The Prodigal Sun

Part 1: Tuesday

Today, for no good reason, I’m feeling brittle and fragile and on-the-edge. I am full of rage and disappointment at no one and everyone, nothing and everything. It is early afternoon, and in an hour I have to go and pick up my kids. I should be doing my Finnish homework, but instead I am sitting in a café, looking out despondently at the falling snow. I don’t know quite why, but I’m just about at the end of my rope.

I started the day tired, after a bad night’s sleep.

(Little Sister is discovering dreams, and currently wakes up multiple times per night shrieking my name, exclaiming loudly about what she just saw, firmly believing that it was all true.

[sitting up in bed and sobbing with wild abandon] “Mummy’s not THEEEERE! She’s gone! Mummy’s GOOOONE!”

[sitting up in bed and yelling at high volume] “Someone BROKE MY SUNGLASSES! On purpose! They are brooookeeeen!”

[sitting up in bed in an indignant huff] “The new cow is called SNUNNY! That’s his name, silly. Hmph!”)

Then, for some reason (no doubt related to her own broken sleep) Little Sister decided this morning that she was going to opt out of day-care. Her initial efforts to implement this decision (engaging in fake coughing during breakfast, refusing to have clothes put on her, and calmly informing me of her Day-Care Embargo during the bus ride into town) failed, but Little Sister is not a quitter. For the entire fifteen-minute walk from Big Sister’s preschool to Little Sister’s day-care, she sat in her stroller and alternately cried and shrieked and shouted about how much she didn’t want to go to day-care, as I slid on the icy footpath and bent my head against the snow pelting stingingly into my eyes, trying to make soothing platitudes issue forth reassuringly from my mouth, but finding their calming effect was negligible because Little Sister could only hear me over the wind and the traffic if I raised my voice to a shout.

I finally got to my Finnish class, and had one of those days where I had to look up more words than I understood, drew a blank at words I knew we’d already studied, and nearly cried when I couldn’t conjugate a type-1 verb in the present passive. This was one of those days I could not summon any energy or patience; could not find any elation in learning a new foreign language one baby step at a time. I just felt overwhelmed and tearful and defeated, and as I walked down the corridor on my way out a couple of shameful big-girl tears dripped down my cheeks.

I opened the street door to find that during the hours I had been inside, the snow had not let up at all, and was now ankle-deep and rising. A sudden sense of blind fury rose in my chest, momentarily overpowering the despair and pissed-offedness already simmering within. Never mind that we’ve had it easy this winter. Only two months of snow so far, and not even that many days of temperatures colder than -15, and yet, I have just had a GUTFUL of the cold and the snow. I am sick of dragging deadweight strollers and sleds laden with children through thick, porridgey snow and over slippery ice; sick of having freezing snowballs thrown excitedly at me; sick of feeling cold despite layers and layers of clothes; sick of reminding my three year old multiple times a day not to reach out of the stroller and swipe at banked-up, dirty, dog-wee-covered snow and put it into her mouth; sick of trying to be a good mother and forcing myself to remain with my kids in the park long after I’ve had enough of standing there in the cold, knowing that no matter how long I remain stoic, the minute I announce that we’re leaving they will still cry and whine because they would stay, revelling delightedly in the snow and ice, for three bloody hours if I let them.

It does no one any good to rage against the weather, but to hell with it.

I am also angry (in no particular order) about the following: the fact that I love ice cream but lately it has inexplicably turned on me and gives me brutal stomach aches; the fact that I can’t manage to get my house key out of my bag and into the lock without taking off my gloves, and thirty seconds without gloves is a hand-freezing eternity when it’s -10; the fact that our building management has decreed that we must not leave anything in the huge, echoing expanse of space corridor outside our apartment door and that therefore our tiny front hallway is now crammed with a stroller, a sled, an enormous plastic box containing the kids’ outside toys, and the whole family’s winter boots dripping dirty puddles of melted snow endlessly onto the floor; the fact that I would love to work as a lawyer again someday – sooner rather than later - but I cannot for the life of me find a way to do that and still be there for my kids, let alone sleep, let alone have some kind of a life outside work and kids; the fact that I have so much to be grateful for and yet today I feel inexplicably low and cranky and cannot manage to shake it off.

Today it is a bad, dark day inside my head. It’s as though someone has turned the lights off and moved the light switch beyond my grasp, and the culprit is hiding somewhere in the darkness, taunting and mocking me in a soft, cruel voice.

Life may be wonderful and beautiful and a gift, but today I’m royally pissed off at it.

 

Part 2: Wednesday

I can’t quite believe the change that came over me this morning, when (noticing that the room was oddly bright) I looked out of the window and saw The Prodigal Sun rising in the sky.

Suddenly, everything was ok again.

It is gorgeously sunny in Helsinki today – clear blue skies, brilliant sunshine that actually feels warm, and temperatures above zero! This is weather we haven’t had for weeks and months, and everyone’s spirits are soaring. The air is full of hope; infused with the heady promise of spring.

It is early afternoon. I have an hour to myself before I have to go and pick up my kids. I should be doing my Finnish homework, but instead I am sitting in a café, defiantly eating ice cream as the sun pours in through the floor-to-ceiling glass window beside me. After months of bitter chill, right now I am toasty warm. I am actually sweating a little bit. It is thrilling in the extreme.

This day and this sun and the sense of hope in the air have literally given me a new lease on life. This time yesterday, I was the same person, sitting in exactly the same café as I am today, and yet today everything is different. Everything is better.

Life is strange like that.  

All you have to do is wait for the sun.

Throwing in the towel on parenthood

Like this blogger, sometimes I suspect that my inner reserves of patience, which were supposed to last me an entire lifetime, have already been all but completely exhausted after only 6 years of parenting.

I used to be known as a nice, kind person--generous in spirit, sunny and optimistic.

Lately, some days I can still pull off “kind but firm”. Other days, I really understand why some species of animals eat their young.

Picture it: 8:30 am on a Sunday morning. Children sitting companionably together on sofa. Mother smiling as she clears breakfast table, suffused with dreamy images of familial harmony, enjoying moment of quiet joy. Father outside, good-naturedly shovelling snow in uber-macho manner.

Seconds later, older child starts teasing younger child mercilessly, taking a favourite toy and holding it just out of reach. Screaming ensues. Frustrated younger child belts living daylights out of older child and tries to sit on her head. Screaming ensues. Younger child given harsh scolding and sent to naughty corner. Screaming ensues. Older child loudly chastised for teasing little sister. Sulking ensues. Older child grumps off to bedroom only to discover that younger child has, at some point, sneakily unearthed box of Secret Treasures from its hiding place and Touched Everything. Screaming ensues. Mother screams at everyone to stop screaming. Younger child, liberated from naughty corner, stomp-runs away at high speed and catches side of forehead with full force on corner of bookshelf. High-decibel shrieking ensues. Mother makes multiple, futile attempts at holding squirming and distraught child still enough to administer bag of frozen peas to massive purple egg-shaped contusion. Phone rings loudly and insistently. Smaller child is still shrieking uncontrollably; panicked mother pictures a hospital visit, head injuries, concussion. Older child finishes sulking and coolly re-enters room, inexplicably having removed all clothes except underpants. She observes the situation; judging from her neutral reaction, apparently everything is perfectly normal. She suddenly demands to know (in tones loud enough to be heard over little sister’s shrieking) what vitamins are in milk, how do tv shows get to our tv, and when are you going to wrap the present I am taking to Best Friend’s birthday party today? Older child commanded to wait 5 minutes until crisis at hand is under control. Older child bitterly accuses parent of dividing attention unevenly between siblings. Younger child stops crying and imperiously tells big sister to shush. Big sister has spectacular meltdown. Little sister starts crying again.

Less than TEN MINUTES of concentrated life with children, and already I am wondering how I’m going to make it through the day.

I love my girls so much. I wanted them desperately, and I still do.

Some days, though, I am completely overcome by the frenetic, frustrating minutiae of daily life with children. I know difficult moments are fleeting and will pass, I know I just need to remain calm and deal with it and allow the ebb and flow of life to take its course, but sometimes, secretly, I just want to give up. I just want it all to go away. In those black moments, I don’t want to be anyone’s mother any more. I don’t want to be responsible for anyone but myself and my own selfish needs. I find myself wishing to go back in time to when I was a carefree twenty-something who washed and blow-dried my hair and carefully applied makeup every morning, had long, chatty brunches with girlfriends on Sunday mornings, and prided myself on being able to handle multiple responsibilities with consummate ease and a smile on my face. I mean, my twenty-something self would even buy special lingerie to wear for her husband on his birthday.

I love my girls so much, but dammit, parenting is hard work. It’s hard to get right, and it’s even harder to know whether or not you’ve actually managed to get it right. It saps my energy and my patience and my confidence like nothing else. It challenges my inner resources beyond what I thought were reasonable boundaries. At the worst times, forging ahead with the day is quite literally a minute-to-minute challenge.

* * * * *

I wrote all this in a surge of emotion this morning (after my husband returned to the scene, took a look around, and - God bless him - told me to hide in our bedroom for an hour and have some time to myself). Of course, right now, as I read back over the rush of truth that poured out of me just hours ago, already my girls are making a liar out of me. One has set up her doll house furniture all over the coffee table and is endearingly letting Sylvanian Families rabbits take turns on the toilet (“Here you go, little one! Pisssssss!”) The other has just fired up some Maroon 5, and is shouting “I got the moves like dragon!”

No way could I ever do without them, and no way do I really want to go back to the days when I only dreamed about having them. They are hard work, but the very best things in life are those that are worked for the hardest. I am also pretty sure that, for all my whining, if I had to I would do my DARNDEST to find further, even endless resources within myself to help and protect and fight for my children through the most serious or challenging circumstances. We all know that we could and would, and my heart goes out to parents have already done just that - parents who really know what it is to give their absolute all to save their child from illness, hunger, danger, or evil.

My secret, dark thoughts of throwing in the towel are, after all, only thoughts. They are fleeting. They too will pass.