It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I don’t know what it was like for all of you that had young children in a pre-pandemic daycare system but speaking on behalf of those of us who are current cohorts in the thunderdome, let me just tell you what it’s like these days. There is no level of vaccination status that can adequately compete with COVID, the Flu, and the souped-up version of RSV that is currently circulating through Buncombe County. Not to mention your everyday average colds, ear infections, foot and mouth disease, or any other what have you that Satan belches forth from the bowls of the earth for us to doge in this live action version of frogger we’re all playing. My daughter’s daycare shut down completely this week while over 50% of its enrolled kiddos are convalescing at home with some symptom or another of some disease or another. And it’s been like this since my two-year-old was born. This is the third time her daycare has had to shut down in order to douse itself in Clorox just to avoid becoming ground zero in the zombie apocalypse that is bound to manifest if the ratio of germs to people becomes anymore skewed than it already is. So, I’m once again housebound with a snotty nosed toddler, but with the addition of a newborn which makes for a super entertaining sequel.

Isn’t this fun?

It’s amazing what I can get done in 30 min if both kids manage to fall asleep at the same time. Even more amazing what I can get done in 5 when they don’t (which is most of the time). If “shortest yet most effective shower” ever becomes an Olympic sport, I’m a shoe in for the gold. I managed to wash my entire self, AND my hair in less than 4 minutes on Monday (fuck a bunch of shaving though; shaved legs have gone the way of drunken all-nighters and my size 6 Levi’s, possibly never to be seen again till the girls go off to college).

But here’s the really cool thing.

I hiked the Camino de Santiago in 2019 after I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Asheville. Every day I woke up at 5:30am, got dressed in a room full of no less than 4 but usually closer to 15 snoring hikers, tossed a ten-pound pack filled with all of my earthly possessions on my back, and walked. I walked until I reached the first eatery with an “open” sign, usually around 9:30 am. I would order a café con leche, some sort of breakfast item (which varied wildly depending on location), consume it, then walk some more. I watched the sunrise every morning. I washed my clothes by hand. I ate what I scrounged and slept in hostels I could afford. Boons came in the form of cafeterías with full breakfast menus or hostels with a coin washer, the cost of which could be split 4 ways to save money and make a full load out of the two changes of hiking clothes carried by most of us. The bummers in the form of eatery’s that offered only packets of old crackers with your coffee or long days hiking 13 miles in the blistering sun with no shade and no amenities (i.e., no toilets or water). You learn really fast to enjoy the little things and to pep talk the shit outta yourself when the days become a slog. And at the end of it all, you’ve got a soul reborn out of the silence of centuries old houses of worship, panoramic vistas of the Spanish countryside, and the sudden knowledge that you are, in fact, a bad ass and can accomplish anything. I realized that the pictures I have, the story I tell, doesn’t necessarily include a full view of the shitty parts because when it’s all said and done, I didn’t bother to record those in full color. I find that when I look back, the shitty days sort of melt into the background even though my journal tells the story of my own loneliness and the occasional deep ache for it all to be over.

When it was all said and done, I chose to emphasize the beauty and deemphasize the ugly.

I realized with sudden clarity as I was falling asleep last night that that has most definitely prepared me for this. Yesterday sucked in a lot of ways, and I could choose to write that story. Chances are it would be funny and chances are many of you would go, “oh I get it. I’ve been there”. But what would be the point? If I had spent all my time bemoaning the cafeterías with stale croissants or the nights spent downstairs on a crappy couch because the epic snore fest happening upstairs had chased me out of the bed I paid for, well the story of my camino would be wildly different than it is. And I like how it turned out. So my pep talk this morning sounded a bit like this:

“Buckle up baby, cause its day 7 of this and you have at least 3 more to go. Just like the Camino, where your one goal was to walk, your one goal today is to parent. If you get anything else done, sweet, if you don’t, fuck it. It’s ok. Your one goal on the Camino was to walk and you managed to do that every day for nearly 42 days straight and you survived. There is nothing more important than parenting these girls – and frankly, it is the single most noble task any of us have ever been granted. Preparing the next generation for taking over the world. So, keep your list short, your temper long, take deep breaths, and for the love of God, make food and drink a priority. Just like the camino, this will be over one day and you can get back to whatever shit you’ve shoved onto the back burner in order to be a mom. But today is not that day sweet cheeks. It’s ok that you’re tired, and it’s ok that you feel lonely. You felt that on the camino and you made it. But you have bacon in the fridge and heavy cream for your coffee which is a hell of a lot more than you had most mornings back then. So let’s cook that shit up and simplify our goals; keep the kids alive and all our spirit high!”

Now, hear me when I say that I am NOT an advocate of pretending everything is fine when it’s not or trying to “I’m ok!” oneself out of things that are NOT ok. That is a form of repression learned in childhoods steeped in a lack of safety that taught us to pretended in order to survive, and FUCK a bunch of doing that. But right now, at this moment, both of my children are asleep and OH MY GOD what a GIFT. Monday Tiziana had the energy and foresight to meal prep TWO meals, so I don’t have to juggle childcare and cooking tonight. OH MY GOD what a GIFT! And my current plans for the afternoon include laying on the couch with my snotty 2-year-old and watching the Grinch together for the 3rd time this week and even THAT is a gift. I am, generally speaking, a ball of energy whose ambition knows no bounds and who is often frustrated by the limitations of this mortal coil on my future projections.

But.

Today is not that day. My soul may have been reborn on the Camino, but it's being perfected in motherhood. And I am eternally grateful, for that.