Mama-Come-Lately

The other day I read and re-posted Glennon Melton’s excellent screed on the sacred monotony of parenting. And it got me thinking about how I respond when people ask me how things are going or what I’ve been doing.

As she points out, the answer is not actually “wiping bottoms and washing bottles.” That stuff is a given, but it’s secondary to the driving force behind all the chores. In essence, my days revolve around the answer to the question, “What does this baby need?” And I ask that question, silently or out loud, dozens of times a day.

Some days, the answer is as simple as a fresh diaper or a bath. Those are good days that I sail through, feeling like motheriest mother there is. Other days, I try to answer the question, the baby makes it clear that I’ve guessed wrong, and I feel like an utterly unqualified Martian. I mean, really, how hard can it be to help a baby get to sleep? But sometimes, it’s ridiculously hard, and even if the baby has the answer, he’s not exactly coherent when he shares it.

I also ask about my own needs. I tend to need things I can either get easily (chocolate, a laugh, a hug) or mollify myself into waiting for (quiet, sleep, a beer). But again, sometimes I don’t know what I need. And those moments, or afternoons, or days, suck, and I go to bed thinking, tomorrow will be better, I hope.

Then there are the needs of the couple to consider: We need a lot more just-us time than we get. When we do get it, sometimes we reconnect easily, and other times we spend our precious baby-free time reading from different pages of different scripts, our needs colliding and going unmet. Even though I know these clashes are temporary, they’re frustrating.

Last on the list of needs is the house. There is always a surface to vacuum, scrub, wipe, sweep, mop or dust (my least favorite). I try not to worry too much about doing these things on a schedule, but it’s also true that one of the things I need is a certain level of order and cleanliness. And while my husband helps, most weeks I do most of the routine cleaning in between meeting the needs of the baby, myself, and my marriage.

So that’s what I’ve been up to: Managing competing needs as best I can, letting some things go as I move others to the top of the list. It’s hard to explain why, but in some ways it feels like an invisible game of Jenga.

On good days, the tower never falls.