This essay was first published on my website in 2015. It has always been one of my favorites. I hope wherever you are today—however you might feel weighed down by the challenges of motherhood—this piece will help you remember the simple truth that we all lose our shit sometimes. You’re in good company.
Dear Lucy,
Today is Monday. Not only is it a Monday, but it’s also the first Monday of your fall break.
Which means you and I are staying home together.
All day.
All. Day.
On one hand, I’m thankful for the fact I can do this now without anxiety following me around like a toddler amped up on sugar. On the other hand, I’ve got a real-life toddler following me around amped up on sugar.
The first part of our day is lovely. We get out of bed around eight, have breakfast together, and then spend close to an hour in your room pretending to make soup with your new play dishes, giggling as we taste-teste from empty spoons. Your eyes tilt at the corners and you turn your head just so, pausing to gauge my words with a mixture of delight and disbelief on your face. Then you join right in. You scoop up a generous helping of air before pressing the spoon to your lips, a tiny slurp added to the end just for good measure.
After snack time you play in your room a little longer while I get cozy in the chair and read aloud from The Jesus Storybook Bible. Normally you like to hear me read, but today you're having none of it. You pat the floor over and over and say my name a hundred times, repeated invitations for me to put down the book and come sit with you.
I’m going to look sideways and you’ll be grown up, Lucy. I know that. I want to be here for these moments. I also want to drink my coffee hot.
After lunch, you go down easily for a nap. Considering how hard we played and how fast you fell asleep, I think you’ll be out for two hours, minimum.
(I bet you can see where this is going.)
Just as I settle into my to-do list, you wake up. No worries, it’s fine. We head out to pick up my lunch and then we come home where you watch a half-hour of television and I enjoy a few quiet moments with my meal.
At four o’clock, I get the bright idea to run some afternoon errands. In the rain. Just before the witching hour.
(I bet you can see where this is going, too.)
Lucy, you’ve always been a dream child. You love being around people, you don’t throw tantrums, and you’re pretty flexible when we have to adjust your schedule. So, naturally, I assume we’re in for a delightful trip to Target. We’ll go print out a few pictures! We’ll pick up some cheap frames! You’ll just stare at all the people and bright shiny things, content to be with your wonderful mother outside the four walls of our house!
Best laid plans, and all that.
First, the photo kiosk at Target becomes possessed by the devil and refuses to connect to Wifi so I can upload my photos. Then, halfway through making edits, the connection shuts down and I have to start all over. Okay, okay. No big deal. Frustrating, but not the end of the world. All the while, you’re next to me in the cart making sounds that cause dogs to howl.
For a while, I shut you out and run on autopilot, simultaneously handing you board books while also trying to operate the most complicated photo printer in the developed world in order to create a minimalist gallery wall in our soon-to-be-purged living room. Because these are my goals for our home, Lucy: To trim our life of stuff.
But, first, I need to buy more stuff.
Finally, the photos print and they’re beautiful and I’m happy, so we set off towards The Dollar Tree (it’s raining harder now) in search of those cheap frames I mentioned (because I might tend towards minimalism, but I’m also here for a bargain).
After we arrive and you are safely stowed in the dirty cart seat—hey, I’m building your immune system, here!—we find the frames quickly. You’re obstinate, loud, and hyped for plastic swords and leftover summer baubles because you are also an American, Lucy Jane, and capitalism is in your DNA, minimalism be damned.
I get us out of there fast, on our way back home before your whines can shape-shift into fully-grown screams. You don't like the song that's playing in the car, but we're in the driveway before you have a chance to make a whole thing of it.
It’s still raining when I pull up. I hurry to the front door and lock the car behind me because who knows what sort of psycho lurks in the bushes waiting for an unsuspecting mother to leave her kid in the car for two seconds? I unlock the front door, turn off the alarm, and drop our bags onto the floor. Then, in record time, I hurry back to the car and remove you from the seat.
As we run to the house, you hold your hands over your head and cry, “‘Ain! ‘Ain!” I groan inwardly as I realize I’ve somehow managed to teach you that water falling from the sky will make you melt. Or maybe it was all those Daniel Tiger episodes. Did I feed you too many preservatives at lunch? No, it was most definitely Daniel Tiger.
I settle you into the high chair (wooden, because vintage), slice up an entirely basic Oscar Meyer hot dog for your snack, and berate myself that it isn’t homemade yogurt with fruit grown from a fairy’s garden. On the table I spread out plastic frames that will end up falling off the wall in six months and start to trim the photos.
With scissors from our utensil drawer.
The scissors that are meant for cutting meat.
Sometimes you just work with whatever you’ve got.
At this point, Lucy, it should be noted that my blood pressure has risen a few points and I’ve got some strain in my upper shoulders. You don’t know anything about that because your body is basically made of rubber at this stage of development, but one day you will understand. The truth is I’m trying to accomplish too much in an environment that is conducive to neither hobbies nor crafts, but instead of taking a break and just stepping away for a second, I keep going.
I am a mother and MOTHERS DO NOT TAKE BREAKS.
We forge ahead until our precious ones have had a full day of positive, intentional play and age-appropriate stimulation. We keep going until the house looks like it belongs on a Pinterest board. We haven’t shaved our legs in three weeks and we’ve forgotten to pay your class dues, but we never forget to cut your sandwiches into triangles and we never, ever forget to smile.
My phone dings once, twice, three times in a row because my little sister has not learned how to put her messages into one single text and you’re protesting because you’ve been strapped into the high chair with no hope of escape and snack time has been over for five minutes and I’m still trimming pictures while the soundtrack of an anxiety attack plays over my head and then I sigh and admonish you to wait and “be patient, my love” while I finish this one little thing but you could give less than two whole shits about my dreams of a gallery wall.
You only care about freedom. All I care about is silence.
Which I why I choose this precise moment to stomp my foot and scream.
I’ve had enough, Lucy Jane. I’ve had it UP.TO.HERE. On its own, none of this stuff—not the phone dings or the picture cuts or the toddler cries to be cut loose from her high chair—would stress me out. But I’m tired and my clothes are still damp from carting you back and forth in the rain and I’m on sensory overload. Your mother is not smiling anymore.
I put my head down into my hands and stomp my foot three times on the hardwood floor. It hurts. My ankle is pissed at me for treating it thus and sends shockwaves up my ankle and into my calf.
What kind of response does this provoke in me? Anger. And more frustration. You have had enough of that damn chair and your little toddler brain says, “This is a good time to shout. She’s obviously not hearing you.” When you do, I turn—wearing an expression that’s somewhere between Linda Blair and Jack Torrance—and whisper scream, the words an ugly hiss, “Would you just SHUT UP?!”
Your eyes widen in fear and my heart sinks to the floor. We both start to cry.
I scoop you out of the blasted high chair and carry you to the couch, your arms wrapped tight around my neck, your cries like a sharp blade to my shame. We sit together like that, crying in alternating pitches of familial despair, until you take notice of my sobs. With tears still streaming down both of our cheeks, you sit up, take one look at my face, and kiss me. A tender gesture of toddler grace that grieves my world-weary mama soul and makes me lift my head in gratitude for the gift of being your mother. You kiss me again and then hug my neck. I cry some more.
“Mama?” you ask, your voice clear and sweet, like a bell.
“Mama is sorry, baby,” I say, and sign the word, a fist rotating between breasts where my heart is broken. “I’m so, so sorry.”
You hold my face in your hands and look into my eyes. I could swear I see Jesus. Who else would embrace the one who hurt them?
“Sometimes mamas lose it and act like assholes, baby. Please forgive me.”
I sign again. You clamber down from my lap, the whole fiasco forgotten.
I let you sit with me when we go back to the table. I show you how to cut and how to hold the paper and how to put the backs on the frames. All the while, my brain is churning over the what-ifs: the phone I wanted to throw but didn’t, the scissors that were lying next to it, the fear of what could have happened if I’d grabbed them by accident.
The messy human gunk that clogs the mind after even the simplest of parenting failures. The lies that whisper, “not good enough, never good enough…” when all the while our kids kiss and forgive and move on—proof that yes, YES, we are good enough. Yes, He is good enough. Yes, there is grace for all.
And, later, when you look up at me, stomp your foot, and ask, “Mama?” in confirmation of how I lost it, I laugh and say, “Yes, baby, thanks for the reminder.”