When We Aren't the Best Parent

I just preliminarily titled this "When we aren't the best parent", before I started posting my story.

So that's pretty instructive about where I'm coming from.

I know blogging is antiquated, and we are in a Twitter/Facebook world, but I just had one of those OH.  UGH.  GAH. BLECH moments  I needed to document for... being real as a human.

I'll equivocate with the fact that I'm weary. Work/Life in this season is... unrelenting.

Plus, I'm genetically disposed to insomnia, and my sleep patterns are so screwed up.

I've had crazy dreams lately. Having to clear the pool because my kids soccer team needs to play there. You know, in the water.  

Having to rescue a 6 foot person from drowning in a 3 foot pool.  

And always the missing my final exam that I needed to ace to have enough credits to graduate.  [Did you know I can fly in an empty mall if I have enough running space?]

WITH THAT BACKGROUND OUT OF THE WAY. 

So James.  Tiny, sweet baby James, is 7.  Upon my calculation, from mask on to comfortable enough mask off, he has spent 37% of his life in an unprecedented global pandemic.  THANKS COVID.

But he, and I, also had the gift of riding side-saddle for almost two years.  We had a thing. He literally perched next to me, 18 inches away. He gave me the space for all the Zooms.  I gave him all the circle breathing, letter tracing, stamp gaming, OE and OA and OO phonetic sounding. 

I got to see him building the sounds and words.  I got to see him being guided by his awesome teaching team from letter awareness to reading.  I saw him, 18 inches from me,  learn how to thread a needle, how to make a stitch, how to "share equally' (aka divide).  He can name more state capitols than me, and doesn't always need a snuggle when he falls down.

He knew, from those months of riding side saddle during the pandemic, that I had to do my job and was the sweetest resilient kid there ever was.

Today? 

He wasn't feeling so well. He's not the kind of kid who comes downstairs and is not feeling so good, so that is so real.  I held him home from school [AS YOU SHOULD DO] (and then got a negative covid test and then a flag for a classroom positive), and then.... I wasn't the best parent.

I need to be reminded that he's seven and hasn't been through the sh%t show of a global pandemic when you aren't well you get some parent attention.  

I was the "welp, work at home day parent".  He clearly embraced the unlimited TV access portion of the day, but I need to be shaken.  

I had a mid-day 90 minute zoom and told my tiny (Montessori, so capable, but UGH) kid, to make himself a sandwich when he said he was hungry.

I TOLD HIM TO MAKE HIMSELF A SANDWICH. HE IS SEVEN AND SICK AND I TOLD MY KID TO MAKE HIMSELF LUNCH BECAUSE I HAD TO "WORK."

He's seven.  We aren't at my-memorable-game-shows-on-USA-all-day age. 

Hell I take meals to all the people when they have sickness/babies/death/crisis and I couldn't be bothered to make a sandwich for my SICK KID.

I told him to make himself a sandwich. And he did.  With some carrots and an apple. What kind of weird terrible space between working life and parenting a sick kid life is that????

Forgive me universe. And I'll introduce him to Press Your Luck, Let's Make a Deal, and all those important sick day shows later.

That's our COVID redux for today. 

On Grief

So we've been in it.. haven't we.

We have made it.  We have pieced it together.  Haven't we?  Have we?

TRUTH: IT HAS BEEN SO MESSY

We've laughed and mourned as we look at our Facebook "on this days"

And this day.  It is the same the day 365 days ago with less "HOW AM I GOING TO DO IT"

Because we did it.

But we are in the space where we are afraid to name hope.  See hope.  Choose hope. 

We lost a friend.  A 3rd grader.

But we dug out.  We dig out.

We see omnicrons and BAs and waves and boosters.  We see families get through the virus.   We see friends with what seem to be life long diagnoses and health damage.  We return to school.  Masks go off, they go on.  

We test the sneezes and the pollens and the tummies and the scaries.  We are lucky that everywhere we live a test is available.

We do what is normal.  We do sports and playdates. We do sleepovers and eat in restaurants.  We have birthday parties in and outside, masked and unmasked. 

We have joy.  Joy?  Remember that?

And we have the PCRs and rapid tests still.  Those are so good. Overlapping caution.

And then the world stops.

They were too young last time. Sandy Hook was an adult problem. They were a week old. And sixteen months old.  

The fear was yours.  The fear was mine.  

I was born in Newtown/Danbury.  Likely at the same hospital. 

That grief is yours.  That fear is yours.  It's in the tiny baby old man brow wrinkles.  It's in the deep dimples and the silly smiles.  It's in the sleepless nights and the early mornings.

But now?  You have a nine and ten year old. They were in that classroom.  They could have been.

A old souled six year old.  Sandy Hook aged.

But ones who have lived in the in between. In the time when grief and hope overshadow each other.  They are old enough to know and understand.  

They ask questions about the why and the how?  About evil and mental health?  About how we didn't protect the kids.  

They named their preferred hiding spaces and how R's classroom is probably the safest.

They ask about death.

Overlapping caution.

And still it's dulled and resigned and unexpected and maybe that's what grief is.

Grief isn't sharp.  It's rounded and dull and resigned and... unexpected.  

They know that grief is as hard to own as reality with it's understandable corners and sharpness.  

They know that grief and resiliency wrestle each other every day.

And please, universe, did we equip them and do we continue to do so every minute and hour and day with the right tools.

Grief is a season, a wave, and a reality.  It is joy and resilience and overwhelming sadness.  

Please let us be enough.  

Please let us all do better.