Paddling

I am a duck on a pond lately. On the surface I look like I’m holding things together well, but underneath it all…

Life, it seems, is always in a state of flux. Generally I’m fine with that. How monotonous would life be if it were ever constant? But lately, there’s a little too much moving at once and I feel a tumbling within; the unmistakable notion that sooner or later I’m going to outwardly panic.

When it comes to parenting I’m in a constant sea of motion, tackling one phase which is inevitably followed, and sometimes even blended, into another. When you have two children it makes things all the more complicated; a constant switching of gears to attend to the needs of both. Add in my son’s new found lingual ability to make his issues known, and things just got a hell of a lot more problematic. Example: The eldest can no longer take a toy from her brother and get away with it. I’ve got a little dude wrapped around my legs, pointing and crying, “YaYa!! Ball!!” YaYa, as he calls my daughter, has the ball in hand, and knows that I have no idea if she actually took it away from him. She will look me square in the face and proclaim her innocence of the offense with a swift, “I had it first”. With one kid’s word against the other, add the role of arbitration to my growing list of responsibilities.

The constant bickering of two little ones, the house and all the things that can and do go wrong with it, the cleaning that never stops and will only promise to get worse if ignored, the ever constant laundry, the bills that need to be paid, the new kids shoes that require purchase, the mice invasion that I can’t even begin talk about right now, the two birthday parties for my children that are looming around the corner and are as of yet unplanned, and the enormous relocation at my office that is about to take place, which will have a mammoth impact on all of our lives…

Deep breath. That last one? That one is that final proverbial straw on the camel’s back. My work-life is about to alter drastically, and only time will tell if it will be for the better. As I have now started diving into the programming that will facilitate this colossal change, it’s becoming all the more real. This is happening. All the other aspects of my life, where I go through the motions every day (with little understanding of how it works except to say that my kids are clean, fed, dressed, my house isn’t totally falling apart, and day to day everyone seems relatively happy), they will all just keep on going. They will just keep evolving the way they always do, and we will have to find a way to make this other massive alteration fit.

With all this upheaval forthcoming, toting with it all this worry, all this uncertainty, all this not knowing how well I’ll cope, I get that infantile yearn to run…hide…get away from it all. Not be Mommy, not be the steadfast employee. Not be who I am. Obviously I get over it, but when it comes to change, I have a tendency to privately panic…it’s just a question of how and to what degree. For my face to the world, my outer adult has more power over the inner child. That little child, however, she’s unsettled, nervous, and she’s been creeping. With everything else going on right now, I’m adding to my “to do” list the need to keep her in check…to remain a duck on a pond.

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