#040122: Pizza for dinner

Thoughts on being a mom

I didn’t make dinner last night. I was too lazy — or, no, that’s not it, I just didn’t have the time. I used to say that I don’t like cooking, and sometimes, I really don’t. But I think that mostly when I would say that I just wanted to make myself different from the blueprint I understood of How It Could Be.

I spent yesterday trying to write but by the time I had to pick up my kids, I’d actually gotten further from the point where I started. This is usually how it goes these days. For months, I’ve been coming to the page in good faith, with a big bunch of fluttering thoughts. Some of these thoughts, I never planned to get out but somehow they end up on the page. Others, I’m dying to arrange but they’re stubborn and sticky, almost glued to this fog that denies it knows how to break. The thing is, I used to cut the fog all the time, so I know that it can break.

Words always come out at first, but I end up taking them back or moving them around or putting them aside and hours go by and I’m still in the leggings I put on to go for a run (I never ran) and there are 4 tabs open on my browser with unfinished business (never checked out the groceries, scheduled the dentist appointment. I forgot to refill the prescription!) and I might be getting somewhere with the moving words but it’s no use at this point, I’m almost late. To get my kids or make dinner.

So I shut the computer in haste, with my head still there trying to break the fog while my body barrels towards the next task at hand. It has usually gotten pretty dark by now — I’ve been punching down at my words since they first came to the page and if then it was manageable and I could push through it, by now, the boxing gloves have gotten too comfortable and they’re still sucker-punching at the gut of the reflex ball that has long surrendered.

It is such a low blow.

The whiplash is often pretty intense, I show up at school or in the kitchen, feigning good posture but really dejected; there’s nothing to show for the energy out. No food for thought or dinner!

Yesterday, I said forget it. It’s been too long and too quiet and dark, I shook off the undone and took them for pizza. Told Abie to pick something up.

At night, after we showered together (my back was hurting from hunching over their bath), I got dressed in really high heels that crunched my toes but it felt kind of good — like the way a teeth cleaning does. I put on a jacket and black velvet pants and as my head re-attached itself to my body, I kissed my clean kids good night.

Abie got home just then, so I kissed him too and left.

It was the first time in a long time that I felt free. Not because I was leaving, I like being home — but because I broke the rules. I never meant to start following them in the first place. So I didn’t make dinner or make myself crazy, just took them out for pizza, then put my wings back on.