I could tell that my time was coming.
I could feel it brewing in the grocery store when there was not one bell pepper to be seen.
I could feel it coming as I stood on a painted gravel line behind 15 masked faces just waiting to buy a single loaf of bread for a half hour, only to have them run out by the time that I reached the front.
By Sunday, as my eight year old stood at my screen door holding a giant pick axe asking if she could play with it,
and I heard myself answer “yes” without even getting up from where I sat to fully assess the situation,
I knew that it had come.
This would be my week.
“Meltdown, It’s showtime,” I said.
This week it feels like everything is coming to a head.
Every stressful shopping trip with someone telling me I’m doing something wrong,
Every honk behind me at a green light,
every internet issue, and scary news article I’ve read,
every held-in Facebook argument,
and 90th wipe down of the stove burners.
Everything that I have tried to just keep smiling through for the past month has culminated into this week of meltdown I am allowing myself.
Now I am letting it come as it comes.
CHLOE: “Mama, why are you acting weird today?”
ME: “What do you mean?”
CHLOE: “I am thirteen years old and I have never once seen you jump, but I’ve seen you jump in the air at least two times today.”
ME: “I don’t know, Chloe. I’ve decided this week to just do whatever I need to do.”
So far it has been emerging as mostly weird outfit and activity choices.
There has been a dash of swear words that have popped into my mind.
One day it came out as the MC Hammer station on Pandora playing for the entire day.
Paige asked me as the sun went down “when I was going to turn the 90s off.”
But sometimes we all need a little break from our regularly scheduled programming to feel all of the feelings, before we can calmly proceed;
So, here it is.
My Tantrum Over All of the Things,
by Kerri Green:
This week I am mad at masks and the way that they make my ears look and feel.
I am mad at gloves that tear because of my ring, and at breathing in Lysol spray.
As a matter of fact, this week I would throat-punch them all if I could.
This week I am mad at distance learning and online ordering tabs that won’t click when I press them the first time.
This week I am mad at Zoom calls where i can’t see everyone at once, and having to unmute my microphone.
I am mad at closed signs posted on bakeries I like when all I want is one singular powdery scone.
This week I don’t want to be patient for one second of Netflix buffering.
I want it seamless and I want it now.
I just want things to be easy.
*hits and kicks the ground while face-down*
*sobs*
I just want things to feel good.
This week my clothes and hair are an absolute horrifying disaster.
On Sunday when I emerged, Tessa, my 11 year old, actually yelled,
“2319!”
I bet if I was allowed to be our roaming in public a homeless person would offer ME change,
and you know what?
I have just gone with all of it because this is how one builds up their meltdown week.
They need a thing that makes their loved-ones answer,
“Yes. Looking back we could definitely see it coming on.”
Last night I had to run an errand.
I was already wearing ankle socks from my walk earlier,
but now while looking for shoes, I could only find my between-the toe sandals.
This was when, rather than even be bothered to remove the socks in order to wear the sandals in their intended way,
I pulled those puppies on right on overtop of those Puma socks and just went on about my day,
because that is where I am at this week.
I am at Level Socks and Between-the-Toe Sandals in Public.
All judgey onlookers are urged to go with God.
Yesterday after a trip to pick up more schoolwork pages for my second grader,
and after a brief discussion with her teacher over all the ways she is starting to struggle with the weight of all of this,
on my way home I suddenly felt the desire to drive really fast.
So fast that my head felt pressed up against the head rest from the force of it,
and maybe I wanted to hear just a *teeny* little tire screech.
I did not do this thing that I felt like doing.
I held to being upstanding, but
I am admitting it lived on silent in me.
Maybe it was the need to feel free and momentarily reckless.
The pressure of constant caution, this week,
it feels kind of like it’s crushing me.
I understand it and why it is necessary.
Of course people’s lives are a million times more important than if I can’t go to the beach for awhile.
I’m just saying that inside I am still me.
Last night after the start of this internal tantrum,
while I was getting onto my middle schoolers about the same thing for the 12th time,
I climbed into our hot tub, sunk up to my neck, shooed them with the back of my hand and said the actual words,
“Go from me.”
As if I was on a throne shooing away the peasants.
“Go from me.”
Just like that.
After they walked inside and closed the door I huffed and wallowed in my own bad mood and then I looked up into the sky.
There in the silence of my Royal Tub
I suddenly felt my own smallness in it all, and it hit me.
It was then looking up into the vastness of the sky that I was able to identify the main feeling in this meltdown:
Powerlessness.
Powerlessness to change any of what’s going on.
Powerless over the virus,
powerless over the lives it’s affecting,
and taking,
Powerless over the school memories lost for our kids,
and all of the people and things we’re all missing.
Powerless to make choices for myself.
It was that this week I feel really small,
and that is a feeling I’ve fought in myself, and tried to teach my house full of little women to fight all along.
While we were out driving today,
the girls spotted a man on the side of the road removing his mask for a few seconds before putting it back on.
“He should not be doing that, right? He shouldn’t be taking it off” Chloe cited,
to which Paige,
a small one, too,
quietly responded a thing that explains the feeling in me –
“He probly just needed a minute to breathe the old way.
Sometimes my face just wants to touch the world, too.”
This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.
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.
