“Are we really not having dinner?” my youngest asks.
It’s just the two of us, since my husband took our oldest to her weekly 2.5 hours of dance, and I got home specifically so that the little one wouldn’t have to go and hang out, but I’m still technically working. Although, anyone who has attempted to work from home with a child at your elbow knows that it means I’m really just splitting my attention between the 9-5 stuff that doesn’t really matter in any 5-year-view, and one of the shining, amazing people who absolutely matters the most, and by doing both jobs poorly, I am taking twice as long.
“Dinner? Um… you had a Clif bar,” I say. If I can just get these last two pages done, I’m done for today. Two. Pages.
“Is a Clif bar dinner?!,” she asks. Well… no. Of course not. Dinner is served with love, around a table, with family, and maybe a salad. It’s at least pancakes (breakfast for dinner! So FUN! And easy for mommy!) But… you seemed so happy eating the yogurt, and then the Clif bar, and then the clementine… I thought maybe we’d all just sort of forget no one made dinner. I had two-day old Chinese food in front of a computer. No one is winning here, little one!
I find that when I’m stressed, I do certain things habitually. I grip the steering wheel tightly when I’m driving. I blink less. Or at least, I must, because my eyes are dry as dust. Speaking of eyes, as I was leaving work today, my right eye twitched through the entire red light, as if in protest of the wasted time. Tick tock, tick tock, twitch tock.
Am I a Wall Street banker? Am I a neurosurgeon? Or maybe a hostage negotiator? No. No, I am not. Am I a mother of four who homeschools and runs a creative side venture after the kids are in bed? Nope. The stress I feel is really all self-imposed. Do I have a busy plate at work and two kids with near-daily scheduled events? Yes. Are there a dozen other parents on our street, a couple hundred in our neighborhood, millions across the country, doing the exact same dance throughout each week? Yep. Do I have a husband who shares the shuttling and knows his way around a mean marinade and how to carve a rotisserie chicken? Yep.
So why with the tick tock twitch? Why do I not have time to blink? Because I forget – it’s so easy to forget – that the minutes are so much more important than we acknowledge when we wish away red lights. It’s not about the next hand-off – home to work to oft-postponed lunch date to work to home to soccer, teeth, bed, you can read in your rooms for 20 minutes! – no, it’s not about the next hand-off, it’s about the next connection. It’s about the circle of people in our lives, not the timetables we’ve constructed to hold them. If we are those people who are always 4 minutes late to soccer warmups? Well, that’s why the coach builds in a full 20-minutes. We’re also the people who gathered with our neighbors to watch the blood moon eclipse, and who have silly modified high fives for special accomplishments, like putting away laundry. And if every now and then my child has a Clif bar for dinner? Well, people who climb mountains eat Clif bars, I’m told. I want you, sweet child, to climb mountains. And so instead of pancakes, you had a Clif bar. The peanut butter kind you love, because I love you. Because sometimes, momentarily – or at least, hopefully, temporarily – I forget that the only hostage in this scenario is me, and I just need to talk myself down. You demand slightly sticky hugs, a glass of wine and an indulgent family who gets you? We can arrange those for you. Sorry, the private plane to Salamanca is out of the question. Just let the hostage go.
