking and it IS overwhelming and if it's not for you, then you are doing it wrong.  I embrace my kids, adore them and live for everything that comes out of their mouth.  I quote them, photograph them, hug them constantly and attempt to make things matter but at night, sometimes I crawl into bed and wonder what the fuck I am doing.  My closest friends are the ones who deep in the night, over a bottle of wine admit this wasn't in the brochure.  That if this is all there is, they may not make it. But they will.  They will and I will because we get it.  We aren't bad moms because we don't embrace sleepless nights because it's fleeting.  We aren't negligent because Disney is more entertaining than a book about the environment and we aren't ignorant because our kids' list of sight words starts with Target and ends with McDonalds.  There I said it.

So here I am at 5am not embracing the "beautiful day Gd created" but cuddling a cup of coffee and hope today is easy but if it's not, it's not and I will survive.  And pizza for dinner with no side of vegetables and cut up apples is fine.  It comes with a chaser of "you will be fine" and I prefer that to vegetables.  It actually does make them stronger.

Four years ago today...

I was watching my children meet Jack for the second time.  Wondering how they will feel about having a brother, wondering how I am going to parent a boy, wondering how I was going to manage four children.  Nursing at midnight, rocking by daylight, dinner, toys, baths, homework...it was such frenetic energy with no time to sit and really wonder about anything at all.

And I guess what I got from that now is you really do just put one foot in front of the other and pray there is no oncoming bus.  Could it really be that simple?  You do what's in front of you, feed them, read to them, nag them to wear a coat...I dunno.  I tried so hard for so long to parent with wild abandon.  To be involved in every square inch of their lives...to create a world for them that is factory new.  Organic broccoli, steamed to perfection with three other nutritionally balanced choices, each of every appropriate color.  Cultural arts, dance, sports... And now I just wonder if more nights of just cereal for dinner, a warm blanket to hang under and no rushing to ballet or swim team might be more the way to go.  I'm not ready to lead the next Slacker Mom revolution because I am entirely too Type A for that but it's nice to think about.

Did my long days of riding bikes after school with no helmet, drinking from the hose in the summer and eating white rice and mechanically processed meats create the frightening prospects we are reading about?  I'm thinking our kids now are more neurotic and anxious than I ever was and yet they are more cared for, watched over and fussed with...I am not a statistician...hell I failed it twice in college but I just musing...

And let's just say while I don't have my pulse on this parenting shit...I can see it from here

My faith was strong...

Maybe there’s a Gd above, but all I’ve ever learned from love, was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.  It’s not a cry you can hear at night, it’s not somebody who has seen the light


It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah


Maybe this is what I taught my children.  To find within themselves the answers and when they can't, they fail.  I was never one to reach up to a higher self or higher gd because to me, years of praying never brought me what I had been praying for.  Sounds selfish for one with four beautiful children but it's true.  I was never one for blind faith.  Ever.  If I thank Gd for my children, I have to blame him for my losses.  If I thank him for my health, I have to blame him for my cancer.  I could never resolve a place so I decided the strength within my self was enough.  Through the pain of my children who can't find the peace I realize I have failed them.  They can't look beyond themselves...why should they?  I never did.


I see so much of myself in them.  My broken soul...my inability to recognize my own weaknesses. 


I said I could never be broken.  I could never give up.  I never would.  Stillborns, chemotherapy, divorce...and yet, the cold and broken cry at night is finally me.


Weakened and broken by circumstance.  Out of the shadows it comes...


It's not a victory march...it's a cold and broken hallelujah.  


I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah