We spent Friday and Saturday up north closing the cottage. At the beginning of the summer, it was a death zone for our almost-two-year-old. Now, he’s familiar with the place, understands the rules (nowhere near the dock without a life jacket on!), and has a veritable playground set up with a broken-down jeep that he can climb on and pretend to drive, an old sandbox and pool from a previous generation of kids up there, and about a bajillion trucks, front loaders, dump trucks and excavators. Shutting down for the summer is always bittersweet for me. September always feels like the start of the year for me, all of those years spent getting ready for school, being in various different kinds of school, it’s hard to think otherwise. I bought a giant calendar to try and keep us organized and it started with September. I have moved the RRBB into long pants for his daycare days. I’ve started making many more meals in the slow cooker. I pulled a bunch of the garden down yesterday and I’m still not prepared.
It’s funny, I can’t get through a single day without leaving some aspect of my life completely incomplete. Work’s busy, but that’s good, life’s busy, and that’s good too–but I’m frustrated and exhausted just trying to keep things just moving forward. I know all working moms must feel this way. There’s a Van Morrison song from one of my favourite records that tears me up every time I hear it lately, about a mom making sure her boy’s got clean clothes, putting on his little red shoes–reminding me that it’s okay if things slip, it’s okay if all we manage one Saturday is clean clothes and leave half the garden done. If we can manage a smile or two in between the brilliant meltdowns and toddler tantrums, we’re doing okay. If I can manage to get soup made and bangs trimmed, that’s even better.
Right now, the whole strategy of jamming my “old” self into the pockets of time I have to myself, simply isn’t working. I need a revolution. I need my whole outlook to change. And, if you’re anything like me, you know how impossible this is–change feels big and overwhelming. I did manage to make headway in terms of budgets, and getting that part of my life under control, but every month something comes along to blow it out of the water. Money, like time, well, there’s just never enough of it. And then I bring it all back to motherhood, and how that’s going these days. Closing the cottage was a good indication–at the end of it, I was exhausted, it’s hard work, and we were lucky enough to have my aunt and uncle keep watch over the RRBB for most of the day–and I was angry at myself for not having more energy, for being out of shape, for letting the disease win, for all of the things I can’t control bleeding into the parts of my life that I actually adore. I think I said to my aunt that I was frustrated by how limiting the disease has been — a day that would be nothing for a healthy person just about destroys me, and then I’m irritable and cranky with my son, my husband, which isn’t fair to anyone.
Keeping control over the crankiness that comes with pure and utter exhaustion is almost as much work as trying to get some sleep. It’s amazing to me how RRBB slept so well from about 4 months until he was just about 1, almost always through the night, maybe a quiet night feeding or two when we were still able to breastfeed. Now, it’s as if something has possessed him at night–he’s up sometimes two, three times, screaming, wailing, and completely inconsolable. Just a week or so ago, if he was totally freaking out, I could stand at the window and he’d look out at the moon. If there was no moon, he’d say, “No moon, only lights momma.” Pause. “Only lights momma.” A little bit of poetry to calm him down. Now, try to take him to the window and it’s, “Nooooooo!!” Shriek, scream, shriek, scream. “Too scary! Too scary!” How does he even know what scary is? I’m ever-impressed with the evolution of him, as a human, but I’m finding the toddler stage particularly challenging. “Momma put the pillow on you!” Translation: Put the pillow on him. “No pillow!” Translation: take the pillow off. “Momma put the pillow on you!” You see the cycle emerging? All the hijinks to push back the bedtime, which used to be blissfully easy. Don’t even get me started on the wrestling match that is changing diapers or getting dressed. I’m telling you, the MMA would do well to hold training sessions with toddlers who need to get dressed. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ll often take out EVERY SINGLE T-SHIRT he owns just so that he picks the one he wants if it’ll avoid a complete and utter meltdown at the sheer audacity of there being a dinosaur and not an excavator on the one clean shirt left in the drawer.
And here’s the rub. I’ve been writing this blog post for four days and am no closer to either being coherent or completing a single thought. So, I’m just going to leave it here.