Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Sometimes When The World Has You Beaten, A Little Light Shows Through.

Sometimes, a little light is all you need...

I won't lie. It's been a rough week. It has been one of those days where I just wanted to sit down for a good long cry. I'm tired in a deep down bone-weary way where it feels like a struggle just to lift my head. More than anything, I just want to stay in bed for a while...but as lovely, dark and deeps these woods are, I have promises to keep and sooo many miles left to go.

This morning when I earned my "Bad Mommy" card. Despite already being completely exhausted, I didn't get to bed until after midnight, dreading that 5am alarm clock. The baby woke twice during the night so I mayyyybe got 2-3 hours of broken sleep overall. I wasn't all together this morning and while juggling Connor, the diaper bag, my pump bag, purse, and laptop, I accidently hit the lock button on my keys. I put the baby in the car seat base, threw the keys in the front seat and arranged all the other bags I was carrying....and shut the door. It only took me a second to realize I had locked my keys and MY CHILD in the car. I looked around in a panic. My phone was in the car, my house key was in the car, and my house-mate is in Sweden. Fortunately, at that moment my neighbor walked out of her house and I begged her phone from her so I could call 911 to come rescue my child from the idiotic mistake of his mother.

While I waited I mentally kicked myself for making such a stupid mistake, for not having mom make a spare key for my car when she was making a spare house key, and for.....a lot of things really. Connor was awake and so I tapped on the car window and told him through the glass that everything would be ok. He smiled at me.

In minutes the rescue guys arrived and they had my car door opened quickly. They made me sign a paper stating that I was ok with them damaging my car. It was humiliating. When I finally got to work, half an hour late, I realized I had left my breakfast AND lunch at home. It was at that moment I wanted to put my head down on my head and cry.

Before the tears could start, my boss and a co-worker entered the room eating cookies. Cookies? The only reason they'd both be eating cookies is if there were some in the breakroom. I went to investigate and there was an entire table covered in sweet-treat goodness. A fellow employee's Christmas gift to her co-workers. I comforted myself with a giant warm cookie and decided I needed a complimentary beverage. It looked like the box of hot chocolate was empty, but as I fished around inside it I discovered that I got the last one. Score! When I got back to my desk with my Hot Chocolate and my cookie there was a card laying on my laptop. I open it to discover a $5 gift card from a co-worker for Chic-Fil-A and a thank you note for some recent work I had done. Wow...breakfast AND lunch taken care of!

Feeling a little better but still not great I logged on here to whine about how hard it is to be a single parent, when I noticed one of the regular blogs I read had been updated. I read it a little:

http://www.kayleighannefreeman.blogspot.com/

And in case you don't want to, the gist of the blog is that the little premie girl the blog centers on is dying. One thing the author wrote really hit me:

"She is our daughter who we will; never bring home to her perfectly painted pink
and brown bedroom, never be woken to screaming and crying in the middle of the
night, never change those stinkiest of diapers, never learn whose personality
she gets, never find out whether she has brown or blond hair, never hear what
her first words will be, never see her crawl, walk or ride a bike for the first
time, never take her to her first kindergarten class, never show off her "battle
wound" scars and tell the stories behind them, never kiss her goodnight every
night or read her a story before bedtime, and I will never get to walk her down
the aisle. Aimee and I will never hear her say "I love you Mommy and Daddy"


And I realized that, no matter how HARD it is, I am so very FORTUNATE to have my little guy and get to see his smile every day, and all the ways he changes and grows EVERY DAY...and just, everything about him. When he is screaming at 3am and I am so tired that I am starting to SMELL COLORS and there isn't a soul there to just hold him for a minute so I can go to the bathroom in peace....I am still lucky that he is healthy enough to scream and spit up in my hair, and pee on my clothes, and keep me up night after night.

...and even if this is awful, and makes me a terrible person, someone else's pain and loss has made me feel a lot better about my own situation and it just doesn't seem as bleak as it did this morning. Maybe it has just helped me appreciate all the things I still have instead of groaning about the things I don't.

2 comments:

Ariyanna Moon said...

Beautiful.

Nana said...

I know its hard, but I am so proud of you. You are a wonderful Mommie, and your little guy loves you so much, when he looks at you it the purest of love you will ever know, and it shows in his sparkling eyes. But you not alone, even though at 3am in the morning it feels like it, but it will get better, the first time he sleeps though the night. Just hang in there daughter, and know I love you. You used to look at me the way Connor looks at you.