The bell on the door rang as we entered Screamin’ Mimi’s – our small town’s ice cream shop.
“Banana splits for dinner,” I had declared,
and for once no one complained about my meal plan.
The girls all chose their ice cream flavors,
and after I payed,
I turned around to see Tessa in the center of the store standing still;
her eyes, looking up towards the ceiling.
“What are you doing?” I asked her,
surprised she wasn’t already half-way done with her ice cream like her sisters were,
and she answered a wistful sounding,
“We never really look up…”
She seemed like the rest of her thoughts were still a long way off, but
able to tell I was confused about what she meant, she continued:
“Have you ever noticed this ceiling before?”
We looked up at it together, and I admitted to her that I hadn’t.
We have been in that shop dozens of times, and I had never, until that moment, looked up and noticed it’s large, beautiful rustic wooden beams and lofty ceiling.
“People just don’t really look up.
We all get so locked in here,” she said,
gesturing with her hands around her eyes like blinders.
“We are all just fine with what’s right in front of us and all the things we’re used to seeing,
but we never really look up.
I wonder how many beautiful ceilings I never noticed because I was fine with just looking straight ahead,” she smiled.
She sat down and started eating her ice cream then, like she hadn’t just taught me a powerful life-lesson,
but I was still left looking at the beams.
I wondered how such an important concept had come from a 10 year old girl.
As I looked, I thought about how it had been another busy week.
Another week of neglecting to do a meal plan, meaning tan-colored last-minute dinners,
and hurried bed-time routine.
Another 5 days of creative school lunches made of whatever things I could scrounge and scrape.
Things that no one has any business putting together.
Things I sniffed.
Things I curiously poked.
Another week where I barked out orders on hectic school mornings.
Another week that felt like 400 others –
Make food, pack food, comb hair, tie shoes, put away shoes, put away food, repeat.
It’s so easy to feel like you’re in a deep trench in these years of raising children as a mom.
You, just slogging along in galoshes,
knee-deep in mud,
never noticing there’s blue sky above you simply because you forgot to look up.
It’s so easy to get into Go-Mode and just never leave it,
and before you know it you’re more
Marine Corporal than Mom.
Some nights I catch myself so desperate for the kids to go to bed that I realize I’ve just sent them off to Dream-Land with a lullaby made up strictly of my crabby commands,
and three too-quick kisses.
I once asked a young Chloe to name something that I liked, and she answered,
“You REALLY like it when people go to sleep.”
There’s a reason for our pushing.
I get it.
It’s hard being the only one that thinks of shoe sensibility, and body temperature.
We know they need to be in bed by 8:00 if we want to avoid an entire day the next day of meltdowns and sobbing,
so we do bed-time like it’s a government job.
No one else knows this kid likes mustard,
and that kid won’t eat cheese unless it’s melted, but we do.
Oh. We do.
It takes a lot to be us,
and it’s exhausting in ways no one but a mother understands.
Some days you can feel years of your life being shaved off.
But if we don’t look up sometimes from the dirty walls of our trenches,
we will miss so many beautiful things.
I would have never had this special moment that smelled like waffle cones had I not decided that sometimes what a kid needs for dinner is their first banana split.
This week a ten year old child and an old wood beam ceiling taught me something that I needed to know.
So take a break this week, Mama.
Stop trudging and look up from your life.
You might notice that what’s above you has way more for you than you ever even knew was there.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
