By Fay Gordon
@faygordon16

One of my clearest early work memories has nothing to do with myself or work. It was a humid July afternoon, I was 22, and our office was in a tizzy. The legal secretary flew up and down the hall, arms balancing stacks of to-be-signed papers. The paralegal tapped her feet at the copy machine, cursing its slowness. I shuffled between them, a clueless summer employee, trying to help. 

The crisis? 

Our boss was leaving for vacation. All the work needed to be completed before his evening departure.  

The urgency felt extreme. “I don’t get it,” I whispered to Jackie, the legal secretary. “Can’t he just … check some of this later?” Our boss was no stranger to after-work hours emails and seemed fully capable of taking work to-go. 

Jackie shuffled her papers and looked up, annoyed. “No. Absolutely not. Everything must be wrapped up before he leaves. He completely crashes on vacation.” 

I nodded and walked away. Still useless, but at least clued in. I had little in common with our boss, but I understood a vacation crash.

In college, I mastered the art of the post-finals-week collapse. Fueled by Diet Coke and cheese fries, I powered through marathon weeks of paper writing, knowing hours of couch and TV time waited on the other side.

This pattern of pushing myself for the crash continued through graduate school and work. I lived for finality. The freedom of the semester’s end, bidding a stressful chapter goodbye. Nothing felt as good as wrapping up a project and typing an out-of-office message.

A push-yourself-through-a-final mentality is effective for work and school. As I quickly observed, this ferocious formula does not work in motherhood. 

Just get through the first six weeks, the parenting books said, and then you’ll feel better. Better, maybe, but relieved? Free from exhaustion? No.

Once you sleep train the baby, you’ll be a new person. But what if the baby-then toddler-never, ever sleep trains? Will I still be the same tired, run-down mother? (Yes).

Just figure out preschool and then you don’t have to stress about childcare. Great for a while but then … preschool ends! And the school and care anxiety ratchet back up again.

The reality is there is no couch to collapse on, no vacation from big parenting decisions and worries. My problem: I can’t seem to remember this. I constantly cycle back to the formula’s trap, thinking it will translate to life.  

It happened again this winter. 

***

I’m sitting on our living room floor, Christmas tree lights and The Holiday illuminate the space. I sip milky black tea and decide which task to tackle. To my left, a crimson wrapping paper roll, scotch tape, and a stack of puzzles. Behind me, our bookshelves and an empty U-haul box.

Our December is shaping up to be a doozy. My husband, David, and I are both working; however, we have no childcare for our baby. We’ve also decided to move just before the New Year. When it rains, it pours. I calculate the days till our various deadlines—work, Christmas gifts, the move—and a familiar mindset creeps in.

Just three weeks left of this chaos and then a break. Work hard, push through, and the stress will be over.

I look up at our kitchen shelves. They always felt so modest. Now, they look cluttered with dozens of mugs and breakable stemware that taunt me with their wrapping needs. I place stacks of books in the U-haul box and think, It’s ok. I wince at the packing tape’s screeching siren, wrap it around the box, and take a deep breath. Just get through the holidays, and everything will be calm.

The move and the gifts are not the only stressors I want wrapped up.

I unfurl the wrapping paper and place a puzzle in the middle. Anticipating our second pandemic holiday, I’m desperate to say good riddance to the previous years’ worries. With two children under five, I’m betting on the “any day now” promise for their vaccines. And, in a few days, I’ll have a routine MRI, part of my screening regimen as a recent breast cancer survivor. It’s a lot, but I feel a wave of relief is just around the corner. I imagine clinking champagne glasses with my family at Christmas, grinning as we say goodbye to all that, celebrating the end of 2020/21’s stress. I grab a stack of newspapers and look back up at the shelves—it's time to take on the wine glasses.

***

It’s 7:00 a.m. on Christmas Eve. There’s a break in the heavy rain and I push open the patio gate, zip my jacket, and step out for a familiar greenbelt walk.

For the first time in over a year, our whole family is gathered at my parents’ house. The day before we celebrated “Early Christmas,” dubbed by my four-year-old, Diego. A deluge of rain pounded the windows and water soaked their usually dry Southern California patio. My sister made a colorful charcuterie tray, my dad built an alarmingly robust fire, and the baby cousins charmed us in their matching rainbow onesies. 

As I step around a massive puddle, I think about how Early Christmas did not close out the December chaos, as I had hoped. The pediatric COVID vaccine I pinned my hopes on is now even further out of reach, and a new variant is taking off. My MRI was inconclusive, meaning I need additional screening in the New Year. And, despite constant packing, our kitchen looks untouched. Hours of boxing await us when we get home—I am never buying another mug.

My cheeks feel chilly, and a bit of sun is smudged behind the clouds. Yesterday, sitting by the fire, we didn’t say goodbye to the previous years’ challenges. Uncertainty floated in the room, along with the anticipation of a preschooler staring at a stack of gifts. While I devoured brie and crackers from my sofa perch, I was aware the discomfort I hoped would be something of the past, sat with me.

Somehow though, maybe it was the drama from the rain, the fire’s warmth, or just the thrill that we were finally together—our joy overpowered the uncertainty. We reveled in the moment. I watched Diego, gobsmacked as he opened a real Bluey t-shirt. I raised my mimosa flute to my mom as she lived her dream of simultaneously bottle feeding two grandbabies. And we all screamed in delight as we pulled Christmas crackers, chattering over each other and clamoring to read the riddles.

As I continue on my morning walk, the water around me is so unfamiliar. The greenbelt is soggy, the community pool water so high, it almost graces the deck. Soon, puddles are unavoidable, and I splosh through them in my running shoes. I’m reminded—again—in life, in motherhood, there’s no raising a glass to bid all the stress adieu. There’s no final exam, no out-of-office, it’s just an endless flow of joy and worry, rest, and to-dos. My only control is the level of comfort I feel as I wade through this constant current, my own ability to take deep breaths and accept what I know and what I don’t. 

What I don’t know is that we will successfully move every item, stemware included, into our new home. My follow up screening will be fine. We will continue to adapt to COVID. Still, to make a home, live as a cancer survivor, and be a family in a pandemic—it is all a process, one without a tidy bow to wrap it all up. 

Water seeps into my shoes as I loop around the greenbelt for the last time. The atmospheric river that bore down for days created a powerful current in the street. Rain rushes down the gutters. Ahead, I see the lights turn on in my parents’ house, the grandchildren are waking up.  Feeling a few raindrops, I adjust my hood and think about how I’m someone who will always crave certainty. But maybe, the process isn’t pushing for a result. Maybe, I can accept the discomfort of uncertainty. If I’m aware of its constant presence, instead of pushing, can I let it carry me, alongside my life’s real and loving forces? 

As I open the front door, I hear those forces—Diego asks for betos (breakfast potatoes), David places a pan on the stove, and the baby whimpers upstairs. The rainfall picks up, and I hear the downpour on the windows. I don’t want motherhood to be a push for moments of relief. There’s power in the current, if I let it move me forward. I step inside, eager for some dry socks, salty potatoes, and the comfort of being with the people who remind me I’m exactly where I need to be.

P.S. If you loved this essay, you'll love our podcast, What I Wish I Had Known with Shauna Niequist.

Guest essay written by Fay Gordon. Fay is a mother, writer and lawyer. She lives in Alameda, California, and she loves reading articles about books, reading books about fascinating people, and listening to fascinating friends talk about what they're reading. She writes a monthly newsletter about caregiving and scrapbooks family memories on her blog.

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.