On the Good Ol' Days

You know that mom who thrives with their kids home? Who would give anything to have their kids with them full-time forever? I am not her.

My basic personality requires an inordinate amount of quiet and alone time. My anxious personality requires even more. Over the past few months, when I’ve needed quiet and alone more than EVER, I have found myself surrounded by my two, somehow seemingly omnipresent, children. In theory I should be clamoring for peace & quiet.

And yet…

As I found myself faced with the decision of sending my kids back to daycare this month, I was confused. Because it turns out I might actually love having them here. All up in my space. Every day.

Even though the bickering makes me want to pull my hair out daily.

Even though I feel like one more bike ride around the parking lot might be my undoing.

Even after 106 days without any alone time.

I don’t want to let them go.

I don’t want the little voices to stop hitting my ears (even though they sometimes sound like nails on a chalkboard.)

I don’t want the nose-kisses and annoying little strangle-hugs to stop (even if I feel like my skin is crawling when they touch me sometimes.)

For any parents of grown children who aren’t living this right now, I equate this time in life to an amplified version of how you can’t wait for your kids to go to sleep all day, and then go in their room to kiss them when they finally do. Because you somehow miss them. (And because parents are basically masochists.)

So despite all of the hard adjustments, the terrible moments, and feelings of defeat during the past few months, I begrudgingly admit that I might be happy here. I have grown. We have grown together. Through concrete. I can see with a painful clarity that this moment in our life together is special, and I’m not ready to let it go.

I won’t love every moment, I can tell you that much with certainty, but I will happily stay suspended here a little while longer. I will spend 55 more mornings catching bugs in the front yard and 55 more afternoons diffusing blowups between brothers.

Because 55 more days will somehow be both too much and not enough of what I already know to be the good ol’ days.