When Nothing Is Truly Your Own

I often look down at the chipped and damaged nail polish on my no-longer-pristine toes and think how nice it would be if I could just sit down, right that very moment, and repaint them. You know, just because I want to, and because it would be so nice to do something that I want to do in the exact moment that I want to do it. I know that I can't, because that would require an uninterrupted minute to myself to get them done, which I certainly have none of (and/or a dedication of 45 extra minutes to paint thirty other little toes), and so my toenails remain chipped and damaged for weeks until I steal a few moments from my own sleep to do them right and then have to make sure the sheets don't smear the still-wet color as I stagger exhausted into my bed.

It's frustrating, this knowledge, and yet I have to remind myself that this was the life I chose for myself, though I did not know that at the beginning. Well, I knew what I was choosing, I just didn't know what I was choosing, if you know what I mean.

It is definitely not the life I imagined, nor was certain I would live. Unfulfilled are the moments I pictured in my my pre-mothering days of children playing cooperatively while I happily organized cupboards or recorded profound thoughts in my journal. (I believe my last profound thought occurred in early 2003. And journal? Isn't that one of those pretty books with the blank pages that I sometimes see at the store?)

In reality, it is a life of half-done (or not-done) tasks; of vacuum cleaners sitting in the middle of unvacuumed rooms, of water left running and refrigerator doors left swaying in the wind as if they marked the entrance to a wild-west saloon. (And let's just say it's a good thing they don't.) It is a life of standing-while-eating, of using the bathroom with a captive audience, of breaking up fights, of driving with only one eye on the road and a hand reached into the backseat, of interrupted thoughts and tasks, and, ironically, of yelling at certain individuals that, in our family, we don't yell at one another. It is a life of giving up my half-eaten apple so that a cute little someone with a runny nose will stop crying for it. It is a life of humidifiers, and bug cream, and band-aids, of annoying television shows, play-dates, doctor's appointments, missing socks, out-grown shoes, smudgy fingerprints, tangled hair, wasted dinners, endless lists, and ever-mounting piles of laundry. It is a life of giving more than you could ever imagine that you had the power to give. It is a life where my time is not my own. Where my lap is not my own. My muscles are not my own. My earrings and shoes are not my own. Where my desk and pens and scissors are not my own. Where my apple, ice cream, soda, yogurt, [insert food item here], are not my own.

Nor is my heart my own, for each day it is being cleaved into four beautiful, frustrating, and endlessly amazing little pieces of flesh that walk around this life without me; that think, and act, and play, and sing, and roll their eyes completely independently from me.

It is hard, this life. So hard that there are days when I could just cry in frustration. So hard that sometimes getting out of bed and jumping knowingly into the madness is an exercise in sheer willpower.

But it is a life that somehow makes me whole even as it tears me into pulsing little pieces. A (difficult, crazy, not-my-own) life that is making me into who I am meant to be: A (desperately flawed, frantically well-meaning) mother who, though she often longs to be a mere onlooker rather than a player in a leading role, and fights at times to be separate and apart from the daily ins and outs of all of it, is creating a life for her children where they know that they are adored, and valued, and worthy of love. Where it is safe for them to laugh or cry or be angry if they need to be. Where they can be creative and make messes and learn sacrifice and cooperation, and start work on becoming the unique, beautiful individuals that the Lord has intended them to be.

And fifteen or twenty years from now when they call me in tears because their lives (and laps and time and apples) are not their own, I will feel for them and tell them I understand. And I will say a silent prayer that they will learn what they are meant to learn from this very difficult experience.

And I will feel just the tiniest, littlest bit of satisfaction as I hang up the phone and go back to my book in the silence of my (very clean) room.

{they're so precious to me, these crazy little heart-pieces of mine}