I Want My Kids To Know I Loved This

By Katie Blackburn
@katiemblackburn

Mornings can get a bit frenzied around here. The two big kids need to be at the bus stop by 8:15, the middle child starts preschool at 9:30, and the babies are either wanting to be held/fed/changed or taking something out of someplace and booby-trapping the kitchen with it. Common space becomes a bit of a minefield with two mobile almost-toddlers who have adventurous spirits and no sense of limitations, and running through that minefield looking for library books and lunchboxes has, physically and mentally, tripped mama up more than once. On many mornings my stressed attempt at punctuality easily trumps any sort of pulse I have on how much I am stressing my kids out, and the we have three minutes to get outside questions start rolling:

Why aren’t your socks on?

Yes you have to wear a jacket, it’s 21 degrees outside.

Do you have your lunch?

You’re wearing that?

Where are the babies?

Why is the pizza pan on the floor?

Your hair is not brushed, is it?

Not every morning is like this, of course. Once in awhile I make lunches the night before and we have time to work on our memory verse over breakfast and the babies sleep in a bit longer, giving them less time to seek and destroy. But if I look at the sum total of the school year, I don’t know, but stressed mama, we’ll call her I can’t even, might have the edge in appearances over grateful mama. 

While we are being reflective about our days, I must confess that nighttimes can get equally as frenzied. There may not be a bus stop to get to on time but there is a bedroom I want children tucked contently away in for the entirety of the night, and when circumstances attempt to thwart my efforts at getting them there, grateful mama takes a hard left off stage and I can’t even mama takes her place. 

Why aren’t your teeth brushed?

I told you to put your pajamas on twenty minutes ago, didn’t I?

Do you have your blanket, because I’m not going to get it.

You’re sleeping in your jeans tonight?

Where are the babies?

Why is there toothpaste all over the counter?

Your teeth are not even brushed, are they?

Not every evening is like this either. Once in a while the laundry is all done and everyone can find their pajamas and we brush our teeth all together and with a little supervision the toothpaste makes it on the brush perfectly. Then we read Harry Potter and five children get prayed for and snuggled in and their I can’t even mama is nowhere to be found. But if I look at the sum total of more than seven years worth of bedtimes, I’m not confident those calm nights are winning, either.

If you’re keeping track, that means my kids’ days could potentially begin and end with a mom who handles their childlike behavior with the attitude that she has better things to do. 

“You’re stressed, mom,” my seven-year-old daughter tells me one day. Many days, actually. She’s said this more than once. “Why don’t you sit down, I’ve got this.” If there is anything more convicting than the blunt and honest observation of a child, I don’t know what it is. 

“Um, I’m not stressed,” I can’t even mama responds. “But we are late/I’m tired/the house is a mess/it’s bedtime and…” my words trail off. However I answered her observation at that moment, depending on what time of the day she noticed it, I could have finished that sentence with some sort of semblance of this: “... I’m trying to get parenting you out of the way so I can do what I really want to do.” I don’t say that, of course; it would be cruel, and how ridiculous to be offended by a seven-year-old. But it’s the truth underlying what I can’t even mama feels sometimes. 

A few weeks ago, I was sitting outside the bathtub, watching our two babies splashing around. They were happy and smiling, delighted to discover anew that bubbles float just long enough to capture their attention, then disappear into the air like magic. Every time we would blow their soapy water bubbles into the air, their eyes got a little bit bigger, as if they had never seen it before, and their smiles grew wider and wider as they anticipated the moment these magical pockets of air popped out of sight, delighting them into giggles. Every single bath for them is an opportunity for enchantment, and because God is good at using the simple things to teach me the big things, there’s something about that I leaned in to at that moment. 

I love this, I thought to myself. I can’t believe I get to do this, to raise them, to watch magic with them. 

In the sweet moments, all those questions the stressed out I can’t even mama hurls at her children seem absurd. They are children, that’s the answer. And I am their mom. They know that I love them, but do they know that I love this—the work of being their mom? Because I do. Will they see themselves as minor characters in my plot to look like I’ve got my stuff together? Or will they remember that I treated them like actual children, who will mess up and make messes? Because they are. The difference between the two roles of mom in my kids’ lives, between I can’t even and grateful is not circumstances, it’s perspective. Nothing needs to change except for how I see it all. 

My parenting is far from perfect. I know I will vacillate between two profoundly different postures toward parenting all the time. But I know where I want to be. Life is flat out frenzied sometimes, and it always will be. But when I really watch the bubbles disappear, I see the magic. When my kids are grown, I don’t want the sum total of their childhood to be a memory of a stressed out mom. “She was always yelling, but hey, we never missed the bus!” That’s not exactly what I’m going for here. When these five little people entrusted to me are old enough to look back on their childhood and the cadence of their home, when they reflect on the kind of mama they saw the most of, this is what I want them to say: “She loved it.” 

Those three words, that’s my heart check today.