Missing a dream
***
I set my alarm for 6am, which hopefully, hopefully gives me a small window of time before the kids stir for me to walk the neighborhood. I start the coffee and the tick tick gurgle of the percolator gets my heart jumping before I’ve even sipped the caffeine. I slip a bra under my pajamas and lace up my green Nike knock off shoes: quarantine, but make it fashion. Ha.
I step out into the cool fog and drink in the misty air, the delicious silence. Still on my front stoop, I open my “running” app to track my course, which usually consists of a 20 minute walk along our hiking trail, with multiple breaks to take pictures of green rolling hills, steam rising off the lake, or the newest fuschia and lavender blooms. I start towards the sidewalk when I hear the cries, the scream I would recognize anywhere, coming from my daughter’s window, loud enough to pierce the still, morning air and shatter any hopes of alone time.
I whisper a curse, click Stop Workout on my app, and pivot my cheap shoes back into the house to start the day.
***
I never missed a workout when I was single, living with my girlfriends. I could wake up and take off and I came home for a fresh shower, not a screaming toddler. I didn't have to sneak alone time into the cracks of my day, yet I didn't have to be alone, either.
Now I miss those girlfriends, that community, the sisterhood we built in college.
Many of us are now mamas; all of us have a significant other that we share our life with. We are no longer roommates. We no longer brew french press coffee together on slow Saturday mornings. We no longer strategize Costco runs or split coffee creamer (we followed the evolution from Coffee Mate to soy based to coconut creamer--now would we share oat milk?, I don’t even know). We don’t grill chicken for dinner or throw together epic salads with whatever ingredients we have on hand from our CSA veggie box. We no longer debrief after long days at work, griping about our bosses or finding subtle ways to steer the conversation back to our latest office crush.
More than my freedom, I miss belonging to them. I miss knowing who prefers red wine to white, who would be into the current rose, and even frose, trend. I miss knowing their skincare routines (I know for sure we’d all be team BeautyCounter now thanks to my friend, Drewsie), sharing clothes and makeup and playlists.
It feels like treason to miss that stage of life. Like I’m ungrateful for the life I have now. A life where my roommates consist of a 20-month-old and a 3-year-old who love to talk about butts and toots and Daniel Tiger and a husband who is working full time from home.
And it’s not like the quarantine did this to us. My friends and I have been drifting into different stages, different seasons, even different states, long before coronavirus and shelter-in-place orders.
This time of more pronounced physical separation has highlighted the metaphorical distance that was already there.
We are no longer each other's go-to people, not in the day-to-day details. We check in with husbands and significant others, base our days around nap schedules and work meetings, not roommate hangouts or happy hours.
We've been apart for a long time, but I'm just now putting a finger to the wound, feeling it pulsing beneath the surface, a dull and steady ache. A longing to belong to something outside my little family.
***
All this longing and missing has made me pretty crazy with my phone.
I feel like Leslie Knope on the Parks and Rec Covid special--wanting to be talking to all my friends all the time, not wanting to be left out. Organizing zoom meetings and text convos.
I find myself glued to my screen even while my kids play. While I nurse my daughter, I’m skimming an Instagram story on body neutrality from an influencer I’ve never met and wondering why my feed is filled with more and more strangers as my real life friends post less and less.
I’m so busy scrolling I miss the way the light hits my daughter’s wispy curls and the sound of gentle sucking as she snuggles in. I want some kind of outside validation so badly, I miss the sweetness right under my nose.
I can’t help but take it personally when my friends don’t reply on my timeline, when I’m the only one initiating, pursuing. I know in my head that people are coping in their own ways. Some people are backing away from technology just as hard as I’m digging in.
But it still hurts.
***
Back in January I thought it was a good idea to come up with a focus for the year and I chose that I wanted to learn to “sit in the hard.” Oh boy, I really asked for it, didn’t I? Never did I imagine this much hard swirling world around us, and this much sitting.
I’ve been trying to sit with this loneliness and see where God is moving, what He is pointing me to.
How much of this loneliness is my God-given ache for connection and how much am I seeking to validate my own worth, my own worthiness, in my connection with others?
All this time, have I kept busy with playdates and small groups and a jam-packed schedule to validate my life as a mom?
I’ve always been a mom AND a teacher, a professor, a friend. I love working part-time--I love challenging my brain, adult interaction, getting out of the house (pre-quarantine), but how much of my job has insulated me from these feelings of worth and worthiness that my “just a mom” friends have wrestled with from the beginning?
I know two things that seem at odds: my desire to connect with others, to reach out, to not stay insulated, is God-given, and yet no amount of text messages or check-ins can make me worthy.
This work is internal. This work is my own.
Maybe for me, learning to be apart, together is learning to be present with my current reality. To disconnect my worth from phone buzzes, likes, and Zoom hangouts (which everyone is tired of anyways).
Perhaps being a good friend in this season may sometimes look like leaving special gift deliveries and sending texts and organizing hangouts.
But maybe the harder part for me, the true work, may not entail reaching out, but settling in. Maybe it’s being content at home, nursing a toddler in silence, giving up my morning walks every now and then.
Like the time a couple weeks ago when I fought the urge to text during nap time and instead brainstormed activities my three-year-old would enjoy. Instead of obsessively checking my phone, I wrote out the alphabet on 26 pieces of scratch paper and taped the large letters around the living room with blue painter’s tape. When I brought him down from his room, he shrieked with glee at the letters and ran to find them without so much as an explanation from me. He grabbed my hand and we galloped around tapping vowels and consonants. He rushed to our home office to invite my husband on our hunt, unable to contain his joy.
The work is also in allowing silence. Leaving my phone on the charger even after my kids go to bed. Taking my feelings of hurt, of being left out, to God or my husband or my journal, instead of mindless scrolling. In continuing to ask what He is teaching me even when the answer doesn’t seem clear or isn’t what I want to hear.
I pray for strength to put down the phone, to stop nursing my nostalgia, and practice settling in to the magic of this season. To pay attention to sweet nursing sessions and silly scavenger hunts.
To find more ways to daily live the dream instead of missing it.
***
This post was written as part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to read the next post in this series "Together, Apart".
My body is not a badge
It doesn’t have to be a badge,
this current state of my body.
Sagging breasts
Love handles that remain
even after months of
container tracking and work outs
Dimpling in my hips
A shelf of skin hanging over
my c-section scar.
I see the posts on Instagram.
The moms who wear their
tiger stripes and body changes as a
badge of honor.
To them, the scar is a sign of
love and sacrifice.
The sagging boobs
a testament to 3.5 years of
breastfeeding without a break.
The love handles a soft place
for toddler hands to land.
The dimples of cellulite
a sign of growing and stretching
to create new life.
I don’t disagree.
That these marks and changes are beautiful
because
of the growth they represent
and the life they nurtured
and continue to nurture.
But I would counter that they are beautiful
just because.
That the beauty is inherent,
not earned,
even through something as beautiful as
motherhood.
If I never grew a child,
dimpled hips are
still beautiful.
Love handles are
sexy.
Softness and cellulite and
taking up space is
beautiful.
My body doesn’t have to be a badge.
Beauty earned by
caveats and asterisks
about life events and motherhood and age.
My body can just be beautiful. Period.
Guilt is not on the menu
"It's not on the menu," I explain for the third time to my three-year-old asking for veggie straws.
He pokes holes into the top of his grilled cheese sandwich and uses his silver Donald Duck spoon to drip tomato soup into those holes. This continues until he asks again.
“Veggie straws veggie straws veggie straws!”
“I like veggie straws, too, Bub. Maybe we can have some tomorrow.” I am trying to keep my cool.
One sloshy spoonful of soup makes it to his lips, but he spits it out in a spray of orange mist. I say nothing. He looks back at his plate and starts plopping green grapes into his mouth. Shoot, I should have cut those smaller, I think as he shovels them in without waiting to swallow.
With the grapes now gone and the grilled cheese thoroughly mushy, he announces, “I’m done! Wash my hands, wash my hands!”
He only ate the grapes and that one spoonful of soup that he promptly spit out. Before, I would have bargained with him, scolded, threatened, bribed. Today I simply ask,
“Is your tummy full?”
“All done!” he yells again.
Without comment I help him down from his chair and he waddles over to the sink holding up his crummy soup stained hands like a doctor waiting to scrub in. I lift him onto the stool and make a mental note not to serve fruit with dinner.
A few months ago, we started implementing a new food strategy with our “picky” eater. I found this dietitian on Instagram (where else?). Her big thing is Division of Responsibility. There are things the parents’ control: the menu, the time of meals, the place. The kids decide what and how much to eat from the food that is offered. Seconds are fine as long as they finish that portion.
It has led to less fighting. Less stress. I offer variety and a balanced menu. I've released my desire to control his every bite through threats or rewards. This is the menu, period. He can eat what he chooses.
We try not to comment on what or how much he eats. We try to make it all as neutral as possible. Food is food. Exposure counts. There are bigger goals than a balanced plate every single time: a healthy relationship with food, building trust, enjoying meal time together.
It was hard to release the idea that he NEEDS to eat a balanced meal every single time. Protein, fat, veggies, iron. The dietitian we follow encourages us to look at the big picture--the whole day, the whole week.
Let's say he only ate blueberries for breakfast and didn’t touch the yogurt. And then he only ate the grapes for lunch and left the soggy soup and sandwich. Not ideal, but not to worry. Since he's eaten only fruit all day, I can just adjust my dinner menu and offer no fruit option. I will pick his favorite, orange chicken from Panda Express. He most likely will eat the entire plate and pick at a few steamed carrots. Over the week, he’ll have had plenty of fruit, yes, but also orange chicken and peanut butter sandwiches and yogurt and noodles and oatmeal and maybe one of these days he will actually eat a whole grilled cheese and perhaps even allow a piece of broccoli to stay on his plate.
I dry his hands and help him down from the step stool. He scurries off to complete an alphabet puzzle. I make a note to only offer fruit at one meal tomorrow, or maybe just at snack time. But today, this lunch time with the soupy sandwich, I will not stress about it.
***
I’ve started to wonder if this bigger picture approach applies to other areas of my life, too. Can I find this grace for myself?
Can I see that maybe I don't have to work out AND write AND read the Bible AND clean the kitchen AND spend time outside AND listen to a podcast EVERY SINGLE DAY. Maybe I can look at the week as a whole, my life as a whole.
Instead of feeling guilty about not being disciplined enough to do all of these things everyday, can I ask myself what I AM DOING.
Am I doing one or two of those things every day? Am I getting a variety of self-care activities throughout the week? Can I adjust my goal (and expectations and therefore disappointment) for the greater good (a healthy relationship with myself)?
And if it’s okay not to do these things every day, why do I still feel like I'm floundering? I think about Aidan. He probably doesn't feel that great an hour later when he only ate fruit for lunch, but there is no need to add condemnation or guilt on top of it.
It's true, I don't feel great when I don't have time to workout, but it's not serving me, or anyone for that matter, to feel bad about it.
What acts of self-care can I fit into my day? Like with Aidan's meal menu, what can I adjust later in the day based on what happened in the beginning? Can I add in a walk to the mailbox, 15 minutes to read a book, just 10 minutes to tidy the kitchen?
What will make me feel good, strong, proud, energized, accomplished?
Instead of beating myself up for not doing IT ALL everyday, can I celebrate all of the ways I showed up for myself throughout the week?
Exposure counts. There are bigger goals than a fully completed to-do list: a healthy relationship with myself, building trust that these small actions add up, enjoying time with my family.
I created a list of all the things that refuel me, a menu with no wrong choices--working out, reading, writing, spending 20 minutes knocking out work email or inputting grades, etc. It’s not a list of MUST-DOs, but a list of COULD-DOs. A sprinkling of suggestions for self-care for whenever I find pockets of time.
Oh, yes, and napping too. Yes, a nap should certainly be on the menu.
