The ebb and flow

I have had an introspective week...a somewhat unproductively introspective week.  Meaning, I have been doing a lot of thinking without a lot of problem solving happening, yet.
I have a really hard time putting it out there when I am struggling with something.  Not  because I have an aversion to showing weakness or that I have to maintain that I somehow have it all together.  It's because admitting it just doesn't help me.  Don't get me wrong,  I wallow and I complain but it's to a select few that are used to my dumping...sorry if that includes you ;)  I have a tendency to pull in and hunker down until I feel on top of my own mountain again.  It's just how I am, how I cope, how I move from one side of something to another.
So here's what I have been struggling with this week....get ready, it will blow your mind.  This situation is hard! Having all of my kids home with all sorts of new expectations is definitely a challenge.  I'm sure my sarcasm is not lost on the millions of Moms around the world that are struggling with the same thing I am. 
The reason that this frustrates me so much is because this is my dream situation, except for the pandemic part of course.  My dream is to raise a family in the social/home structure of the 1800's.  Pioneers that grow our own food, educate our own children, drive the wagon into town for a church picnic every once in a while, but with modern conveniences like penicillin and epidurals.  You get the idea.  At home, with my entire family is where I want to be but I'm finding that I just can't quite pull it off to the degree I wish I could.
I am a homemaker, a home engineer, you know the bit, the maid, the chauffeur, the teacher, the chef, the financial advisor, the referee.  I've been doing it for 18+ years.  Looking back I think that there are times that it did it fairly well though I'm not sure I recognized it in the moment.

Normally I would compartmentalize, prioritize.  But it feels impossible to even do that.  It's just a big sloppy soup with a little of this and a lot of that.

I have more time than ever before but also the the least, a constant line of people requesting my help with little to no break.  I have a really hard time letting things fall by the wayside, though there has been plenty of it because it's just not possible to do it all.  I know that sounds like the most obvious revelation in the world but it's a hard one for me to swallow because I chose this.  I chose a big family-I want to take care of them and meet all of their needs and not being able to sounds irresponsible somehow. 

In talking with my sister in law the other day I realized a couple of things.  She has a talent for articulating what I cannot, it's one of the things I admire most about her and why I often go to her with my burning questions.  She was saying how she wished that she could sit and talk with her grandmother, or great grandmother.  I would have so many questions! I think that what I've been missing is the "essence" of why it's important to me.  Is it because I didn't choose to do it, right now, like this? I'm not sure if that's it or not.  I mean, this is what I want to do.  I recognize that each woman feels a drive and pull to do different things, and I completely respect that and honor it.  Mine has always been to be a Mother.  To do this.  I think that is where the majority of my frustration actually comes from, the fact that this is exactly what I want and yet I can't find the rhythm.  Maybe there is no consistency in a gig like this.  That's a terribly frustrating prospect for a type A like me.  I have spent years learning how to be OK with the fact that mothering and housekeeping is a messy job.  Things are never as perfectly organized or smooth as they could be in my mind.  I have learned a great deal of patience over the years.  I have spent so many years working on some of these weaknesses.  I have felt so proud at how far I've come from a frustrated young Mom who lost her cool more easily-I have learned so much and come so far and it feels frustrating to be back at that level of intolerance.  I feel like I have regressed and I'm back in a house of little tiny kids that demanded so much of me physically and emotionally.

One of my very favorite books is Little Heathens.  It's a memoir of a woman that was a child in rural Iowa during the depression.  It's kind of like a Little House in the Big Woods for adults.  There's not really a linear storyline, she just talks about what life was like, how they did things and how things worked.  She loved her childhood.  Very little is mentioned about the depression because it was just life and the way it was.  She points out that as adults her sister remembers things very differently but it makes me love the author even more.  She just embraced the hard work, the process, the life.  I love it.  They were strong and resilient.  I mentioned in a previous entry how often I think of the pioneers and families, namely women from centuries past.  I admire what they were capable of, surely I can emulate that ability at least in a small degree.
I felt like I was doing a better job at all of this three weeks ago and suddenly I woke up last week and it wasn't working and we weren't accomplishing anything.  I know it's a matter of taking stock of what is going well, of the things that are working.  Like any stage in parenting or life we just have to re-evaluate and make adjustments, hold on to what works, tweak what doesn't, even though that may change from week to week.

We were talking to the kids the other day about this opportunity.  It's one of the many pep talk/lectures we have had about finding the amazing things that can come out of a unique and historic situation like this.  We have been thrown into a situation that is so unique.  For our family it's a chance to figure out the very basic existence of what it most important to us, our family and our faith.  Everything has been removed, all the extra and we have been left with the chance to figure out how to be together, how to live with the ones that are most important to us.
I want so badly to succeed at this.  I feel like it will be one of the most awarded opportunities of this period of our lives, maybe in our entire lives.

 Sometimes I ignore everything else that would be productive and I hyper-focus on a task that is less important but helps me feel "finished" with something, like organizing a closet or cleaning out a cupboard.  This week is was making masks for all of the kids.  Do I think they will need them at any point? No. I don't.  And I had to let go of feelings of guilt that I haven't been sewing stacks of them for hospitals or nurses in need.  The truth is, I can't even finish the ones I made because I have no elastic and not much fabric (*see instance last year when I cleaned out one of those closets mentioned above and got rid of all the fabric I didn't need or love.)

 We have had beautiful weather most days and I love to sit and watch the kids play.  Yesterday I laid in a hammock, totally exhausted from not completing my list of tasks, and watched my family play catch in the yard as the sun set, following a delicious dinner of homemade lasagna and bread sticks that I made with the help of my oldest daughter.  I will say that this whole experience has reinstated by ability to plan out and actually make dinner almost every night of the week.  I had all but stopped because our schedules had gotten so busy and I just hated cooking, but as of late we have been having actual family dinners of actual meals.  It's been nice.

Shopping is becoming less frequent and much stranger.  The CDC recommends that everyone in public wear a mask, in addition to the other precautions in place in most stores (staying six feet away, not approaching the checkout, etc.) It all just feels weird and yet it's not as hard as I would expect to just adapt and do what you gotta do.  I have only filled up my car once in the last two and a half weeks, so that's pretty cool I guess.

In short, it's fine, it's all fine.  It's weird and it's uncomfortable and we are far from perfect but that's life, right?  I kind of don't want to figure it all out because then it will be over and "normal" life will go on, whatever that may look like in the coming months.  My goal is to have a little more consistency, a little more progress, and a lot more contentment in the process.