Sometimes I can't find the here and now, with all the getting lost in yesterday and the planning of tomorrow.
Five kids, I have. Five glorious children who delight me and frustrate me and teach me and humble me. My days are a blur of the monotony and routine of childraising -- there are so many breakfasts and snacks and sippie cups and fresh pitchers of juice to make each day it makes my head spin. And that only brings me to about 7:20 a.m.
By this time of night, roughly half-past 10, most of my babies are slumbering. The two oldest boys, 10-1/2 & 12-1/2, are reading and getting ready for sleep's terrifically unavoidable comfort. We had a nice day, full of playing with the dog, teasing the kitties and tossing our enormous, oversized volleyball over the semi-stable net we've put up in the backyard. My little daughter rolls on it and in doing so has taught herself how to do a somersault. Not bad for a wee girl nearing her third year. She is proud of her new accomplishment and now this silly, overstuffed volleyball has become a "friend" and must accompany her when both in and out of doors. I allow it, only because attempting to prevent it prompts screeches and screams loud enough to raise the hair on the back of your neck you didn't even know you had. Nails on a chalkboard have nothing on my small girl when she's in demand-mode.
In any case, I digress, but because this is a rambling entry, there's little to actually digress from. I suppose that's my overall point as I stumble awkwardly through these sentences...I'm constantly feeling like I need to catch up on what happened before, what happened last week, when exactly my third-born son's second baby tooth fell out so I can record it, memorialize it, save it for all eternity...and then too, I'm caught in setting up my children's back-to-school physical exams for September, I'm trying to make sure their closets are full of their favorite clothes for the day trips we've got penciled in for August, I'm doing my darnedest to make sure that all the mattresses get flipped this summer because soon, in less than 10 days' time, my beloved mother will be undergoing major abdominal surgery to resect her renal arteries and repair her abdominal aortic aneurysm and do the two-step with the Grim Reaper once more and there will be no time to do the bed-spin once my mom has been admitted and is hooked up to IVs and begging me with her eyes to tell her she's going to be all right. Because I just don't know. I don't know if she'll be okay. I don't know if I'll get all the mattresses turned over and around. I really have no clue if my kids' best t-shirts will be clean and without holes in time for driving to Chicago for the day. And I just can't quite recall why my son's second tooth is sitting in my jewelry box, waiting on its small brown envelope for lifetime safekeeping. I just don't know.
I know only that as I type these words, all five of my desperately loved, deeply cherished, embarrassingly adored children are finally sleep. My mother is tucked into her bed a half-mile away, having fallen asleep, likely, with her reading glasses on and her crossword puzzle book splayed open on her bedcovers. My husband has asked me to turn out the lights before I go up to join him in hours of spooning, and that's the best offer I've had all day. So off I go.
Yesterday is powerful in emotion, but over and done with. Tomorrow teases and engages me with possibility and anxiety, but is out of reach. Tonight? My babies are safe. My mother is safe. My husband, he waits for me.
Tonight, there's no in between. I know exactly where I should be.
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