Sorry

Most days it's ok. I get up, and I make breakfast and coffee and answer questions and change diapers and tidy and clean and shop and cook and bandage and smile and encourage and don't think much about the knitting that's been sitting at 12 rows for more than two weeks, the first knitting I've attempted since she was born, or the millions of books I've bought with the hope that I'd get to read them, but I never get to. This is what I signed up for. And if there are days I lay in bed and think Get up, darn you, this is what you wanted, so behave like an adult, well, I'm allowed, some days. Provided, of course, that I do, in the end, get up.

Which is to say: Being a parent means no time for yourself, I know it does. At least, not until the kids are a little older and self-sufficient, and then not much more then. It's such a short bit of time, it's such a small piece of my life, and I think that it's appropriate when your kids are small to sacrifice some of yourself to make sure they get a good start in life.

The time I do get to myself is pretty much only the time when I'm nursing, and even then, it's mostly in the dark because my daughter gets very distracted when eating so we lie together in the dark for 20 minutes or so. She's quiet, I'm quiet, and during those times I read stuff, what I can. But it's not books, because it's not light enough, it's just whatever I can read on my iPhone in the dark. Some of it is good, some of it isn't, but it's better than nothing.

The other day when I started playing a video game on the iPad that The Boy and The Man enjoyed, I was pretty stoked to find something that I could do easily in my time to myself. Something fun. Something that recalled that I'm more than the mom and wife and tidier-of-all-things. It isn't a big deal, of course it's not. But it was fun. I got pretty far, it's one of those games that gets better (and harder) through successive levels, and I did pretty well if I do say so myself.

So when I got out of the shower this morning and my son -- very chirpily -- said "I'm sorry mom (not sounding sorry at all) but I deleted your game!" well, I was upset.

I admit it. I cried.

This morning I was tired. My daughter was up in the night and took a long while to settle again. They both woke up early. The Man is sick, so I'm trying to help him rest but that means I'm picking up the slack. So I admit that I'm feeling really sorry for myself, really overworked and underappreciated and losing of myself. It wasn't the game. It's a stupid video game. It's that everything I have, everything that's mine, is swept under the rug for later. Every. Little. Stupid. Thing. Even the video game.

I got upset and I cried and The Boy got upset and got mad, and then he got madder, and he acted out, and we got madder, and it was a terrible morning. Over a video game. I know. I'm kind of ashamed of it, to be honest. It was a huge to-do over nothing. Nothing nothing nothing.

Not that I am nothing, not to say that. But the fact is that The Boy only thinks of it as a video game he deleted. He doesn't see the rest, he's five. He doesn't see what I give up and go without and if I asked for this and I signed up for it, I am in fact fine with this, it doesn't need to mean it's all gone. I get to keep the damn video game. And I know that someday he'll remember this and say to me, when he's 20 "Do you remember that time I deleted your game and you cried? What the hell was THAT, mom??!"

It's ok. It really is. I'm fine and I'm no longer sorry for myself and I have at least assured, by God, that he'll never delete a game again. He thinks video games are the most important thing ever, now, because he loves them and now even MOM cried over them, so clearly he is right to ascribe importance to them of something akin to deities. It's a huge parenting fail.

But some days, you fail. It's just life, it's just being a parent.