...spring cleaning...

Much as I would like to think that some echo of my former self still lingers, the truth is that this chapter of motherhood has effectively killed her off...and with her, all sense of scheduling, organizing, and planning.

That's not to say I don't still try.  The planner sits atop the kitchen table, full of hastily scribbled "reminders to self" and checklists and calendar notations.  But at the end of every day, the page tells the true story...a few lines of text checked and crossed off in the early hours of caffeination...and then, abandonment.  Each day rolling over into the next, with a growing list of to-dos and want-tos...and, worse yet, should-have-alreadys...

'Twixt toddler-hood and the (now) 20 year old, my days are a precarious balancing act of tasks/goals and chaos control...and that's before adding in the "crisis management" that has been the operating system of recent months. 

Come night...or, rather, midnight and her shadowy sisters, I pause long enough to copy the lines of one day over into the next and shake loose the disappointment-irritation-shame of having failed to accomplish once again.

So here I sit, with planner beside me, full of 'best laid plans' and the traffic snarl of 'good intentions'.

Here I sit, in contemplative silence (of inner self, not surroundings...ha!) marking the passage of days and idly scrolling through my handwritten notes.

Wondering, as always if I'll ever get back on track.

Wondering just where and when and how I got off track to begin with.

And then I hear the hushed murmurs of my two boys, from but a few feet away, where they play.

Two boys.

One young adult.

One newly minted three year old.

Playing with all the wild abandonment of boyhood at trucks and dinos and transformers.

Ah.  Yes.  There it is.  The off-ramp.

Of motherhood.

Motherhood of this variety.

The "drop everything to be in the moment" motherhood.

The "tend to the curiousities" and let the rest fall away motherhood.

The "wear all the hats" motherhood.

The "embrace both skills and deficits of disability" motherhood.

The...

Stop

Drop

and Roll With It

motherhood.

The...pause now to pick up the pieces and wonder if I'll ever even get back to finishing this post motherhood.

6:37 a.m.

11:05 a.m.

Half-empty page...beckoning...and finally a lull in the chaos...

Back to the topic at hand...spring cleaning.

Or

rather

the

plan...plans...planning?

Scratch that.

The lack of planning.

Because there is no schedule.

There is no organization.

There is just a series of full-body pivots from one emergent situation to the next.

So rather than having a schedule, I've a...balancing act of uneven weights that only stays aloft so long as I am constantly shifting.

Speaking of shifting...the weather is.  Or it's supposed to be.  March coming in like a lion and all that.  In years past, the first of March was The Day.  Much like the first May, the first of August, the first of December.

The Day.

To shift.

To unrelentingly rip apart the closet, cast off the discards (into either donation bags or the embarrassingly full 'maybe someday again' tote) and swap out the season's attire.

To 'close the books' on the season, both mentally and physically.  Bringing in the next season in dishware and us-wear.

First of March.

Come and gone.

Here it is, the middle of the month, and...oh...look..I've fallen behind...again.

Ugh.

2:43 p.m.

There is a particular shame associated with failing oneself, even in these perceptional 'small' ways.  It's the shame of 'not doing it all', 'not covering all the bases', 'not being super-woman or super-mom or even a super side-kick'.  It's the shame of having to address your limitations and your self-realized dysfunction and acknowledge that whatever you are doing...isn't really working.

(Sleep/rest/restoration?  I'm talking to you!)

Ugh.

This weekend, I finally 'got round' to the closets.  A labor of love and loathing...and lunacy.

Loads upon loads of laundry, carefully folded and ready to be packed away.

Totes upon totes to go through...their bottom layers all properly stored and labelled, but inevitably covered up with hastily stowed layers of other household detritus.

(Small space living means constant swapping out of things based on current needs, which somehow always means randomly dropping things in not-quite-full totes.)

And in and among the mess of it all, the mess-of-my-own-making...born from our early years of making-do...the pieces that should have been discarded but weren't.  

So there I stood, behind a locked bedroom door, frantically racing to try on All The Things before one or both of the boys 'needed' me.  Racing and sweating and swearing.

Tugging on fabrics to check 'range of motion', because...mom of toddler.  Raising up and bending over and craning my neck to check hemlines, because...mom of toddler.

Arguing with zippers that wouldn't rise and buttons that refused to meet their mates halfway.

Giving free reign to the inner voice so full of vitriol and insults.  Cringing at the way things fell on a body that still hasn't 'snapped back' from pregnancy...and never will.

There I stood.  In panic-mode.  Rushing to tamp it all down and get it all done.

Neatly folded stacks of my sons' clothing ready to put in drawers.

My own, a pile of misery.

Ah, spring cleaning. Dusting off the cobwebs...on my own inner loathing and bringing it all to the surface.  Welcoming it all back in.

Ugh.

But.

It's done.

The totes were emptied, and filled again.

Labels swapped out for current ones.

Dresser drawers and closets and under-bed storage reorganized.

It's done.

Off schedule.  Day late. Dollar shot.

But, done.

So why do I still feel so...behind...?

Why, having crossed off that task, do I feel even further behind on the to-dos?  What did I miss?

Oh, right.

Saturday.

I missed The Weekend.

The task...the big, bad task took over all the rest of the day, and I missed out on the momming...the play and pretend, the snuggles and rough-housing, the creation and destruction of toddler-imagination unleashed.

I missed out on life, because I was tending to an overdue task.

Because spring cleaning meant creating time where there wasn't any, in order to get back on track.

Because the cost was derailing myself from My Mother-Hood for that time.

4:19 p.m.

And that...

up above...

is why I'm off track.

Because my version of mothering is more important to me than the schedule~the organization~the planning that used to rule my days.

My former self was a powerhouse.

She was action. 

She was tasks accomplished.  She was schedules adhered to.  She was plans made and brought to fruition.

She was.

She's dead.

I'm the me: of planner roll-over...of "where was I?" conversation circles...of constant rearranging...of compartmentalization and cobwebs...

I'm the me: that can stop everything to problem-solve your crisis, but can't get through the whole chore list.

I'm the me: that somehow...miraculously...is doing it all even though she can't see it.

I think this me is the in-between.

The early spring.

When all the change and growth and blossoming isn't visible.

When everything that's happening is below the surface...deep and tangled and dirty in the mud.

Pushing through.

Discarding the shell.

Making room.

I'm spring cleaning.  Hoping for spring.  Preparing for spring.

Still firmly entrenched in the wintering, but slowly beginning to thaw.