I’m Living in the Moment (I Can’t Find Today’s so I’m Borrowing Last Week’s)

It seems like everywhere I turn around lately there’s some sappy reminder that you need to spend time with your kids (NOW!!!) because before you know it, they’ll be gone and you’ll be a decrepit old lady who misses the smell of gym socks and the sounds of children screaming at each other. Okay, so it’s worded a little differently than that, but I’m not kidding about being inundated with the message.

It’s on commercials.

It’s in poems.

It’s on my FaceBook wall when I finally catch a minute to stalk, I mean, catch up with my family and friends.

What these well-meaning people fail to realize though, is that this just kicks my mom guilt into high gear. Suddenly I’m worried that all my kids are going to remember of their childhood is that I nagged them to pick up their dirty clothes instead of remembering the field trips that I chaperoned or the impromptu park trips or themed birthday parties that I killed myself over. (More on THAT later.)

And I know that I’m not alone either. There’s a gaggle of moms, wide awake in bed at night, second guessing everything they said and did with their precious progeny. It’s classic nurture versus nature. We nurture so it’s in our nature to worry that we’re doing it right. (Or wrong. Or not as well as Kevin’s mom. But definitely better than that wacko on the news who duct taped her baby to the wall. Poor thing. I wonder if the baby's okay now. I wonder if I’m okay. I wonder if my kids are ok. I just know the youngest is coming down sick. I know his signs. <Nods to self> You just watch, he’s going to get sick. Then he’s going to share with his siblings. They’re going to fall like dominoes and then time it so that someone is sick for the daughter’s graduation. That’s it, I’m going to start giving them all Vitamin C tomorrow! That’ll nip it in the bud. Oh, that reminds me, I have to….) And down the rabbit hole we continue until we pass out from sheer exhaustion.

It’s not that we don’t want to spend time with our kids either. We all have that fantasy of a perfect outing with our family. Like going to the park and having a picnic with foods that they all like and eat, followed by a board game where we have some good clean family fun like a 1950’s "Leave It to Beaver" episode. (Google it Generation Z.) Everyone’s laughing and having a good time, the kids are happy, the parents are happy, and we will build memories that will have everyone sighing fondly over “that one time we went on that picnic”. We build it up in our head and convince ourselves that our family is actually normal enough to accomplish such a feat.

So we try it.

And then reality kicks in.

The picnic was sabotaged by nasty biting insects who made it impossible to sit down. That was fine though since the youngest kept trying to drown himself in the pond because he wanted to go swimming making you and your husband keep jumping up to chase him, the teenager decided that she’s only vegan this week and wouldn’t eat anything other than fruit, and the wind kept blowing the paper plates around, adding a nice garnish of dirt and grass to the food. You forgot to take your allergy pill and sneezed for 2 hours straight. By the time you made it back home, everyone needed a bath and you and your husband needed a bottle of wine or a couple Zoloft. (Or maybe wine with a Zoloft chaser.)

And a lot of the time, it doesn’t even have anything to do with our unrealistic expectations of family gatherings. Sometimes we go in with our eyes wide open, knowing that there’s a 78.9% chance it’s all going to turn into a shit show, but we just can’t seem to find enough time in our days. There’s work and after school activities and shopping and cooking and laundry and somewhere in there we even manage a few hours of sleep. (Occasionally.) It’s not that we don’t want to have meaningful moments, it’s that we are so freaking busy living our lives that there’s no time to live our damn lives! (Ironic, isn’t it?)

But this is why God gives us grandchildren. It's like our do-over. By that time, we've managed to successfully raise our own kids and have had the opportunity to remember what sanity is. Which is probably a good thing since our kids will be on that carousel and need us to lend them some of ours. (Usually in the form of babysitting.)

So I'll try to be living in the moment more. It might not necessarily be THIS moment, because I seem to have misplaced that one. But I think there's one from last week stuck between the couch cushions, so I can use that one. (I just might have to dust it off a little first.)

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