Which means the number of Friday mornings we have left for just the two of us are numbered.
I think he knows this, even though four year-olds aren't great at the concept of time. It's clear, though, that he wants to get every possible second of joy out of these mornings together.
This morning we decided to just lay low with a lazy day. We made smoothies, we played basketball, soccer, football and legos. We snuggled and read books. It didn't hurt that the weather finally decided to act like fall and we could enjoy the outdoors without sweating the whole time.
I was able to treasure it.
Which is pretty huge for me.
As a one on the enneagram, my brain tends to be going a mile a minute. I can simultaneously be writing an email in my head, lamenting the injustice of the world, planning the meals for the next week and reminding myself what I need to do to pack to be ready for my 4 am shift tomorrow and still be playing with my child. But when my mind is racing like that, I'm not fully there. I know that about myself. I have a tendency to feel urgently that I need to be accomplishing something. Checking things off lists. DOING. Making something better.
So to be able to play with him all morning, to see the huge dimple grin on his face, to laugh alongside him when we both fell down trying to dribble around each other and to do it all without worrying about what I wasn't accomplishing...that is a rare gift.
Just last week a friend of mine messaged me after a particularly impossible day with her daughter. Apparently it was some kind of national daughters day (and no, I cannot keep up with all the "holidays" these days) and she finished the drama of the day by turning on facebook and seeing post after post of people making loving and generous proclamations over their female offspring. And it was like salt in a wound, because she just couldn't do it right then. We lamented together. This parenting thing is the hardest role we've ever played.
And just a few days later, when national sons day(really? is this new this year?) came along, I was in the thick of it with parenting a child who was having adverse reactions to a drug, being sent home early from school for behavior issues, another one who ate something requiring a long call with poison control and a number of other significantly challenging issues and well, I was done. There was no treasuring of parenthood. No smiling pictures of us to post. I felt, like my son so eloquently put recently when he couldn't be nice to his brother, that "I only had mean words in my mouth." I knew that to post anything that night would be disingenuous. Not that I don't love my kids. But some days, oh man, some days...this road with SPD, ADHD and ODD is LONG and HARD and TOO MUCH.
The thing is, the longer and harder and "too much" things feel, the more I disengage. I let my brain race. I just get through the day accomplishing what I can to keep us all churning. The homework, the dinners, the job, the doctors appointments and therapies, the scheduling and sports. But I don't enjoy the parenting. When the hard moments vastly outweigh the good ones, sometimes I am so distracted by the recovering that needs to take place, I miss the actual sweet moments.
So, today I am grateful. Things aren't necessarily easy yet. But it was this moment of grace, where I was able to leave my lists to the side and just engage him. He loves quality time, he loves when his mom or dad just stops what we are doing and make him the center of the moment. Those moments are hard to come by when you are the youngest of three.
So, we played. We played and laughed and chased and tickled and cuddled and read. And as he sleeps upstairs and we wait for his older brothers to come home, I feel thankful for the gift of it. And hopeful that we can have more Fridays where I make the choice to see him and to be the kind of carefree mom he needs me to be sometimes.
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