Slow It Down, Mama

It can be really stressful to be alive. It can be really stressful to be a mother, working, with kids at home doing Zoom calls, with all the stresses of the house on your food-stained shoulders.

I acknowledge this. I feel this.

Today I sat with four loads of laundry piled high around me. It had been a chore that I had been avoiding because laundry is the worst. (Sometimes I  consider moving to a nudist colony; I weigh the pros and cons of having my sagging jiggly-bits on display for the world vs having to do no laundry. Most days I lean towards nudist colony but surprisingly there is not a lot nearby.)

On the computer was a tab open to a day’s worth of work that also had to be done.

I had a mental checklist going of all the things I had to get done in the next hour.

A wailing sound emanated from down the hallway and my five-year-old sobbed his way through the hoards of clothes to sit on my lap.

“I hurt my eye!” He wailed. Apparently, he and his kindergarten counterpart had been engaged in a very active music class, and he had been on the receiving end of an elbow jab. I held him for a quick second, gave him a kiss, and was about to push him off of my lap and back on his Zoom. Remember–I had laundry. Work. Three other kids on Zooms. This was a small window in which to get some of my shit done.

But as I sat there cradling this five-year-old on my lap, it hit me– I am not going to have many of these moments left. This little boy is my baby. It won’t be long before he’s too old for his owies to be fixed by kisses and cuddles. There will come a time, not far down the road, when he will no longer want to sit in my lap. 

So I sat. 

The towels had fallen off the bed and were sitting on the dirty floor.
My white shirts, which I had worked painstakingly hard to remove the stains from, were crumpled in their basket like wilted flowers.
The screen with my work shut off.

And still I sat.

It is easy to forget that none of the day-to-day chores of life really matter in the end. Work will get done, laundry will eventually get folded, Zoom calls will end.

My kids aren’t going to remember how wrinkly my clothes are or if the towels smelled a little funky. They won’t remember dirty floors or dishes in the sink. But I guarantee you they will remember the feeling of being comforted by their mama; by a grown-up taking a second of their busy day to spend some quality time with them.

There is no getting back precious mama moments back. I am writing this as a reminder to myself to slow it down. To take time for the small moments. To breathe is the sweaty hair of my five-year-old while I still can.