Mothering

I've been exhausted lately. I find it hard to wind down at night, and I wake up in the morning hardly feeling rested. The crazy period at work is hopefully over for some time. And I'm in what seems to be my annual spring funk, so down on myself and whatever it is I'm chosing for this thing called life. None of this makes for good mothering.

Last night I was too tired to make my son supper - I told him he had to make his own. He made himself an almond butter and jam sandwhich. Then his father calls on skype, and my son proceeds to tell him the entire story of him having to make his own dinner because I refused to lift a finger. Now my poor mothering skills are public knowledge to the person I am most vulnerable to attack by.

After my son went to bed, I microwaved some popcorn for dinner and watched a sappy romance movie on TV (on a Saudi channel so all the good kissing scenes were cut out), and then went to bed bemoaning the fact that my life is so lacking in romance. Its a good story line when I'm in a funk, keeps me there even longer!

Around midnight, I'm deep into REM trying to figure my way out of some pseudo-realistic work problem and my cell phone jingles its notification for a text message. A text message at 10 minutes after midnight, it must be a good one! Still, I hesitate in my semi-dreamlike mindframe. I finally reach over and open the phone. The message reads, "Happy Mother's Day" and the sender is Omar's babysitter. I register it somewhere as a sweet gesture, although at the same time wonder it its strange that it arrived at such an odd hour.

My son's babysitter has been a lifesaver - always reliable, always keeping my son happy, and taking my sometimes erratic schedule all in stride. I have many things in my life right now that are lifesavers that I know after 37 years I shouldn't take for granted - a good babysitter, a trustworthy and good housecleaner, a kind and normal landlord, a safe and beautiful home, friends who don't judge, a job that pays well, a car that gets me from point A to point B, a healthy and relatively normal kid. There were plenty of times in my life when I lacked some of these, and a few key periods when I had none of them. And still, I feel like the world's crappiest mother on Mother's Day.