Night and Day

For as long as I can remember, I have loved the nighttime.  As a child, yes, and now even more as an adult.  When the sun tucks itself in just to the west and the moon rises in its place, I feel my very best.  Satisfaction washes over me like warm water.  I get giddy, almost loopy, and something inside of my brain clicks and clicks like the the wheel immediately before the Showcase Showdown.  Click click click click click...I can feel the happy vibration within me as I make dinner, fold a basket of laundry, feed these kids, do baths and jammies, and prepare my family for bedtime.  The Witching Hour, I have been known to call it, only because my click click clicking induces anxiety, and of course that is the part of the whole 24 hours when all hell seems to break loose.  People have meltdowns over foods they either do or do not want to eat.  People lose their minds over spills.  People get cold and think they need blankets at the dinner table, and Kindles, and stuffed animals, and toy firetrucks, and those miserable Wonderloom rubber bands, too.  If it's not one thing, it's another.  And if one kid is melting down now, then calms down, good.  But you can bet dollars to donuts that in 5 minutes, another child will proceed to have a conniption fit about something as dumb as the wind blowing in the wrong direction.  Yeah...and I am not kidding.

The only saving grace I have at that point in the day is to just keep my internal stopwatch on the ready, and repeat this on loop in my brain:  It's almost their bedtime...almost bedtime...almost bedtime.   

One of these days, I am going to really regret wishing my time away.  These nights that are a struggle, I know I am going to miss them some day in the future.  I must learn to be more self-regulating in my dealings with my family.  After all, they need and deserve the best version of their mother, not some panic-stricken control freak trying to chop!chop! keep everyone on some semblance of a schedule.  In reality, I'm just going through the motions and checking off a list as things fall into their natural order, all the while the nighttime like a a carrot on a stick, this huge, intangible thing I simply cannot catch and savor.  Maybe I DO look forward to the dark of night when I can be alone with myself to write, listen to music, and eat stuff I don't want to confess to eating, like Moon Pies and maybe some Reese cups.  But that's an entirely different conversation.

Anyway.

Yes, one day I will miss this chaos, and rather than abhorring it for the circus it seems now, I will trade it in for a sentiment of missing and appreciating it all for its beauty and the smiles I have had, or wish I would have let myself enjoy this all along.  I need to simply sllloowwww dowwwwn and realize this temporary state of noisy and complete whirlywind disorder is just that...temporary...but the little personalities I am helping to shape will last forever.  Wow.  Forever is so...indefinite.  Stretching for miles, the personal equivalent of looking out onto the horizon while right in the middle of the ocean.  If I continue on this path of handling my kids, they, too, will grow up with anxiety and a perpetual feeling that being still is the same as not doing anything constructive, and this very reason alone is a reason good enough for me to make an effort to change my habits, my role, in this whole thing, this horror show known as Parenting.  

I believe kids often mimic the things they see or hear.  I know mine do, anyway.  And I don't want them to be an indolent ball of nerves now, or ever, for that matter.  Therefore, I am going to make it a goal of mine to SLOW DOWN with my kids and try and be more nurturing.  I certainly don't want to enable any weaknesses, but I don't want to avoid their needs in such a concerted effort that I am too rushed to give them my love and attention.  

Yes.  Mommy is going to be like Night and Day, kids.  That's the way that I am.  When I see something within myself that bothers me, I do my very best to try and do better.  After all, being responsible for my kids' forever really IS a big responsibility in the grand scheme of things.  How I respond to my littles will affect how THEY respond to life.  It will affect their school and work careers.  It will color their outlook on this world in which we must survive.  My response to my children will play into the cycle, after all, and they will interact with and treat their children much in the same manner.  It will affect their relationships with their chosen companions.  I want my kids to have healthy coping skills and the kind of self-confidence and self-sufficiency that will enable them to be winners at life, not victims or creators of problems.  

Night and Day, dark and light, slow then fast and then slow again.  But loving them as best I can, all day.  I'm on the right path to even recognize there is a problem, and I am the only one who can change me.  

I am up for this challenge, and I will conquer it.  I will thank myself later for choosing to slow down.  I may have unfolded laundry and dirty floors (my current situation, ahem...) but at least my kids will know I am trying to make real time for them.  After all, kids don't want stuff.  They want their mothers to listen to them and take an active interest in what they are saying and doing, and not just rattle off some lame statement and send them on their way again.  Night and Day.  And the nighttime is NOW.