Alana Smith
I am climbing our stairs, headed to my son’s room for the second time this evening. When he sees me, his face is filled with relief.
“Momma.”
I scoop him up, and we settle into the rocker in his room. I am weary and ready for him to sleep.
Although I need to finish the laundry, I really settle in and exhale deeply, pushing out the stress of the day. As his breath slows and he lulls to sleep, I can feel mine doing the same.
I think to myself, how nice it would be just to fall asleep right here. Perfectly safe, warm and content with my child in my arms. But then I open my eyes.
No matter how much I would like to stay in this spot, I must get up. The house and its duties beckon me. If I sleep here, I would miss my alarm in the morning, and everyone would be late — late to all of the places that we must go.
Lunches would be unmade, and dishes left dirty. The members of my family would be a puzzled bunch — “Mom? What happened to Mom?”
As mothers, we don’t travel lightly throughout the day. We carry our responsibilities, burdens and distractions into every task. Even moments that truly demand our attention are interrupted by thoughts of our to-do list.
As I rock, I long to just be in this moment, unattached and free, content in this place between past and future.
When I am overwhelmed with tasks, I sometimes picture my family living on a farm, “Little House on the Prairie”-style, with slow-moving days and my children running carefree. I long for the freedom to just watch them, in awe, without ruminating over how I am doing and what I need to do next.
Did mothers long ago sit in peace and rear children without distraction? Unlikely. They were probably thinking of their family’s next meal or washing sheets by hand or wartime.
But still I daydream. I imagine myself without interruptions, being able to play cars on the floor with my son with true joy, and not the visceral pull that my responsibilities have over me. How much more pleasure would I be to him if I was truly present, not accessible to anything other than him at that moment?
I crave simplicity, yet nothing about my normal day seems simple. When I come home from work and we have only moments before we leave for baseball, my living room is littered with toys, crumbs and rogue shoes.
Fruit snack wrappers and marker tops are abandoned, and piles of laundry wait to be folded. I can feel the tension rising in me, on the cusp of boiling over.
Breathe. If only I was untethered.
I know that as a mother, and a human, I will naturally be filled with responsibilities to my family, my employer and to society, and I cannot realistically unburden myself of those things. I know that our busy schedules are too full, yet I’m thankful for the opportunities available to my children.
Amid the chaos, I truly enjoy the activities and sports, as well as the noisy and often messy house we live in. So I must embrace the busyness that a full life brings.
I pray that I can live with purpose and intention. I hope that when I find a moment of solace during the week, that I savor it. I pray that I can be truly present and soak up the moments that matter with my children.
I once read that “to have a happy family … is to enjoy an earlier heaven,” a truth to be remembered when we are overwhelmed with our day. I imagine heaven is like the true joy of motherhood — all consuming and indescribable — without the doubt, weariness and frustration that we often feel.
Motherhood, unencumbered.
We are gifted little glimpses of heaven: when our children bring tears to our eyes with their goodness; when your son holds your hand while you read to him; when he hits a ball to the fence and finds you in the stands first; and when he looks back to find your eyes once more as he walks into school.
These moments should remind us of the profound love our children have for us, no matter how messy, distracted or weighed down we think we are.
We are mothers, and that in itself, is accomplishment enough.