The other morning when leaving Bootcamp, I heard a woman exclaim how mundane her life had become with making lunches and gathering kids to the bus for school. I remember those days. Frankly, I’m glad they’re over. It’s challenging being a mom and working and shuffling after-school activities, homework, discipline and then you still have to feed these people. It’s exhausting. And then, it seems a few days later, they’re driving cars and shuffling themselves to after-school activities. They’re going to parties and getting part-time jobs. They buy their own lunches and get busy with friends. Pretty soon, she’s going to college or university and taking classes we’ve never heard of and dating people we don’t know. Who owns you?
Then you find yourself sitting at her convocation and celebrating her achievement (which is really yours, as well) and then she’s stressed because she has to find a job. Then you turn around and she’s moved out into her own apartment because she has actual employment, her own vehicle and a life. And here you are Mommy, with her lunch in your hand saying, ‘but I made you peanut butter, your favourite.’ She shrugs and says she has her own food and will see you later. Like next week. When she has the time and is not on shift. And she needs food for her fridge.
The mundane is how you go from ‘Mommy, I need you’ to ‘Mom, I’ll see you later.’ It’s all the crap you have to endure in order to see that snotty-nosed kid become an adult. One capable of making her own lunches and paying her own bills and taking care of somebody else’s sick baby. But then she comes home and opens the fridge to see what’s to eat and she wants to watch Arthur’s Perfect Christmas with you and everything is right with the world, until she has to go back to work and become an adult and someone else’s caregiver.
You did that, Mommy. Because you made her lunches and you got her shuffled to the bus and you read her stories at night for the one-hundredth millionth time and you did it because you knew, someday, it would all be worth it. I know, right now it’s tiring and challenging. I know you have no time for yourself and you wish she would just be a bit more independent, but don’t rush it. She’ll get there. In her own time.
Hang in there, Mommy. You are doing a great job. Make those damned lunches, take her to the bus stop and read the bed-time stories. You’ll blink and you’ll be hanging art in her new apartment and wondering if she has enough toilet paper for next week.
The mundane stuff is what she relies on. You are her safety net. Keep going.
She’ll. Be. Great.
Kayjai 