Last week the kids were all in Dallas, and I lived a joyful freedom from responsibility that I did not know was possible.
Monday we drove three hours there and three hours back to bring our babies home. This is love, people.
All day long Tuesday I was yelled at, fussed at, ignored, refused, and then at bedtime everyone begged for me to lay in their beds and snuggle with them. (Note: Motherhood is not something you should take personally all the time.)
As I reflect on all the revelatory moments surfacing in the wake of our reunited family, I have begun a list of ten things I learned after sending my kids to their grandparents’ house. Here goes:
10. The children came back angry. They are mad that their days no longer include multiple trips to super fun places. They are mad they don’t get cookies whenever they want. They are really mad when they have to do chores again. I know all about this anger; I was mad for two weeks after our vacation last month. Now that I think about it, I’m still a little miffed that Mr. Fantastic has to go to work every day, we can’t eat out every night, and I have to do the laundry. Real life is tedious and aggravating. Yuck.
9. The children matured 2 years internally. Apart from the area of responsibility, they come back all grown up. They are confident and self-assured, having survived an entire week without their mom and dad. They have navigated a house with different rules, slept in unfamiliar places, and learned to manipulate their grandparents like pros. These kids are big and they can do stuff (just don’t ask them to do the dishes).
8. The sugar detox is most painful for me. While the kids ate cookies hand over fist at my in-laws, I ate candy every day that they were gone. They are rolling with post-Grammie’s-house sugar restrictions much better than I am. I want a bag of gummy bears right now.
7. Sometimes, it’s not me, it’s them. Mom guilt will take you down. If you have read even one parenting book, you are armed with enough good-intentioned-advice-turned-into-self-accusation to wonder what you have done (or not done) to create these children who seem to lack all rational behavior. But then they go away and act the same way for other people, and you realize that it’s just not easy raising children with intentional love and discipline. Ah, that grace-filled knowledge is all cozy for the soul, isn’t it?
6. I am a nicer person when the house is clean. Last week, I kept looking around the house and feeling so good that my heart tingled with happiness. The counters were clean. The sofa cushions were neatly placed. The dishes were done. The laundry was folded. All the beds were made. I have often wondered if a clean house would help with my stress levels. The answer is yes. The next time every room looks like a bomb site and my head begins to explode, I will remember that in about twenty years I will be nice all the time. I can’t wait!
5. Other times, it’s not them, it’s definitely me. Yes, I was cool as a cucumber without four other people to care for 24/7. Nothing stressed me out much at all. I was happy, encouraged, disciplined, and life was good. But, in a way, that is bad. I have more than a decade before I am done with this responsibility. I yearn to shoulder motherhood with grace and patience, not to endure it with gritted teeth and an over-consumption of caffeine. I want to roll with my days with the kids like I rolled with my days without the kids. That will take a miracle, a lot of faith, and some hard soul work. But God is more than able, and I am pretty desperate. That combination usually leaves a lot of room for miracles.
4. House norms and family values must be relearned. Tuesday morning I looked one angry child straight in the eye and said, “We read our Bibles in the morning before anything else. This is one way we spend time prioritizing our relationship with God.” Later I told another angry child, “We are a family and families take care of one another. I need you to put the blanket away even if it isn’t yours.” The learning curve seems steep because they have spent a week learning other house norms and family values, but it will all come flooding back soon, I hope. Until then, I repeat myself a lot.
3. The children came back bonded. I have read enough classic literature to have a far-fetched dream that my kids will be like the siblings in The Boxcar Children, Anne’s sweet children in Rainbow Valley, the loyal sisters in All of a Kind Family, or the Melendy kids In The Saturdays. I want them to have schemes and plans, to form clubs and dream together. I want them to learn to hold one another up and fight for each other. A week without their parents around has tightened the bonds that unite them. They are playing better together, creating worlds and hashing out ideas. The shared experience of going to their grandparents’ house has drawn them closer together, and I am loving it.
2. I am still a whole person. Buried beneath the constant black hole of need that four children create, I still exist. I am still funny and thoughtful. I do actually desire to engage socially when I am not exhausted mentally and emotionally. I have original thoughts not pertaining to motherhood that are delightful. I do not need this title of Mom and the role that it requires to have a meaningful life. Motherhood is a flavor- certainly an important one- but not the entire menu of my life. This thought deserves more contemplation, but after a long day with my kids, I’m too tired to figure it out….
1. I won’t be as sad when they grow up as I have thought. Nothing strikes fear in my heart like a mom who tells me how she bawled her eyes out after dropping her child off at college. I am buying an entire black wardrobe for this Fall because my baby is going to turn five and five year-olds aren’t babies. I thank God she was born after the cut-off date for Kindergarten, because it gives me one more year before my youngest is in school. But last week, I wasn’t sad. I was kind of bored without all the chaos. I felt a little struggle to figure out what to do. I totally was into Mr. Fantastic and loved our time alone together. The truth is I really liked not having so much mommy pressure on me. This gave me hope for the day they start flying from the nest. After all the years of love together, I think I’ll be okay with letting go and living a different kind of life. I think…
