Keeping my head above water

I started this Lent with lots of enthusiasm. If that makes sense, that is. I had the schedule I was going to work on, I'd figured out some adaptations for my own household, it was gonna be great. I'd have the house clean(er) and (more) organized come Easter--yay!
Then five visits to the pediatrician in six days; nebulizing ever three, then four, then six hours; four kids going on antibiotics twice daily and two of them with eardrops four times daily; unseasonably warm weather making everyone want to be outside (and thus slack off on chores); so we got behind and haven't caught up.
I'm feeling overwhelmed by STUFF. We have more books than we'll ever read, more movies than we'll ever watch, more toys than they'll ever play with, more clothes than we'll ever wear out... I don't think we'll have more food than we'll ever eat but that's only because we regularly consume quantities of that. Maybe it's because I watched an episode of Hoarders last night but I'm really feeling this glut of abundance that can only happen in First World countries.
Like forgoing vaccinations, by the way. Here in the US, we can debate shots versus ill effects, government conspiracies and autism risks, mercury poisoning and ethical production. In places where children still die from polio, they don't have that luxury.
Back to my original thought, such as it was. I look around my house and think of so many things I want to do, and wish could happen, and even could get rid of and simplify... then the baby cries, or a diaper needs changing or bickering needs refereeing or someone needs help with their school. Repeat ad infinitum until the end of the day when I just want to crawl in bed.
Even on my Kindle where entire collections of classics can be found for free, I still feel that in my head. Carrying it around. Perhaps that's my own little neurosis as they don't take up any physical space.
Purging doesn't take any money, just time and effort. And the motivation to do it.

So today is a fresh morning. Perhaps I will be one bag of donations lighter at the end of it.

Simplicity

The noise is sometimes unbearable. Not just the juggling of six children, their conversations and questions and requests and disputes and... The other noise. The one that never goes away and starts with, "I really should be doing..." or "After I'm done with this, what can I start next?"
Multitasking can be both a lifesaver and a route to insanity. The washer, dryer, and dishwasher running; the littles napping; the big 3 doing school or chores; folding laundry and mentally planning what to do next, or writing the shopping list or dinner that night. It's the standard of my life and it's become second nature. But where is my silence?
Yesterday, when Husband was home ill but not contagious, I went with just Thomas to pick the Big 3 up from art class. I arrived and luckily saw a familiar mom; she told my kids I was outside waiting. So there I was. Three kids safe and involved in an activity I'm not leading, two others home with their father, the youngest asleep in his car seat behind me. Instead of simply sitting still, contemplating the quiet, saying a prayer, what did I do?
I pulled out the girls' handbook and started looking over badges we could do. I could have prayed a decade (God gave us 10 fingers for a reason), I could have said something spontaneous, instead I started looking for more work to do.
It's a sickness.
Saturday, when getting Elizabeth down for her nap, I lost my temper. For some reason, yelling "Lie down!" is counterproductive when dealing with a 2-year-old. After she finally wound down, I went and got my Rosary. She was drifting off when I hugged her for a moment; she started to say she wanted to get up and I shushed her. "Mama's going to say her prayers. You go to sleep," I told her. Her eyes slid shut.
Despite my many distractions on what should be done to tidy their room, I managed all five decades. It was almost penitential which tells me more than anything it's been too long.

So now I have a patron saint?

     I've written about this before--the insignificance I feel sometimes when I compare myself to certain others. Those who get mentioned in my alumni bulletin, for example. There are kids younger than I gallivanting around the globe bringing potable water to obscure villages in developing nations, or making huge scientific breakthroughs related to various plagues. (I'm not exaggerating. One of my former students is currently in the Peace Corps working with his wife in South Africa.) Or they're making these thoughtful and generous philanthropic donations or improving literacy rates in Appalachia.
     Whatever. I'm just trying to keep my baby happy, my school-age trio on-task, and preschooler and toddler alive. Monumental global accomplishments and curing cancer will have to wait.
     Will the small acts of kindness I do ever amount to much? Will my kids even remember? Will she remember how I tried every week to make sure she had tights for ballet, or he how I made sure his uniform was clean? How I would try to serve one of her favorite dinners the same week I made her least favorite to please her brother?
     In the one episode of Leverage I've watched, one of the characters said something like, "One child is a human interest story; a thousand is a statistic." All of those tiny acts are statistics that get lost.
     I was thinking about this some weeks ago. We'd arrived early for Mass and the ambulatory kids were walking around looking at the church--something they still do even though we've been there many times now. I contemplated the painting above the altar of the church's patroness, St. Veronica. I think she's one of those early saints that got "grandfathered" in before the Church started getting official about who was or wasn't and thoroughly examining miracles, kind of like St. Philomena or St. Christopher. Did you know the saint referred to most certainly wasn't named "Veronica"? She's called that from the translation of true image--I'm not up on my Greek, but I think it's vera ikon. According to Catholic Tradition, she wiped the face of Jesus as He carried His cross. An image of His face remained on her veil. Her act of kindness isn't even mentioned in Scripture, but is part of the Stations of the Cross. What else she did in her lifetime, whether she had children, even her real name is lost.
    That kind of humility, to be remembered two millenia later for one simple act, is a saint that understands motherhood.

On remembrance

My aunt's funeral was today. It wasn't a traumatic event for me or the kids; she'd been quite sick for a while so it wasn't a surprise; I hadn't seen her in years besides. She and my uncle, my dad's brother, lived 4-5 hours away--it wasn't any family issues, just modern life and distance.
Distance, and not just geographical, creates a different dynamic for the events at hand. As my daily life is going to be rather unchanged, my mind goes other places. Metaphorical distance allows for more introspection, more generalities. I think of other funerals, other cemeteries, other memorials.

I think of my father and siblings who some years, like this one, don't have grave blankets. Yes, I had a new baby, and we didn't have a car that would transport the whole family until he was over a month old, but we still could have traveled in two--it's not that far. It's 19 years that my dad's been gone, 44 for Mark, and 36 for Heidi. It's so very difficult for me to go to the cemetery. It's a mess of guilt that I have these six healthy children and others don't, it's the memory of guilt of not going more frequently. Denial is pretty strong--"It won't happen to me!"

It's also the very clear memory of the pain of loss. Among the shiny mylar balloons still lofting with the helium, the headstones with toys unfaded by the sun, are other headstones without. I'm sure there are some where nobody has trimmed with clippers or knelt to say a prayer in decades. The child was laid to rest and shortly afterward, a job transfer took the family out of state. Who knows if that child had siblings, or if their parents are still alive? Is there anyone to remember these little ones?
Then there are those who don't have headstones at all. I recall Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and JFK Jr. were cremated and their ashes scattered at sea. Where does his sister go to mourn? Equally everywhere translates to my mind as nowhere, and that thought fills me with more horror than I can articulate. I can understand the practical sentiments toward dead celebrities, I suppose; how long to keep the flowers? What to do with all of them that fans bring? That is temporary, though. You can cite the visitors to Elvis' or Marilyn Monroe's gravesites, but I don't think Oscar Wilde's is as overrun as it may once have been.
So tomorrow I'll wake up and take the troops for the little guy's four-month well-child checkup. I'll give the spelling tests that should have happened today, they'll catch up on their math. Laundry and dishes and vacuuming and diapers. I think I'll dedicate tomorrow's work to those who have nobody who remembers them. Maybe one of them will become a saint. At least one person whose real name isn't recorded is; that's a whole 'nother post.

Is this thing still on?

I get posts wandering around in my head--really profound, thoughtful ones that I could expound on at my beloved husband/captive audience for an extended car ride, like my dad used to do to me--and then I hear screaming, splashing, or suspicious silence. None of those are good.
Then they evaporate and I can't even come up with a status update.
They're meaty ones, too. Like the trail of irresponsibility going back to the Lambeth Conference in 1930 to the Occupy movement of last fall, as exemplified in the mediocritization of our public schools, the decline in general morals and self-control, the creeping acceptance of abortion as the nadir of abdication of responsibility, the pinnacle of societal goals being to take it easy instead of betterment of self or society, the tragedy of the American divorce rate due to selfishness on the part of parents who then transfer that belief onto their children who end up eating vegan salads in tents and pooping on police cars...
Yeah. See?

So is it worth it?

Sometimes I'm really, really bad.

Not "eat a whole cake" bad. Bad-wife-and-mother bad.

I will throw my beloved husband's clean clothes--that *I* washed, dried, and carried up in the hamper--right on the floor. Why? To beat him to it. If I leave them on the bed, hoping he'll take the time and initiative to put them away, he will simply shift them from the bed to the floor. Why did I put them on the bed in the first place? Because I have at least three other people's laundry to put away--Elizabeth's, Tommy's, and my own. I still have to sort and fold Lou's, then hand him each pile with specific instructions: "Put this in your pants drawer." I assume my loving, otherwise-attentive, intelligent husband will respect my time and energy and put his own clothes away.

I will not clean up after my older kids. I will let their rooms get almost dangerously impassable in their floor clutter of laundry, books, toys, and various other items before I harangue them to clean it up. I will not remind them to bring down their laundry for weeks, until they run out of weather-appropriate clothes. Then I will leave them to stew in their frostbite or sunstroke, waiting for the realization of "Maybe if I put my clothes where Mom will wash them, I wouldn't suffer like this." It doesn't happen.

It's a good thing they obey the rule of "No food in the bedrooms" or we'd have more ants than an African tree up there.

Right now there is a shirt with pasta sauce on it on the floor of the girls' room, along with the past 3 days' worth of socks, underwear, and other apparel. The shirt went there at the end of lunch today. I'm debating letting it stay until one of the following: a) it starts to stink, b) she notices, c) it comes down on its own. It probably won't get that far but that's where I am today.

I leave their clothes on the floor of the bathroom until it has more than their closet. They will stay there even when the perpetrator has to dig through them to get the shoes on the bottom of the pile. Nowhere will it cross the child's mind to get rid of the pile, nor will the child who tidies the bathroom address it.

Why? This is the really hard part. They don't see it. Well, yes, their eyes take them in, but those things don't register. They really don't.

I remember the commercial where there was a laundry basket floating down a flight of stairs, a broom whisking across a floor by itself, that kind of thing. The idea was the person (mother) doing those tasks was invisible. Sometimes I feel silent too, for as often as my words are ignored. It doesn't matter if I'm answering a question, either. I may as well be just moving my lips.

I just had to get that rant out of my system. Thomas needs to be fed.

At least *he* appreciates what I do.

Been a while, I know.

But I have to get this out of my head.
She needs to be fed. He needs his diaper changed. The table needs clearing. She needs a bowl, then cereal, then milk poured. He needs reminding to come to the table. She needs reminding to get dressed, then her teeth brushed. She needs her hair braided. She needs feeding, then her diaper changed, then cuddling. He needs a sippy of milk. He needs reminding to get dressed. They all need reminding to brush their teeth. They all need hugs and blown kisses when Daddy leaves.
The dishes need washing, the laundry needs folding, the table needs clearing. She needs help with her math, he needs help with his spelling, she needs to know the weather before she can dress. He needs a diaper changed--"Boo den!" he says, turning around--because he "pooped again."
Lunch needs preparing, table needs clearing again, she needs feeding again. Lunch needs to be eaten. Diapers need to be changed again, they need refereeing over space, he needs a nap and she needs feeding again. Toys need to be put away, dishes need washing, they need help with geography or reading or science. Dinner needs planning, bills need paying, they need reminding to put on soccer uniforms and then a ride to their game. He needs his shoes tied. Diapers need changing, water bottles need filling, snacks need to be carried. She needs entertaining, eyedrops, and a sweater. He needs his harness and leash.
They need a ride home, and baths, and pajamas, and a story. He needs his medicine again. Then they need reminders to brush their teeth again and to go to bed.

And tomorrow, they'll need it all over again. I know someday they won't need me for all of this. They'll grow up and call weekly, and I'll miss these days of ever-present needs. Right now, though, it's exhausting to be so needed.