On my niece’s wedding day this past Saturday, I lucked out: in the way back corner of my youngest son’s dresser drawer, I found a pair of dress socks that matched the one pair of khaki pants he owns, but my satisfaction faded when I realized that he’d outgrown the only pair of dress shoes in the house.
An hour later, in Target, with the rest of the family in the van, engine idling, I am the mom who rushes in with her child and forces shoes on his feet, and has him walk out with the new shoes on, old shoes in the box. I am the mother whose son jumps up on the red, concrete ball on our way out of Target rendering his new shoes less impressive due to the streak of dirt on his white button down shirt and black marks on the seat of aforementioned khakis.
And this is just the beginning. This past week, when the kids went back to school, I went back to teaching full time.
I’m not going to lie: when I was home every other day (as a part time teacher these past three years), I wasn’t likely to be found in Target buying the wedding accessories (yes, shoes are an accessory) ahead of time … I’ve always been the mother who realizes these items are necessary – ahem – on the day of the event. But I felt a whole lot more on top of things around the house than I felt when I worked full time, and after only six days on the job this school year, I already feel like my house is sliding back into a sort of chaos we haven’t known since 2009.
Fortunately, the kids are older this go ‘round. Last night, the girls and I made lunches together. They can help with chores that used to be mine alone, and they can also do a lot for themselves like picking up around the house.
The flip side? Now, there’s homework. And sports schedules and Girl Scouts and CCD, which means that my husband and I have to match our schedules as perfectly as the synchronized swimmers in the Summer Olympics. Doing things for ourselves gets lost in the shuffle. So far, he hasn’t made it out to the Freedom Center, and I haven’t figured out which yoga class will best fit into our busy lives, provided we have the physical energy to actually do any sort of exercise at all.
I now get up at 5:15AM to arrive at school by 6:45; most days driving home, my lids grow heavy, and last Wednesday, I was fast asleep – flanked by our two girls – by 9:00PM, too early an hour for any self-respecting night person to be cashed.
Since I leave before our children wake up, the best I can do is kiss them goodbye and leave them a note on the kitchen table. Daddy has taken over the morning routine – for which I am two parts grateful and one part jealous – so it is now up to him to make sure that the girls wear bloomers, or shorts, underneath their skirts and dresses (why don’t all clothing designers just make SKORTS for little girls anyway?) and it is now up to him to make sure that they have ice packs in their lunch boxes so their sandwiches are edible by the time they sit down in the cafeteria at 12:00.
He is the kind of father who will cheerfully take on whatever I cannot reach – if I’m working full time, he is pulling his 50% of the household division of labor. (Even when I was part-time, he shared in most of the tasks. A better partner you could not ask for, and I know – from anecdotes shared by my friends – that I am lucky in the husband department.)
But I’m not going to lie: I liked the morning routine with our kids. I liked being the one they woke up to and the one who drove them to school. I liked waving at them from the turn-around, and I liked being close enough to run down a forgotten lunchbox or notebook. I liked being an occasional volunteer … field day timer, trip chaperone, class reader. Even if I didn’t volunteer more than I did, I liked that I could wake up one morning and decide to do more.
I am the mother who wants it all. But having just turned 40 with the fatigue – after a 16 hour day – that matches the waning energy of one who’s just entered her fourth decade, I can see something’s going to have to go. Since I will not allow it to be the time I spend with my kids, and it cannot be time devoted to health (physical or mental – the one relieved by at least some modicum of exercise, the other relieved by putting words, like these, on paper), I am searching for something to give up.
As it turns out, weddings without clean shirts and matching shoes are only part of a much larger conundrum that we all share: no matter how we wish differently, there are still only 24 hours in a day.
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