Tuesday

I was right. Today was better. In fact, as far as Tuesdays go, this one felt oddly familiar in that one-too-many-snow-days kind of way. All three kids ignored the schedule I furiously formatted and created yesterday. I was desperate to find a way to make their lives feel normal. 

They need structure! They need school! They need to feel secure! 

Who am I kidding? That schedule and those needs were about me and my need to control the uncontrollable. 

So, in the end, they ignored my scheduled requirement to be awake, present, and accounted for by 9:00 a.m. They rightfully slept until 10:30 and we let them. Sleep is good for the soul in troubled times.

I sipped my coffee and understood that my meltdown last night was my anxiety taking over. It got big and out of control because despite my best efforts, my kids were frightened, unsettled, and pissed off.

And who can blame them for being angry, really? They have every single right to be furious. In the space of a week everything they know has changed. Sleep away camps are tabled, that Doja Cat concert G and her friends have tickets to see? The one D dutifully volunteered to chaperone? That’s not happening. And poor K will never know that there was to have been a surprise party on Saturday for her eleventh birthday. I don’t care if it sounds dramatic, my soul aches for them. I don’t want this for them. 

I want J to have his Friday night pizza parties at our place. I want G to ask for yet another sleepover because she can’t stand being away from her friends. I want to hear K play her oboe in her first springtime concert. 

At 11,13 and15, these kids are just beginning to understand the meaning of trust and beauty of freedom. Even though for G, middle school has been an unbelievably challenging time for all of us, we know how she thrives on being social. J should be following up on his first job applications and learning to drive. K should have been blowing out birthday candles with her best friends last Saturday. 

Love your babies and try to remember how it was to be 15, 13, and 11.