Happy Birthday Mom

Happy Birthday Mom!

Tonight after I put the girls in bed I found myself in kind of a funk.

Honestly, I was in kind of a funk all day.

You know, one of those days where you feel an itch on your shoulder in that spot you can't quite catch except you feel the itch not physically, but emotionally?

You are angry, and sad, and unhappy but you know you have no reason to be any of those things, and it makes you feel worse?

And you know that part of it is because you keep forgetting everything that is important - appointments to make, appointments to keep, things to get in the mail, insurance papers to figure out ... I didn't ever feed my kids lunch today.  When they got hungry I told them to go eat some birthday cake, and then Hallie said, "But mom, we have to have lunch first!"

So I said, "Well, today is backwards day. We'll eat lunch in a minute after you eat your birthday cake."

But then I never made them lunch.  When I called them in from the backyard for dinner, Hallie said, "Oh! Is it lunchtime now?"

And then the night just spiraled downward from there, and the bad feelings started making me have somewhat of a stomachache (don't tell me it was too much birthday cake and not enough lunch, ok?)

I cleaned up the house, did the dishes, reorganized some things, all the while trying not to feel so angry at my kids for the messes they make in the house and the resultant chaos in my brain - and I stumbled upon some old pictures.  The first one on top was a picture of you and dad, on the day you dropped me off at Purdue.

Mom.

Mom.

All the bad feelings inside disappeared as I looked through the lens of time at your two smiling faces.  I thought back through all the years that had led up to me growing and going to college, all the good times and the bad times and the million times that were just somewhere in between.

I thought about all the years since that day when you dropped me off at college, all the million moments since then that have been good and bad and somewhere in between.  Finally, the things I've been telling myself all night about how I've really got it good began to penetrate the fog of grouchy that has been swirling like a thundercloud over me all day.

I have four beautiful baby girls sleeping quietly in their beds upstairs.  Although, actually, one or two of them may or may not be on the floor, because that's their new thing now.  Not sure why, but they prefer to sleep on the floor.  I'm sure it's just a phase.

They seem so busy and little and in my face right now, and sometimes I am desperate for space to breathe and think and not have tiny little pieces of cut up paper all over my house from their "projects".  But you know, nearly every single one of those projects says, "Mom.  I love you." and is signed by whichever artist made it.  Heather's, of course, are just full of scribbles, and when you ask her what it says, she usually tells you "t   h   spells yay!"  That works too.

Anyway, Happy Birthday Mom.  I love you.  I miss you. Thanks for taking such good care of me.
 In Mexico.  Not sure why we took a picture with this man.

This is at Senior awards night for soccer.
I'm not really sure why we all have such weird looks on our faces.  
What are we looking at?

Comments

  1. Mimi CollettJuly 18, 2014 at 5:38 PM

    Oh Ames. Me, too. Me, too. To everything. I wish I could say I have never had days where I haven't been in a funk or where I didn't feed my kids lunch, but that would not be true. The other day, my kids were searching for their own lunch while I was up on the third floor, and they got into the fridge, and Daniel mistook thawed raw bacon for ham. Oh gross. Based on what I found on the floor and the bite marks in the bacon, he didn't actually swallow any, because he spit it all back out.

    We are really lucky with our parents.

    And I try to be grateful for their sweet messes, too. :)

    ReplyDelete

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