My kids beg me all the time to tell them “baby stories”. They love hearing about themselves as babies and all the adorable things they did. Of course, to them, the worst moments of my life as a mother often fall into this category. It’s a little bit of redemption for me every time a story that was horrifying at the time grows softer around the edges with distance. Bless you, children!
None of the things I tell them would likely stand out to you, reader. Everyone with children in their life somewhere knows that what is precious and adorable and unique to you will make anyone else’s eyes glaze over as you retell it. (Well, except for the story of my baby son, who would only smile at a Diet Pepsi can…another day, another day).
But what I don’t tell them is how hard it was to be the mother of babies, then toddlers, then preschoolers.
Even as I am reminiscing with them about the cute way he said things like “us un ip!” (“Just one sip!”), or laughing over the time she had us searching the house in a panic while she hid under the table with a handful of candy…in the back of my mind is the itch of a memory of how tired I was. How tired. In every way. How I used to wake up to the alarm buzzing, look at the glowing numbers with fuzzy eyes, and mentally calculate how many hours until I would be able to go back to sleep.
Yes, it was hard. But slogging through that “hard” together built a bond between us that is sacred. When I look back at those times – pictures, videos, or just the stories – I don’t discount the difficulty of what it was like in our lives at that time. But the difficulty isn’t the story. The joy is the story. The survival (because, in a blog like this, I’m not even going to get into everything else that was happening in our life during baby- and toddlerhood!). The laughter.
Over the past week, most of my conversations with people have quite frankly been awful because the subject matter has been awful. Babies with cancer. Marriages falling apart and practical matters to consider. A mean, mean kid using the guise of “friend” to try and destroy Fourth Grade for one little girl. Tough conversations about the sacrifice and commitment it takes to achieve excellence and decisions about whether it’s worth it.
What I cling to, through these conversations, is the hope that many years from now, the sharpest and most memorable takeaways will be the joy. The gratefulness at people’s giving spirits and helpful actions. The assurance that friendships see us through the absolute worst. The look sideways at a dinner table at the person with whom you’ve walked through absolute fire and have somehow come out, slightly singed but intact, still walking. One foot in front of the other.
I hope today, whatever awful thing is happening in your life (and I’m sure something is!), you can take a minute to look backwards. See how time and distance have rewritten a situation that seemed literally the worst. Then look at the awful thing happening now, and try very hard to see it as you will days or weeks or years from now. What is really worth the mental and emotional energy, and what won’t even show up on the radar. It’s nearly impossible to do this, I know, but I’ve learned to look at the situation and say, “it seems very bad – the worst – but next Tuesday, I will look back and realize that I made it. I made it!”
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