It Doesn’t Take Much To Lose My Mind In This Pandemic Parenting Nightmare
Last month my son received an excavation kit for his birthday. The box proudly proclaimed that fifteen fossils lay hidden inside and alas, at least one of them will glow in the dark! I don’t typically find children’s toys amusing, but I welcomed the free therapy that came along with chiseling silently together. The meditation and quiet as much of a treasure as the toys embedded inside.
We have successfully discovered thirteen of them in our two intense archeological sessions of smashing, chipping and digging. Now only a few lumps remain. I’m skeptical the last two exist. He’s working his hardest to leave no stone unturned, while I pray we didn’t accidentally throw them away with the previous haul of not fully pulverized remains. Still, I work methodically at each piece with an aggressive desperation. I want to find the full fortune of all that we were promised. For his sake. And mine.
He’s so hopeful. Working on each little nugget waiting to find the surprise. I gave up 15 minutes ago but now the chiseling has taken on a new purpose, channeling my anger on this awful, gray Monday morning. We had a really peaceful weekend. The kind where I sat back and watched the fruits of all my hard work converge into perfect little polaroids. Golden sunshine, dimpled red cheeks creased with uncontainable smiles, ridiculous toddler dance moves and a rare 6 year old head on my lap eager for his mothers embrace. Maybe it’s the contrast of yesterdays cinematic light and todays gray despair, but I am crabby. Everyone in my house seems to be feeling it. Or maybe it’s my doing. They orbit around me daily like I’m the goddamn sun, for better or for worse. Now my ill-temper pulls my little planets into a moody black hole.
How many times can one say, I hate parenting in a pandemic? The redundant grievance has me rolling my eyes even as the words leave my lips. I’m sick of even thinking it and at my whits end for finding my way back to this place almost every single day. A broken record on an infinite loop, overplayed and worn thin, yet physically fifteen pounds heavier than my usual frame. As we approach nearly a year since my stay at home parenthood went from manageably, most of the time to impossibly, all the time, I am amazed at my inability to assimilate and simultaneously in awe of my persistence in resisting this reality. Halfway through trying to decide which is more impressive, the baby wakes from his nap.
We get to the last of the little clumps, a pile of silt litters my dining room table and much of the floor underneath. We sit staring at our hard work that produced no physical prizes. And the box is now empty.
Sigh.
I ask my son if he’s ok and he declares simply, “I’m giving up!”
I start to feel the edge of my crumble. I haven’t cried in two weeks (a new record) but suddenly I’m nearing tears because this kit that was supposed to provide us with fifteen little treasures is short two pieces. It is so unfair.
And then it’s all just too much. The little one is crying no matter what I do. The noise, the loss, the loneliness, the exhaustion and the feeling of being utterly trapped closes in on me all at once. I scoop him up with frustration and stick him in his crib with some pacifiers and books. We both need some space, I tell him as kindly as I can muster. He looks at me with impossibly large eyes and I close the door gently before his innocence pulls me back with it’s unspoken lure. He’s in a safe spot and I need to do something quick. I march down to the living room and promptly stick my head into the pillow my mom made me that I poorly stuffed and sewed, white fluff bleeding out the side.
I scream.
Until throat hurts.
I know my older son sees the whole event. We taught him to scream into pillows too. Mid scream, I can still sense his presence, watching me melt down. Again. Am I scaring him or breaking him or stealing the innocence of thinking his mother is strong and in control? Is he rolling his eyes because he’s seen it so many times before? Is he also lamenting the lovely day we had yesterday and realizing that no amount of good can keep me happy for more than 24 hours?
In the past a lovely weekend followed by a particularly challenging day wouldn’t send me down a spiral. I look at him sitting there and remind myself that if life were normal he wouldn’t be sitting there at all. He’d be in school. And the little one up in the crib would be in preschool at least part of the week. No matter how hard I try to accept that is life right now, I grieve my should be empty spaces, filled. Filled with needs and demands and endless messes and no room left for me. Instead, I squeeze myself into the tiniest and most inconvenient hours of the day just to have a break.
He sits quietly at the table idly pushing sand around, not looking particularly bothered or pleased. He’s never been one for many words about his feelings. I wish I could hear his thoughts. I wish I were as calm as he seems to be.
When his brother was born we were stuck home a lot too. The summer heat was monstrous for a newborn and we passed the days with games of Guess Who, Monopoly Jr. and a daily afternoon movie. On August 63rd, as someone jokingly told me, the air finally cooled. I stood outside the yoga studio in my blue staff shirt waiting for the class before me to finish up. One child at school, the other in the upstairs daycare, I felt appendage-less, nervously checking my playlist, my notes, and fixing my clothes, fidgeting my way through being on my own. It was weird being back in class, responsible for holding space for adults. It was exhilarating too. It was just one day a week and sometimes I only had 2 students. I’d sit facing them on my sticky purple mat, hands at my heart in true gratitude for the gift of their attendance. The gift of a purpose outside of my motherhood. I would proudly leave class every week, baby squished against my body in the carrier we loved until it wore thin. And drive home feeling more clear and alive than I had in the previous 6 days. It wasn’t much. But it was something.
Wiping tears away, I wonder what sort of things I’d be crying about if my kids were in school as planned? It is motherhood after all, pandemic or no pandemic.
Together we brush the dust into the bin with our hands, without saying a word. His resiliency in all of this has astounded me, but I can’t help but think the effects of this time will reveal themselves later in unforeseen ways. He grabs the vacuum and does the floor and the table independently. I didn’t even have to ask. He’s matured this year. I’ve been intently watching him grow in the confines of my own home during a time he otherwise would have been released into the little brick building a mile down the road. A moment of gratitude.
Up in his room there is a little shelf in the closet. Thirteen fossils are carefully situated next to fifteen little dragons, like each is on dutiful watch. I imagine he will instruct them to share since there aren’t enough for everyone. He’s a good friend to humans and imaginary creatures alike. His kind heart makes me smile. I hear he and his brother dancing around the living room making the strange creatural noises they produce when they are feeling as kids should feel, unencumbered. A small tension releases from somewhere in my chest.
Maybe we’ll find out later that he actually did chisel fifteen fossils and two of them are deep in the unknown of the couch cushions where little things go to get lost. Once I found a small toy we’d been looking for for months in a dusty corner of the house. A monkey that squeaks a silly sound from the pit of its belly. I can see my older son, at 5 months old in the basket of a bright red cart, laughter rising from deep in his belly, not unlike the toy itself. We bought it on the spot and then it disappeared. I felt a cold loneliness from its sudden vanishing. And all the while no one else seemed as distressed that this inanimate piece of our happiness had gone missing. I wonder what I was really grieving back then.
I toss the fossil box in the recycling, another casualty of a birthday gone. My son is off to the next thing, always present in is play, as kids tend to be. I’m the one still stewing about the missing treasures. I pray he doesn’t feel the intensity of everything else that’s been lost this year. I try and hold as much of it as I can so he doesn’t have to. One day he’ll learn that he lived through history, while he danced, played and excavated, none the wiser. One day I’ll see that I lived through it all too. Maybe even release the grief of what was lost and embrace all that we actually found.
