An Other Day

By Megan

There are days, my friends, when all of my reflection and appreciation and joy and love aren’t enough to keep me from being frustrated and irritated and DONE with motherhood. A five year old girl has enough sassiness and attitude and drama than this Mama knows how to handle sometimes, and Peabody? Oh, that boy picks days out of a hat to just not like ANYTHING. At all.

Yesterday their sassy, dramatic, I-will-NOT-be-happy-ness lined up together and by noon my jaw was clenched and the muscles in my neck and shoulders twisted into knots. Fortunately Al’s patience was flowing while mine ebbed and he minded our little dyspeptics while I escaped for a hair appointment.

When I came home hours later, nobody looked or sounded any happier. As I climbed the steps into the kitchen from the garage I could already hear Peabody wailing from the bathtub. I headed to the kids’ bathroom to help out and encountered Bean wearing a scowl so sour it looked like her face turning inside out.

They are, after all, just little human beings. We all have our days of sweetness and congeniality, and we all have our … other days.

All the same, when I finally lay Peabody in his crib, he sighed a deep sigh of contentment, wrapped one arm around the stuffed puppy Bean and I chose together for him before he was born, and raised a smiling face up off the mattress to catch the kiss he knew I’d blow to him, like I do every night, as I turned in the doorway for one last look at my baby boy. And all the same, when Bean’s sleepy shape traipsed down the stairs to me for one more kiss and hug before she fell asleep, she fit perfectly into my arms, and her head tucked itself under my chin because it knew that’s where it belonged.

They have their other days, these kids of mine, but even those days, they go to sleep completely sure of my love for them — comfortable, cozy in the routines of affection that first established themselves on days much less other than this one.

My love just IS, to them, no matter what. It’s not like the fickle rainbow after a storm, which shows itself only when conditions are right, but like the sun, shining on, a constant, conditions be darned.

It just IS, and they know it, on a good day, or any other day at all.

And while THEY really need not feel gratitude for that fact, I am thankful beyond measure.

Megan also blogs at FriedOkra.

4 Responses to An Other Day
  1. Anjie
    May 24, 2010 | 8:50 am

    Aw! 🙂 Very sweet.

  2. Jeni
    May 25, 2010 | 11:12 am

    We have those days around here, too. Unfortunately, it seems like our OTHER days all coincide – me AND the kids – and it makes for a rough time. But you’re right, at the end of the day, after tooth-brushing and book-reading and blankie-tucking, those precious little blessings reach up their arms for one last hug, and can sink into the mattress secure in the love that surrounds them. And seeing their finally-peaceful, quiet faces…so can I.

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