Aida

One of the songs on my playlist at home is the following from Aida.  Sometimes, it makes me laugh.  Especially when I'm serving lunch and I hear the following words:

Aida! Aida!

All we ask of you
Is a lifetime of service, wisdom, courage
To ask more would be selfish
But nothing less will do

I don't know, something about that stanza just strikes me as downright hilarious when I'm involved in the "I want water/a spoon/a fork/a napkin/more/less/something else" tasks of mealtimes.

But, when I'm not laughing, the following stanzas remind me that my responses to my children's all encompassing needs/desires/want should probably be addressed a bit more differently than I currently deal with them.

Sometimes it confuses me.  I am supposed to serve others, but dealing with home-life can exhaust me by the end of the day, it keeps me from stepping outside and acknowledging that other people exist. 

People?  There's people out there?

And home-life, despite being for "them" - all those people in my house - is also intrinsically selfish.  I mean, children in these years are almost appendages to their mothers.  They are me.  So taking care of them is really just taking care of myself.  Doing their hair, dressing them.  And so many of the other things I choose to do are not completely necessary. They are things I like to do, but they do not save any souls or solve any world evils.  My house does not need to be as picked up as I have it, it's just that I go slightly crazy if it's messy.  I do not have to teach ballet, but I choose to.  And the girls hair does not have to be done, or - gasp - their teeth brushed. 

And somehow, suddenly, even those other things that are "service" to the people in my home are also somewhat selfish.  So there I am - tired by my "selfish" homegrown tasks - unable to serve those outside my home.  And yet, didn't I just spend the day doing things that I seriously would never have done in my pre-family truly self-centered college life?  You know: diapers, wet-sheets, breakfasts/lunches/dinners (meals are a hate for me... I mean, I'd rather starve than cook or do all those dishes every day - and I'm completely serious).

The never-ending question of what I should be doing is exhausting in and of itself.  What is necessary?  What is good?  What is service?  What is fitting?  What is productive?  What is the needful thing now?

I am supposed to know this?

Says Aida:


It's knowing what they want of me that scares me

It's knowing having followed that I must lead
It's knowing that each person there compares me
To those in my past whom I now succeed
But how can whatever I do for them now
Be enough
Be enough

But, these are not really questions I find myself capable of answering presently, and so it all wanders 'round and 'round my head as I go on, task by task.  I think, however, I should be thinking a little more about the last stanza.  That somehow the energy in it, the purpose in it would help the rest fall into place. 

I know expectations are wild and almost
Beyond my fulfillment but they won't hear
A word of a doubt or see signs of weakness
My nigh on impossible duty is clear
If I can rekindle my ancestors' dreams
It's enough
It's enough

At least, in the magical world of musicals where problems appearing at the beginning of songs can calmly be solved by the end.

Don't they look Angelic?

I may or may not have just put my children to bed one hour earlier than their normal bedtime. And this may or may not be the second week in a row I have done this when Justin went to his Wednesday meetings. (Survival, folks, survival.)

Since I have not taught E to tell time well enough to understand how time relates to the day (she does know she gets to wake up at 7:00 am, but that's about the extent of it) and since I have given the "in the summer we go to bed when it's lighter outside" speech, they are really none the wiser.

(Yet another reason to avoid kindergarten - E might learn that 6:30 pm is quite a bit earlier than 7:30 pm. Bad idea.)

So, why to bed so early? Because I did not want to spend the rest of the evening yelling at them, my exhaustion - not theirs - being the deciding factor. You see, I knew I could not behave for another hour.

I actually have done really well this week with the yelling thing. I have been reading a parenting book that I've read before. (It's the only parenting book I've ever read. I don't do well with people telling me what to do, and I generally avoid parenting literature. It just plain irritates me.) But this book only talks about being kind and generous and using the Golden Rule in your home. These are things I believe in already - so I don't mind the book bossing me about it - but I often don't find the strength to really do them. Still, I find that if I read just a little of this book each day I see more meaning behind the struggle to not flip out when M asks me for the 80 billionth time if she can have a cookie, jump on the table, lick the windows, or flood the toilet.

For fun, Mom, for fun.

But it is harder to be generous than to yell. It is harder to help than to delegate or order. It is harder to hug when I'm yelled at then to send someone to their room. And by 6:30, I am worn out with keeping my cool and trying to - as one Church leader put it - "be the saint."

(Full quote: "If there be need of a Saint, be that Saint." Not that I consider myself anywhere near a saint. We're talking yelling reduction here, the day I accomplish yelling deletion will be a total miracle.)

I knew that I was past my point of no return when I had to say to the girls - I did say it C - A - L - M - L - Y, (between gritted teeth) - "Mommy needs a rest, so you need to sit on those chairs in the kitchen while I make dinner."

This was so I would know that M was not swinging the pictures off of their nails downstairs, that E was not putting every toy in her corner and assigning it a task that no other child could interfere with, or that GQ was not using any leftover toy as a temporary baseball bat (his sisters' heads being the balls).

Strangely enough, considering the screaming banshees they'd been moments before, E and M sat down - E sullen, M happily eyeing the pictures on the kitchen walls - they might swing too, you know.

I left the room for a minute, and when I came back I realized how ridiculous my "sit and face the wall" edict had been. For there - copying his sisters as closely as possible, was GQ.

He had gotten out his own chair, drug it to the wall, and sat down on it dutifully. Then he turned around and giggled at his sisters. As though to say: "Mommy's crazy, but whatever... I'll do it too."

In my defense - is my position defensible? - we are suffering from "almost two-years-old" syndrome here.

You know: screaming, hitting, swearing in baby language, whining and other such fun two-year-old antics.

As an added bonus, E and M have decided that if GQ can get away with screaming in the middle of the kitchen floor they might as well try it too. Why not?

I'll tell you why not.... because you are all driving your mother I-N-S-A-N-E.

(Although you are all very cute after you fall asleep, when I look at you in your baby pictures, and... and... and... when you give me hugs, yes that too.)

See, they are cute.  Really, they are.

Anyway, after getting off our chairs and having dinner, and despite GQ's attempted intervention, crazy Mommy sent them all to bed.

Don't worry. They are happily listening to a book on tape, convinced it is bedtime.

And I am hiding. Confession: I already feel better.

And honestly, an early bedtime never hurt anyone, did it?

Just don't tell the kids that when I shut their window I spied some neighbor kids outside playing games together.