I came down to my kitchen grumpily on Saturday morning, after a fitful night of sleep. A lone soup spoon lay face down in the drain of the little bar sink, surrounded by a spray of coffee grounds and looking not unlike a murder victim. We normally use that sink exclusively for drinking water, and so without any other dish-washing happening, the spoon had remained there untouched for at least three days.
In an ill-fated private experiment enacted by countless mothers before me, I was waiting to see how long it would languish there before someone noticed. Predictably, no one had bothered to put it in the dishwasher. I knew if I didn't move the pathetic lonely thing, no one would, and that depressed me.
But my boyfriend came for the weekend, and even though he was suffering from post-vaccine ickiness, he must have eventually done what my children would not, because the spoon and it's surrounding mess disappeared. It's for the best that he inadvertently cut my experiment short. In this particular round, I ultimately wasn't feeling resentful of my kids. I was instead experiencing a kind of familiar, floundering fitfulness before my own shortcomings as a parent: why haven't I taught them to take responsibility for their environment?
I've been having a hard time finding the balance of things lately. I'm observing certain places where the fabric is wearing thin, but I'm not sure what to do about it. It seems I should have figured out things like housekeeping and parenting and managing work and the rest of life better by now; the problem is no matter how much experience I accrue, things are always shifting under my feet.
How is it that I can feel so discouraged? Frances is at Princeton doing beautifully, Gabriel is home this fall working and saving up for his thru hike in the spring, and Beatrice is no longer a little girl who fights me at bedtime. She is twelve years old and knows how to bake an exquisite chocolate chip cookie.
But all the same, I often feel that I am wanting in my ability to captain this ship, and we are teetering on the edge of chaos. I doublebook orthodontist appointments and clients, haircuts and meetings. Empty seltzer cans stand watch over stacks of unread New Yorkers that slide around the surface of the coffee table, while dirty socks are huddled up beneath it. I can't seem to find time to take the stacks of paper recyclables to the place with terrible hours, or call my liability insurance with my questions. The toilet paper holder is broken and I don't know how to fix it. Even my body is chaotic: my shoulder hurts. Or sometimes my knees. My period is totally whack. My god, just think what will happen to us when menopause really gets underway...!
Even though I've parented two twelve year olds before, parenting twelve year old Beatrice is it's own thing. I can only learn to do this from and with her. And I can only parent her as the woman I have become, someone who lives in an older body, has more responsibility at work, and who is more comfortable acknowledging her own need for care, rest, and independent pursuits (like my new private practice and my Thursday night dance rehearsals). When Frances and Gabriel were twelve, I was willing to sacrifice my own well-being. I was taking care of my ill husband, and then I was newly widowed with three young children. Back then I didn't see any other way we were going to survive.
Now we are forty-eight. I like to see my friends and exercise; also I am navigating screens, middle school dynamics, chores, and schedules with my youngest and more often than not feeling at a loss.
I've been reading Laurie Colwin (Happy All the Time and More Home Cooking), listening to Samin Nosrat on Fresh Air, and paging through old favorite cookbooks. All of these things fill me with tender longing. I'm building a private practice while working full time (there are good reasons) and the effort and hours this requires is likely related to how freshly appealing cooking has become, ideally with the people I love perched on stools nearby. Gabriel, back from 30 days in the Rockies, has led us on two camping weekends since school began. Cooking in the woods with my family! The gurgle of the little percolator over the fire! Even better. While packing for it is anything but, life becomes marvelously simple on a camping trip. Time unfurls luxuriously.
On Saturday morning, I was still very much recovering from the over-full week and the hit my house, parenting, and nervous system had taken in response. But last night I cooked a delicious dinner from CSA eggplants and green beans (vegetables that had been stressing me out during the week, looking at me accusingly every time I opened the fridge and threatening to go bad before I had time to cook them), watched a dumb movie snuggled up with Beatrice and Thomas, and slept deeply. Today I went to church, took a long walk in a wooded park with Thomas and Ramona where I had a cry about my various worries, and baked a pumpkin chocolate chip loaf with Beatrice. Gabriel and Beatrice and I did our grateful grace at dinner, and talked about college applications and school projects and whether or not I should buy a pair of silver shoes.
I still don't know how to do this. Widowed parenting is it's own kind of thing, full of rushing love, mind reading, and gut punches - with no breaks. They don't put the spoons away, because I do. There is so much more for me to learn, so many more moments of feeling desperately at a loss ahead.
I won't know what to do. But we can always sit down to dinner - at the table half covered in homework and laundry, or under a canopy of trees - and bolstered by that ritual well-soaked in faith and love, be reminded that it's okay not to know. We find our way anyhow.
