transformation: step one

Aug 23, 2012

Oh my. Can you hear my long, low sigh.

That is the sound of reality hitting me square in the face.

Here it is. I have completely forgotten how to run a home. It has been so long since I have tried to be an effective home manager (and I was never that stellar to begin with) that I can’t even wrap my head around how to do it. Get out of bed at a decent hour? No clue how to do it. Get loads of laundry done, meals prepared, dishes done, floors swept and mopped, carpets vacuumed, dusting done, and errands run? Again, no clue. I mean this. I am lost. I feel like I got my breast lump last April and my life stopped. Then in February when my hip was injured, it really stopped. I mean, I kept doing THINGS, but I stopped functioning like a normal human being. I went into survival mode where only the most pressing, most obvious things get noticed and only the most critical of those most obvious things get done.

Somehow we are still here and we have eaten and have clothes on our bods, but I haven’t been doing it. The kids have made egg sandwiches, pancakes, and pasta for the past several months. Before that, friends brought in meals and on the other nights we ate freezer meals. The yard has deteriorated into something akin to a garbage dump and my bedroom has a meandering path through the piles of stuff that have built up over the past several months.

It is time for a new beginning. A new world where I am up early(-ish) and working on the tasks that my grandmother did everyday…you know, like breakfast, snacks, dishes, floors, laundry, etc. A world where my children know they can count on me.

This feels like a huge transition. I’m not even sure I know how to be with my children anymore. I was in bed for the whole spring and they have played outside for most of the summer. I have been with them for little chunks of time and usually one at a time. Now, we are starting back into our school routine and it feels like a foreign land. My patience has never been so low, my voice so tight, or my inability to love deeply so glaringly obvious.

But I am finally ready to open myself to the learning and growth that needs to happen in my soul so I can go back become the mother they need me to be. Seventeen months out of commission is more than long enough and it is time to start repairing relationships, conquer bad learn new habits, and give myself fully to mothering and home management.

Today is day one of the change. My babystep for today is to look my children in the eye when they speak to me. I want to add another babystep, but I know that is probably a big mistake, but I will do it anyway…babystep #2 is to have a calm voice when I reply. Of course, I have a long list of home management tasks I want to accomplish as well…but I need to remember where I have been these past months and not make my list a gazillion miles long because then I will flat-out fail and what I need is success in small things.