pronounced [WUR-go] as in "wur go-ing crazy"
Last week I prayed for calm. I prayed to be a loving mother as I glared at my small children, their blinking blue eyes looking back at me, curious boys wondering where their nice Mommy had gone. Who was this shell of a Mommy sitting before them, threatening to crack right there on the living room floor?
The accumulation of stuff – especially after kids arrive – is a blessing and a curse as are so many things in life – wine, dairy, sunshine, toddlers, marriage. The new trend toward minimalism is shouting at us to wake up and see past the shiny lie of consumerism, but I can’t seem to hear the call over the roar of my 72” LCD, the battery-powered four-wheeler screeching through my kitchen, and the gigantic new-to-us Suburban sitting in our three-stall garage.
It’s Saturday morning, and I’m trying to warm myself from the inside out with a mug of lukewarm coffee. We’ve just returned from watching my oldest play football in the unforgiving air of late October, observing from the sidelines in our bag chairs, using our two youngest children as human blankets to shield us from the cold.
In a house filled with penises, I am determined to keep my feminist spirit alive. This is not easy. It feels insurmountable some days, especially as my boys age and I find myself shielding my sons’ eyes from everything that makes me female while they prance like tiny peacocks on display.
Marriage is hard. People who lead you to believe otherwise are hiding vodka bottles in the crawl space or a secretary on the other side of town.
I have nothing left to give, and it's only Thursday. My husband doesn’t come home for another 12 hours and the last 72 have been…heavy. I took the kids grocery shopping on Monday. By the time we got back, one was crying, the other was starving, and I juggled their needs, the 19 bags, and my piercing headache with little to no grace. I finished multiple loads of laundry and tried to piece our house back together after an exhausting weekend. I stole time away from my kids to crank out some freelance copy and served leftovers for dinner because who has time to cook? Stay-at-home moms do, right? Wrong.
My Facebook game is strong. I have a cover photo boasting a towering mountain range from our last trip out west. There’s a profile pic with three happy children and a smiling husband.
I’m learning to parent like I’m dying. Tomorrow, or next Tuesday, sometime soon. Death is imminent. And really, it kind of is. In the grand scheme of things, the hundreds of millions of billions of souls floating back and forth from Earth to sky, our death is imminent. We are all dying. Every day. Every... Continue Reading →
A few summers ago, I convinced my husband to join me, our rapidly growing fetus, and our two-year-old and ten-month-old boys, on a 3,500 mile, 13 day trek to Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. This Canadian adventure was the very first of what has become our annual (sometimes semi-annual) family road trip, these unruly journeys that have cemented themselves at the very top of my favorite way to travel.
