Riding the Waves

I remember the weeks following Jack’s death coming across something I’d found on Pinterest about grief that, at the time, spoke to me and made a lot of sense.   It said, “Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves, ebbing and flowing.  Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it’s overwhelming.  All we can do is learn to swim.” 

It’s been a good long while since my last post.  Just about a month.  I wrote on Jack’s birthday, like I have the two previous years before, because I feel like I owe that to him but after that I just didn’t have any steam in my tank to keep it going.  The truth is I’ve just felt sad.  I let myself get bogged down in some of the sadness and rather than stopping to acknowledge it, I’ve been plowing ahead and it caught up to me.  Don’t get me wrong, there has been a lot of really amazing stuff peppered in there but I haven’t been all in on the experience part.  I’ve been distracted by my heavy heart. 

My girl is so full of life that it radiates off of her but it can be exhausting trying to mirror the excitement she’s looking for after coming home from work.  A career I used to love has shifted into job-something that pays the bills-but also uses most of my patience and so I find myself digging at the bottom of the barrel to muster some for a girl that deserves so much more than that.  God love her though, she’ll call me out and let me know when I could be doing better and forgive me when it’s the best I’ve got.  As tired as this heart has been, she jump-starts it when she asks me to climb in bed with her and sing her her song before she falls to sleep. 

And then there’s the boy.  This sweet, sweet baby boy.  My God, he makes life sweeter, with his big, gorgeous, blue eyes that dance when he gets excited and his chubby cheeks that he lets me smother with kisses.  But with every morsel of goodness comes a pang of sadness as I realize over and over again what we really lost that day his big brother died.  But I breathe him in as deeply as I can, knowing how lucky I am to have been given this little love to pour my heart into. 

Through the fog of sadness there were still some really bright spots. A Valentine’s Dance for Kennedy and Daddy, lots of snuggles, snow days, our annual visit from cousins filled with fun and firsts. 

One of those firsts was Carter’s first sickness.  A high fever meant sleepless nights for me, where a heightened sense of fear had me standing over his crib to make sure he was breathing. And as I stood watching his chest rise and fall I found myself begging God to make me stop being so afraid; to stop being afraid that this baby boy could be taken from me too.  It ended up being an ear infection that put my happy little guy out of sorts and stopped us from making our visit we’d planned to Boston to see my best friend.  He’s slowing getting back to himself and my fears are dulling around the edges.

It’s planning mode now.  Trying to get everything in order and stay upbeat preparing for Jack’s Herd’s Second Annual Cocktail Party and Silent Auction.  I try to remind myself not to be sad while doing this; that this is how we help celebrate our first boy’s legacy.  I know when the stress passes I will find my footing again, and hopefully that’s in time to enjoy a wonderful night.

You see that quote I mentioned before about waves and grief has a ring of truth to it.  Over these last three years though I’ve learned something that takes the whole ocean smile a little further.  Grief is more like a rip tide.  It can come on strong and quick and sometimes out of nowhere.  As a little kid, spending loads of time at the beach, my dad used to warn us if we ever got caught in a rip tide, not to fight against it, that it could exhaust you causing you to drown.  Instead swim parallel to the shore until you are free.  So my grief, I’ve stopped fighting against it, I swim with it and change my direction to get free of it.  It took me a few years to figure out that if I fight against this sadness it will overtake me.  I have to respect my hearts need to feel what it feels and to give it the time to call out to the little boy that took part of it with him. 

Mother of the Year

So let me set the scene for you:  We are at hockey practice yesterday afternoon and getting Kennedy dressed and ready to go.  I arrived from work just in time to put her helmet on (she never seems to think Sean does it “the right way”).  I put it on and she instantly starts crying that it's hurting her head-embarrassingly loud.  I get it off and think that maybe her ponytail was too high and pushing against her head in the helmet and so I lower it to the nape of her neck and put the helmet back on and she seems appeased.  She gets on the ice and goes about her hockey business but wasn't doing a particularly good job following her coach’s directions (join the club, Coach Matt).  As practice went on you could tell she wasn’t feeling it that day and as she fell over and over, which she doesn't usually do, she was laying on the ice and taking her sweet time getting up.  Then the tears started.  She hasn’t cried that way since her first few practices and so after about the third burst of hysterics I opened the boards and told her to get off the ice, that “nobody wanted to hear her crying” (I know, real nice). So we get undressed and she’s whining her head hurts but we get in our cars and headed home.  I figured she’d had a long day, preschool and hockey, and was just really cranky.

As we pull in the driveway and I get out to help Sean unload her and everything else that a day out of the house comes with, she says, “ I think I’m going to frow-up!”  We get the front door open and she goes tearing into the house and into the bathroom just in time to vomit all over the toilet, but not in it.  As I am holding her hair back and then getting her cleaned up and changed, all I could think was- you’re such a bad mom, yelling at your kid for whining when really she was sick- really, just awesome.

There are so many times, as a parent, where you find yourself thinking that you’re doing an okay job; a stranger could compliment how well behaved or polite your little one is, or you watch your child do something on their own that you had showed them.  Now granted, these moments are usually followed, close behind, by “oh-crap” moments when you're hoping no one notices a parenting misstep.  But then, every so often you have moments where not only are you thinking I have no idea what I am doing! but that you are a downright bad parent.  In the back of your mind, where I think logic hides out, you know that it's not true, that you are just like every other parent that is finding their way.  But nevertheless, it's a feeling you get.  And it's awful.  It feels like I have a bad-mother-punch-card tucked in my back pocket that gets punched when I make a particularly ugly parenting move- hockey practice earned me one.

So I spent the rest of the evening trying to make myself feel better, fussing over her and making her comfortable in her bed, a towel on her pillow, some water and juice, little snacks that I convinced her to nibble on, and tucked her in.  I made sure the monitor was on in her room and mine and went to bed.

When I woke up this morning and was getting ready for work I heard her calling me around 6:45, like she usually does.  I went in thinking she would ask for her iPad and something to eat (always her first two requests of the day) but instead she was crying, “I was calling you and you didn’t come and I frowed-up on myself and my bed!”  And she had; awhile ago because it was dried on her face and in her hair and on her nightshirt, the towel wet.  I felt miserable.  Another punch on my card.

I set her up on the couch after she was cleaned up with a pillow and blanket.  I gave her a cold washcloth on her head and tried, somewhat unsuccessfully, to get some Tylenol in to her while Sean stripped her bed and threw everything into the wash.  He left for work and I attempted to get keep getting ready while I waited for my mother-in-law to arrive.  Kennedy called me to sit with her on the couch every few minutes and whined at me not to go to work.  When Maryann and Bill arrived she said she was going to be sick again and as we ran for the bathroom we barely made it to the bowl.  She threw up more than I thought her little belly could hold and when she was finished I looked at my watch.  Usually I would be heading out the door but she wanted me to give her a bath and so I made it a quick one, got her dressed and cozy on the couch.  She was pouting out her bottom lip and crying just enough to crush my heart saying that she wanted me to stay.  We decided she should go to the doctor because we’d also noticed a rash on her during the bath.  I felt so guilty that not only was I leaving my sick baby but I wouldn't be the one to take her to the doctor.  Another punch.

I don’t know what it is.  I know all working moms have to deal with this, dads too.  Kids gets sick and you still have to go to work.  But it feels terrible.  It feels wrong to have someone else comforting your sick baby, even if it is a family member.  I cried on my way into work.  I wanted to be with her not with other people’s kids.  But it is good old state test week and I had to proctor the seventh grade.   But as I paced around the gym all I thought of was that I should have stayed home with her.  I should have just called in to work that day.

Aside from the bad-mom-feelings, I also, often simultaneously, have bad-employee and bad-wife-feelings.  All of these are important aspects of who I am but the problem is so often it is a hard balance.  It often feels like I am struggling to balance them all at once and so one or two or all feel like they are not getting out of me what they should or could.  The thing is, if I am being honest, being a mom wins out over all of the rest every time.  I love my husband something fierce, and my career can be incredibly rewarding, albeit rough these days, but being a mother- this trumps all. And so I left.  Was my boss particularly happy with me?  Probably not.  But my bad-mother-card had been punched far too many times in less than twenty-four hours and so I left.  I drove home to my baby and cuddled up with her on the couch and watched as many episodes of Jake and the Neverland Pirates as she wanted and soaked up the sensation that I was doing an okay job.

I know deep down I am doing the best I can.  I’m a mom running on half a tank and so sometimes I know I have to cut myself some slack.  But after a day like today it makes me wonder:  after you get ten punches on your bad-mother-card what do you earn?  A Mother of the Year mug?