What Do You Mean I’m Not Supermom?

I was stretched out on the couch with a cup of herbal tea Sunday night. I was going to watch the new episode of Mad Men and then head to bed when it was over at 11pm. Early for me. Ed paused to say goodnight and I stopped him to say, “Thank you. Thank you for this weekend.”

He looked confused. I could see him mentally thumbing through the weekend’s activities: nursing one last kid through the final stages of a stomach bug, bickering about housework, writing up a new list of chores for us to ignore, grocery shopping, the tyke hockey finals, brunch with his mom, a trip to Canadian Tire for t-ball gear and a scooter, cleaning up the yard a bit, burgers for Sunday dinner, kiddie bath and bedtime. Pretty uneventful, all in all, and I was damned happy for it.

Because two nights earlier I was brought to tears trying to cook chili for dinner while all of the children ran around screaming like banshees and time marched mercilessly on.

You know how everyone tells you to take time for yourself? To make sure your basic needs are taken care of so you’ll have more to give? Yadda yadda yadda. Whatever, I always thought, I have super endurance powers. I don’t need sleep.

I could drive the entire five hours from Ottawa to Toronto while Ed naps because he needs to rest. I could then stay up late writing a well-received post that I was also vilified for because I was too bleary-eyed to properly consider how people might feel. I could wake up early and spend my morning’s worth of paid childcare dealing with that flack and thus have to stay up late again to catch up on work. I could then squeeze a haircut into my childcare window so I might look half-decent for a meeting with a Toronto Star photographer and then realize at the last minute that I don’t have the car key to drop off the kids at my parents and have to walk the girls to the bus stop to get Colum and frantically text the photographer and my dad and figure out how I’m going to make it there.

I could pretty much run on adrenaline for an entire week, I figured, trying to juggle a million different responsibilities and look good doing it. New haircut!

So there I was trying to defrost ground beef at 5:45pm because some kid asked for chili last week and dammit, I should be making more home cooked meals, what’s wrong with me, why am I so lazy? And the kitchen was a disaster zone and I kept yelling for Colum to go upstairs and do his homework and Irene was crying about wanting more TV and the toddler was running around wreaking toddler havoc and the ground beef wouldn’t cook fast enough and I couldn’t even get the cutting board washed to chop up the cauliflower I always add and the dishwasher needed to be emptied and filled and I was tripping over toys and papers and play jewelry and stray socks and odd rain boots and I said, “NO, YOU CAN’T PLAY WITH THE TABLET.”

My brain was running at some souped-up, caffeine-addled frantic speed and all the things I’ve ever wanted to get done kept looping through with the utmost urgency. Emails to write, parties to plan, shopping to do, bills to pay, posts and stories and novels to write, laundry, dishes, toys, window washing, gardening, home renos, baseball games, swimming lessons, book proposals, grocery shopping, pest control, taxes, homework and cooking dinner. Why would it not cook?!

I was sobbing over the stove.

Mercifully, Ed came home then. He kept the kids away while I finished dinner. I served it two hours after I started, at 7:45 pm, only 15 minutes before kiddie bedtime. And then I left the room, went upstairs and passed out.

I slept. I slept and I slept and I woke up when Irene threw up in bed and changed her sheets and brought her a bowl and went back and slept some more. It was wonderful.

It turns out I’m not supermom after all. I think I’ll try to remember this for a couple weeks.