The Be All and End All

I made it home today in time to do the nightly routine with the offspring; even managed to squeeze in a game of Baby Monopoly before bedtime. When I stumbled out of the bedroom at close to 10pm, light-headed with hunger, my first thought was to get some food into my system. My helper chooses this opportune time to tell me that the diapers that I had bought last week were too big, and by God, I felt like a criminal.

I started to explain that I had bought a size up because they had run out of the usual sizes, but I stopped mid-sentence because I just couldn’t finish what I had wanted to say; seized by a sense of failure and despair so deep that it brought tears to my eyes.

I know I don’t spend enough time with Aoife, and I know that the guilt I carry in me causes me to interpret every innocuous comment as an accusation. I’m wound-up so tight that I sometimes lie awake at night listening to the sound of my teeth clenching, and trying to still the nervous twitch in my fingers. It’s not funny.

It seems as if I hold the clues to every mystery in the house – the mystery of the missing keys/wallet/phone (I can really empathise with St Jude sometimes); the mystery of the miraculous self-paying bills; the mystery of the magic auto-packing schoolbag... and the list goes on. It's hard to shed the entire Superwoman persona, and just exit to the wings, away from the stage lights and the unspoken demands of an expectant audience. It's harder to admit that the greatest pressures come from within, and the one that's shouting the loudest for me to run faster, jump higher, do more, and just be more, is really none other than myself.

All kids think of their parents as omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient... and we break our backs to be that way, dreading the inevitable day when our children will realise that we are only human. But I realise how important it is for me to try to be kind to myself - to shrug off the little misses, and to celebrate each hard-earned hit. Because only when we recognise and accept that all of us are imperfect beings who are capable of numerous blunders, can we learn, and teach our children, how to bend and not break.

Learn to... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel