Well, summer is officially here.
You can always recognize it by the amount of cups that are left sitting out that no one will claim,
and by the amount of effort I put into cleaning, only for it to look like I was never there, and have not ever raised a finger once.
Normally, I cannot wait for summer to come.
I love the freedom from school drop-off, and pick-up, and all the luxurious sleeping in.
This last school year, with my daycare years behind me, I had gotten used to the alone time that the school hours afforded me, so everyone home at once feels like….an adjustment.
I am also now watching my baby granddaughter 4 days a week.
She gets dropped off, grinning at me and bright-eyed at 7am.
My peaceful, and free days are done.
Lately I have felt anxiety creeping back up, and in the last few days I started having some heart palpitations.
After evaluating what was causing me to feel this way, I have settled on one thing, and that is – Suddenly everyone else is just always HERE.
I love my family so very much, but as I’m getting older, I’ve learned to love my own time as well. The time that used to be filled with kid crafts and activities, have now been replaced by taking pictures of my cat and my plants.
A slower pace has helped my mood and body so much.
Now, when I would have been sipping my coffee leisurely, or watering things, though,
I am being asked to drive someone a place, or to cook a thing, or if the whites ever got put in yet.
They come to me for everything, and that is equal parts “I did this to myself,” and “They turn to me just like I wanted. How wonderful!”
I have been trustworthy, and steadfast, and they see me as a safe place for them, which I do know is truly good.
However, looking back, I see the holes in my strategy.
I should have taught them to cook more for themselves, for example.
I should have impressed on them the beauty in a good hearty walk, and maybe I wouldn’t have to drive them everywhere.
I should have nudged them out the door and told them to just imagine they were European.
“Those people are known for their health!”
Instead, I slip my shoes on for the thousandth time, and drive them back and forth on a loop to their boyfriend’s.
For the last several days I’ve been having heart palpitations, that I first attributed to some new supplements, but today as I headed out to have bloodwork done to check it out, I had my hand on the door handle and my 12 year old asked me, from her place on the couch, if I could toast her some waffles first.
I then reminded her the same thing parents around the world are often reminding:
That she was perfectly capable of doing it herself.
She looked wounded by this information, and it took all that I had in me not to turn around and do it for her.
I don’t know what happened between my childhood to now, but I NEVER called on my mother this much.
She was a very loving mother that I knew was there for me,
but I also never really saw her between dawn and dusk.
Instead, I woke up to a chore chart taped to the beast of a TV of all the things my brother and I were to have done before we were allowed to go out and do our own things.
We knew to do them.
We never argued.
It was non-negotiable, and understood.
In some ways it was like we kids lived a whole separate life than my parents did.
They both worked, and we had house keys and microwave skills.
What more could a child need?
There was no focus on a kid’s emotional health in the 80’s and 90’s!
I never had one toy made out of smooth-sanded wood.
We always had easy, packaged things to eat on hand.
I’ve eaten my weight in Little Debbie’s Oatmeal Cream cookies.
My childhood cholesterol was probably 401.
I would not eat a single thing with any real nutritional value sometimes for months.
But catch me now, over here up until 1am googling my kids’ symptoms and their holistic cures.
No one researched a cure for anything for me, obviously.
You can see it in my eyes by looking back at photos of me in 2nd grade.
That kid was practically a Sponsor-a-Child ad.
“For just $1 a day, you can help fix the bangs on this girl.”
Even Side-Profile Me looks like she knew this hairstyle was criminal;
I would title the picture “A Side Profile’s Cry for Help.”
The other day I commented on how well my daughter, Tessa, is doing in school this year, and was talking about her college plans to my mom, when she said,
“Man, if you had that kind of teaching method, you would have probably done better, too.”
I was confused.
Better? I had always gotten straight A’s.
Then I realized it:
She didn’t actually know how I’d done in school.
I don’t blame her. This was the way things were back then.
We left in the morning, went to some dangerous mystery location, and for 12 hours no one knew where we were.
No way to reach us, should something go wrong.
I spent one night in a bush out on the cliffs by the ocean once.
There was no real knowledge of who our friend’s parents were.
My parents thought “she’s at a sleepover” and pictured footie pajamas,
but meanwhile I was speeding down the freeway, heading from a bar gig to my friend’s dad’s afterparty band jam session, sitting loose, clinging for life on the back of a flat-bed truck.
So how did my generation go from being feral, and set free, to us so often being the micromanaging ones? I know I’m not the only one. I read the articles, and talk to other moms.
Was it that through our collective years of therapy needed, we realized where the holes in that kind of upbringing were, and so we set out to take the reigns; To control what had felt out of control?
All I know is I realized I’d taken those reigns too far today, with my hand on the door handle, being asked to toast something before I gave vials of my blood.
Maybe this summer they need just a hint of Latch Key.
Just enough to learn how the kitchen works.
Maybe the key to freedom was in bikes with banana seats…
I remember a time when it felt like it was.
Today on Facebook, with impeccable timing, I read a post from one of my favorite follows, Bunmi Latidan.
She posted:
“Feeling personally attacked by the level at which my family needs me.
I’m thinking of stuffing a scarecrow into leggings and a hoodie so they take some of their problems to Hay Mommy.
That’s what I’d call her.
Either that, or she’d scare them into figuring some stuff out on their own.
Either way it’s a win.”
I have never felt so understood.
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.
