Up before the sun...

Sometimes I think it would benefit me greatly to try to wake up before my girls. To beat the sun out of bed so that I could have the quiet and the dark all to myself.

I think that I want to stay on top of the housework, more. That I let the laundry pile up too big. Last week, Scouty was using the heap of clean, unfolded clothing to play a game called Mountain Climbing Girl.

I think that I need to get out into the yard. It's not quite sunny, but I could get my kale into the ground. And the lettuce and spinach. I have some carrots I need to sow. The tomatoes need sun, though. I will start them in the cocoon of my laundry over-ridden house.

I think that I should probably exercise more. I make it to the gym for a frenzied thirty minutes each day. It's late and squeezed out of my evening, between writing and sitting alone in the still, perfect air of the library's sun room.

I would like to be able to read more.

I would like to have a conversation with my husband.

I would like to climb a mountain.

I want to ride my bike from the suburbs, into the city, to drift along with the rivers.

I think that I need more time, but not because I'm a housewife and couldn't we all use a few more hours in a day? I feel like I need to live for three thousand years to be able to complete things I want to complete. That I need a lifetime just to be still, and another to work my muscles raw. I need one for my husband and one for each child, and then a whole lifetime to be with both of my girls, forever. I need a lifetime to make up for my mistakes, as a child.

I have a friend who is finishing up medical school. I'm realizing that I'm smart enough to have been anything I wanted to be. Only, I didn't know. I need a lifetime to learn the things I need to know to be something.


I need a lifetime to be young again.

I need to go back and be this girl, again, because I did it wrong, the first time. I was muddy water and back roads, and I would never get out of that place, but I did. If I could, I would go back and show some compassion to a fly-away twenty something, me.

I would tell her, "Come on back down to the ground. I've been to the future. I've seen it, and it's better."



Sometimes I feel like there is too much to do. I'm talking about dishes and diapers and bath time and lunchtime and dinnertime, but I'm talking about impossible things, too. Like that I want to be something other than this. I want to be real at something. I don't want to say, "Well, I can't pay my student loans and there are weeds in my garden, but I'm a good person." I just want to be a thing, and be it all the way.

I'm tired of having to point myself out, to the world.

It's just that... there is too much to do.

My husband has a gift to look into the future and to say, you will have time, later. Someday Louise's lifespan won't be measured in months, and Scouty will be able to dress herself, and they'll both sleep all night long, for sure, every night. Someday you can be yourself, again.

I fight between an impulse to give myself away entirely, because I love being mommy... and an impulse to duck away, to dream of more time and more energy for myself. If I dream of myself too much, though, I start to resent that dream being intruded on by the filthy kitchen floor and the understanding that it is my job to keep it clean. I start to feel like Pretend Restaurant and Shrinky Dinks are a chore, instead of a delight. So, I keep my longing for myself folded neatly and closed into the slipperiness of my core.

I get glimpses of myself sometimes, when I sneak away to ride my bike, or when my seedlings are growing because of my stolen moments of protective patience. When I wake up late on a Saturday morning and Kurt and the girls are gone out to play and I can take my time over tea and showering. I get a peek at myself often enough to still feel like me so that my personality can go on, without turning into a totally non-hydrogenated, cloth diapering, house keeping, budget planning, meal making, gym-going, baby need-meeting, toddler entertainer. Exhale.

I am more than this.

Lake Erie, last spring