I pop out of bed ….Its 545am. I want to sleep a few more minutes but remember that I have a 7 am conference and need to drop the car off for service on the way as there is a message flashing “coolant low, stop engine safely”. I don’t know much about cars, but that can’t be good.

 I take a 3 minute shower.. Shaving can happen some other day (who knows when) and run.. Back in my pj’s to drive my son to the metro for school. On the way down the stairs I see that Cocoa (our youngest pound rescue) has snuck upstairs and retrieved my youngest child who is now galavanting loudly around the house. This is why my fiancé states “no one in this house likes to sleep”.  My middle child calls out… She’s crying.. Her stomach is hurting her. She wrythes with pain. Goodness me. 

Hair dripping I retrieve the galavanting child and terrorist dog and send them both upstairs to soothe her, run outside, take my son to the metro and return.. Car and conference are put on hold, but have inescapable work duties starting no later than 9. 

This is it for us moms, right? The goal of “life balance”. Always just teetering at the edge of our abilities… But have you ever noticed how your abilities always increase just enough to meet the need?  Women possess innate ingenuity… The ability to figure it out somehow… Someway, when they put their minds to it.

I examine her- as a surgeon— all seems like gastroenteritis.. Then try my best to take care of her as a mom.. Tea..warm shower… Braid her hair… She is sooooo sick… Thin frame racking with retching  and pain. She is begging me to make it better. She asks me how I make the kids at the hospital feel better… I tell her that’s different – they need surgery.. She rolls her tear filled  eyes like only an (almost) 11 year old girl can and mutters “it’s not fair”. It reminds me of when she was 4 and I was getting dressed to go back to the hospital at her bedtime to care for a child with appendicitis. She didn’t want me to leave. I told her I had to, that I had to fix the little boy’s tummy ache and she replied “well my tummy hurts now too”…. Yeah. That makes it easy.

Well that’s life, right? Fair.. Not fair. I see kids with cancer..some treatable, some not… Their working parents thinned and pale at the stress of caring for their sick child while trying to work to keep health insurance and their other children fed and cared for. Their abilities stretched beyond what I consider possible.. But they do it. I see them managing.. Albeit barely.. But they find the strength to support themselves and their children. Not fair. 

I see kids shot … By themselves, by others… On purpose .. By accident because we live in a country of “fair”. Because everyone wants to have a gun, and no one can find a “fair” way to regulate it. I see kids hit by cars, thrown from cars due to lack of proper restraints, abused…

I see them recover, unimaginably resilient… And I see the parents. They make it through,too. 

Life’s little things can seem big… Frazzle us… Cause stress to the point you think you will break. Remember the next time you are about to lose it over an order at a store or a minor mix up at work. The big things, that we hope will never come, must seem insurmountable. Keep the little things in perspective.

No one said this balance thing was easy.  Keep yourself and them safe and as healthy as possible and avoid the preventable big things.. Please keep guns out of your house or lock them up, put your children in the age appropriate car seats, get them their flu shots, get a pool fence and make sure they use helmets when on their bikes, skateboard and hover boards. Like one of my mentors, the late Red Duke used to say “trauma is no accident”.

Life as a mom is like a chocolate cake iced by my 7 year old… Sweet, delicious & beautiful…. But a bit messy. 

❤️