True Confessions of a Mother, Non-Vodka-Oriented Ways of Coping, and Reflections on “Buy Now, Pay Later” Disease

I have my moments when I feel like I can deal amazingly well with stress, and then my moments when I don’t.  I’m not sure if the ability is always there or not, but I have a sneaking feeling it is.  Sometimes its just more difficult to drag up to the surface, that’s all.  Some weeks, I am the Mom Who Floats Upon the Clouds.  Other weeks, I am the Mom Who Tries But The Clouds Throw Thunder.  Like, today. 

We all went to St. Francis for the Episcopal morning service, the five kids and I.  The wiggly bouncy three year old is not so fun to take to a service when I’m operating as a single parent.  Last week he volunteered to take the offering basket.  They let him.  Obviously they don’t know us very well yet. 

So he went down his side of the building, not passing the basket but actually walking up and down the pews in person, stopping in front of each and every one there.  Then he doubled-back and went down the other (already-collected) side, ignoring the hisses of the ten year old boy who had just done that side.  I guess Jireh just wanted to make sure they gave their all.  From the back of the congregation, he carefully looked through the contents of his basket, pulling out the biggest bill, beaming proudly as he held it up high so that the nice deacon up front could see. 

Today, they didn’t ask him to take the offering.  Which I was just fine with.  Things were running smoothly enough, until he decided to throw a little fit during the Lord’s Supper because his older brother dared to touch his Buzz Light Year puzzle.  I was trying to figure out how to get him to chill out, and all nice approaches were met with complete and total rejection.  It’s almost time for me to go up front and I have this kid who’s on the verge of losing it.  

So I whisper that he won’t be getting a mint if he can’t sit quietly.  He says he doesn’t care, he wants the puzzle NOW.  I say, fine, no mint for you then.  He lets out a howl of protest.  I give the back of his arm a pinch.  (Yes, I am the one who wrote those articles about learning to parent in non-punitive ways).  He yelps angrily at me, but then sits down, mostly quiet though simmering, and I’m going up to go kneel with others and eat bread and wine and be reminded of my union with Christ.  Ha.  

I recall that this moment is supposed to be a time of reflection.  I notice that the lady near me has her eyes closed and is looking like she is having a very deep and mystical experience.  My reflection mainly involves squelching feelings of wanting to go sit on my kid.  Then I get up because I have to get back to my spot before WWIII breaks out over a Buzz Light Year puzzle.   

Since I’m in a confessing mood, there are other times I don’t handle stress so well.  I’ve noticed that when I’m weighted down with big issues, some of which are heavy around here of late, it seems like my capacity to handle chaos is limited.  Sort of like half my brain is tied up, busy handling the pain and the sorrow quietly in the background, and so quietly that I don’t know it’s even doing it, until mass chaos occurs in my immediate surroundings and I feel like I can’t take it, any of it, and am overwhelmed way easier than I should be. 

Those are the times I turn into Mommy Drill Sergeant, barking orders at my kids, generally orders involving cleaning up the [insert target area here], now, soldier!   Apparently my ability to handle large amounts of stress is to be attributed to my equally shining ability to mimic military personnel. 

There is something about kids and disaster that I still have yet to fully comprehend, or maybe it’s just that I don’t want to fully comprehend it.  Denial, perhaps.  How can the house be clean, and an hour later, when you look up from whatever it was you were lost in, the house has been transformed into a zoo for orphans?  Neatly combed pony-tails are now Einstienian fuzz balls from the friction of blankets—blankets stripped from everyone’s beds, now being used as robes and headcoverings and being dragged all over the floors. 

Couch cushions have been taken off, taken apart, and strapped onto skate-boards, the boys lost their shirts somewhere and their sweaty bare chests (freshly bathed this morning but now long past smelling like clean) are heaving under the strain of their dog leashed rick-shaw contraptions, siblings being carted around on wobbly plastic chairs delicately balanced on top of the makeshift “taxi’s” like kings and queens on thrones, being dropped off at selected stores for ”shopping.”  

I notice that someone decided that the entry way was a “shoe store,” and proceeded to “buy” many previously-neatly-lined-up-pairs, the left and the rights now strewn here, there, everywhere, and meantime, the tub of Lego’s in the boys room was dispersed and dispensed in a fashion that nobody, and I mean nobody, says they participated in, and in the whir of noise and craze, I am being handed out typed-and-printed slumber party invitations to look over, because, “Mom, I just have to have a slumber party next week…” 

As I stand there, dazed and confused, holding papers while watching my three year old nimbly stepping, like a gazelle, on a mountain of couch cushions, almost missing a key step and nearly crashing to the concrete floor head first (but he didn’t and landed with a smile), and as my brain tries to compute a solution to mass chaos, I realize that I can’t think of anything.  I, someone who always has a solution to everything, or at least an optimistic attempt, am drawing a complete blank. 

So I tell everyone that clean-up time is going to be in 15 minutes, have fun and play nice, and then I go into my bedroom, one of the few untouched zones left out of Taxi-ville (only because they hadn’t thought of including it yet, I’m sure), and I shut the door.  I pull out my guitar.  And try to get through a song, though I don’t, because as I start strumming, my second daughter stands outside the door saying, “Mom.  Mom.  Mom” at five second intervals for what appears to be an unlimited duration of time. 

I let her go a couple minutes because I thought that maybe she’d give up and go away, you know, get the hint that the door was locked.  Maybe notice that a guitar was playing, maybe guess that I couldn’t hear her.  But after a couple minutes, I figure it must be important, because the Mom Mom Mom was not only still going, but it was surprisingly on beat, like she was enjoying it, like she was getting into it, so I stop playing because there was nothing peace-inducing about it by this time and I ask her what she needs.  She asks if everyone can have a couple jelly beans.  A couple jelly beans.  I stifle the urge to scream, and instead politely ask her what she thinks the answer might be.  She goes back to playing taxi-rickshaw-shopping-world.  I go back to the guitar.   

And this all, I promise, has to do with the fact that I was going to order a Wii for Christmas.  We decided not to because, well, ordering expensive stuff long before you have the money to pay for it is what we Americans are good at and what we’re personally trying to get bad at.   Which isn’t to say that I didn’t want to buy a Wii.  I really did.  My local store has them, cheaper than they’re going for on scoured ebay.  Meaning, I scoured ebay for a couple hours for a little while.  Because a Wii would be fun, a Wii would be active, and indoor-non-noisy-non-messy-action is a GOOD thing for an Alaskan mom of five.  In fact, I may cry myself to sleep a lot over the two week period of Christmas break, all for lack of a Wii.   

But there comes a time in the life of any wanna-be budget when the idea of paying things off meets with the reality of paying things off.  Part of the reason we built our home ourselves was to get out of debt.  It’s helped.  It’s helped a ton.  But we’re not out of debt yet.  More like cut it in half.  But the half left is still a big thing and I want out.  So I thought about it carefully, and I’ve decided that, yes, a Wii would be cool.  It might save the couch cushions from being turned into taxi’s.   It might constructively move mass chaos into controlled chaos.  And that would be nice. 

But the couches are all second-hand anyways, and home-made rickshaws designed with dog leashes and wheels make for good memories.  We’re on a budget.  It’s a tight one.  That means all I want for Christmas is a good pair of earplugs and a case of Tension Tamer herbal tea.  And if I lose it and run out and buy a Wii anyway, that’s okay too.  In the long run, it’s cheaper than vodka.