She Never Lost a Sock

She Never Lost a Sock

This past weekend was busy but good.  In fact the past several weekends have really been good.  I have spent most of the time at the house with Frank and the kids.  There have been basketball games, birthday parties, triathlon trainings, hosted breakfasts, coffees with friends and time together.  It has been happily chaotic.
One thing I have noticed are my changing expectations of myself and life in general.  In the past I have been so hard on myself and by default those around me to have the perfectly picked up house, the perfectly put together dinner for guests, the over the top offering at the classroom party.  I put a lot of pressure on myself and Frank and the kids to get it just so.  They could never do it the way I really wanted it done so then I would just try and do it all myself.  Then I would be resentful because I wasn't getting any help and there wasn't enough time and then I was disappointed in myself and all this would spiral.  All this annoyance and resentment and time spent trying to make it just so meant I wasn't spending so much time with everyone else.  Frank has been trying to point this out to me for years, but I couldn't hear the message from him.
It is still my instinct to clean the kitchen before I start to cook because I want to start with a clean slate and it is always going to be my instinct to tidy up.  The difference I am starting to see now is that I have different expectations of how things should be or more specifically I have nearly no expectations.  Things are just going to be.  If things need to be tidied up then everyone can help and it doesn't have to be my way or if there is no time, then there is no time and things won't get tidied up.  Teaching the kids to take care of things at their level is important too and if they put their clothes in different drawers than I would, then at least they are learning to put them away and does it really matter anyway?
Cooking for the family is something that I really enjoy.  Living alone in the apartment I hardly ever cook.  I came to realize that cooking for me is an expression of love and nurturing.  What I hadn't noticed was that others enjoy it as well.  Frank has always enjoyed to cook and I had pushed him out of the kitchen over time.  Then the other weekend we were making meat balls together and as Frank has such a natural ability to do, he included Wren in the task and showed her how to mix the meat and eggs.  She stood on a stool at the counter and plunged her washed hands right in and started to cackle with delight.  She was elated, she chatted away and was so proud of the result.
A few weekends later she and I made some pumpkin chocolate chip bread and for the first time I didn't rush her through the steps because I was trying to get onto the next task and thinking it would be much easier if I just did it myself.  We chatted and laughed and measured and mixed and it was lovely.  She came home later in the week with a story she had written in class all about how she had baked this gingerbread with her mom.  She wrote this long essay about it and how happy it had made her and how much fun she had had with her mommy and how much she loves me and she got a high score from her teacher.  She gave me the essay and told me to keep it.  I read it and wept because she tells me in the essay that I am the best mommy in the whole world and I didn't expect to hear that this year.  So what was Wren able to teach me that Frank has been trying to tell me for years?  Slow down; enjoy the moment; nothing has to be perfect...  They say that when the student is ready the teacher appears...
Frank has a basket in the laundry room for unmatched socks now.  I commented on it a while ago and Frank said he finds he is always losing socks when he does laundry.  He mentioned that I never lost socks and that he didn't know how I did it.  Honestly who cares.  I don't want to pride myself on the tracking of socks, I don't want my tombstone to read, "She never lost a sock."  I want my children to say I taught them more than organizational skills and time management.  I want them to say that I made them feel loved and listened to and validated like their father does.   So this past weekend Wren and I went to an animal shelter to volunteer because that is her passion.  We baked cookies and I had her do the whole thing from reading the recipe, to getting the ingredients out and separating the eggs.  She was thrilled.  After I showed her how to level the baking powder I put it back in the can and said, now you do it and she laughed and said, "Wow, Mama, you are really letting me do the WHOLE thing!" It took us a lot longer than if I had done it myself, but we made more than cookies, we made memories.  She also did some chores with me and when we took the recycling out I asked her if she minded helping me get a couple of things done before we baked and she said, "It's like Mary Poppins, you can make anything fun if you do it together."