If I Only Had (More Than) a Brain
These are the days of miracles and wonder, of doing everything and nothing.
I am trudging behind a tricycle, eyes watchful and feet wary for uneven paving and stray sticks. There is a baby strapped to my chest and a preschooler pedaling ahead of me. Is he decidedly a preschooler? Can I call him a toddler anymore? He has passed that title, hasn’t he? What was the word people used for this age before preschool was a thing? What would Jane Austen have called a three-year-old?
I want to reread Northanger Abbey. I need to add it to my list. But I need to spend less time on my phone and my reading list is on my phone. Maybe I need a paper list.
My grocery list is on paper. So is my weekly menu. I have to think of four dinners to cook and then I can fudge a night of leftovers and do a pizza. I should read more cookbooks and not fall into such a rut of making the same meals all the time. When can I make time to read a cookbook?
The sky is pure and cold and the baby keeps looking up at the bright cloudlessness and blinking, and I put a warm brimmed Elmer Fudd hat on him but he does not like his hat and keeps trying to pull it off, and I suppose it’s getting too small for him but I have not dug out the next size of clothing from the plastic totes of outgrowns in the basement. There are books I should move to the basement. A birthday present from a dear friend, a book on dressmaking that I want very badly to read but haven’t found the time. I’ll put it with my books on writing, or maybe with my books on sewing. I haven’t sewed anything lately. I wonder if I’ve forgotten how.
While I am driving to the library I put on an audiobook, and I listen to three minutes before my passenger who can talk begins hollering for Daniel Tiger music, and my passenger who cannot talk begins hollering because the talking passenger is hollering, and soon it is all hollering and no book, and I can’t remember what it was about anyway.
Do I work on potty training this week or do I night wean? Or can I do both? Probably not. I haven’t read The Great Gatsby. I should. Oh, the baby’s running a fever. Now the kids are sick. I put two books that were not Northanger Abbey or The Great Gatsby on hold and didn’t get to the library in time to pick them up.
I am tired. I am heavy, weighted down by fatigued muscles, stumbling through the slippery hallway in sock feet at two AM in search of a crib with a crying baby in it. I am free-falling, floating, teetering on the precipice of sleep, desperate to stay awake while nursing, reaching for my phone yet again in hopes that the blue light will prop my eyelids open.
I am a mommy and I am a ma, ma, ma, and I am a wife and a friend and a sister and a daughter and on the edges and in the evenings and when the naptimes overlap I am a student and a writer and a reader and a journaler and a person who looks up from her laptop and sees that there are squashed strawberries under the table that have dried and stuck to the floor, and now I am a scrubber and a mopper too, and the list of books on my phone is still just as long.
“Don’t lose your identity in motherhood,” people say, and I am in no danger of that. I know who I am. I know who I love and what I want and what I believe in. I have hobbies and pursuits and passions, but only one brain to hold it all, and only twenty-four hours in the day to do it all, and I need to make dentist appointments for everyone.
“Mommy, you married Daddy,” my three-year-old says as we drive home.
“Yes, I did,” I say, and then I don’t know what possesses me to add this, but I do: “I wasn’t a mommy when we got married, though. I was just a person.”
“WHAAAAAAAAT?” He draws out the single syllable in that half-genuine-shock, half-silliness that preschoolers love.
“Nope. I didn’t become a mommy until you were born. And now I am your mommy. And I am still just a person who happens to be a mommy.”
He doesn’t respond to this, but switches the conversation to dinosaurs and annoying chickens, and I am left to ponder how much of me is just a person and how much of me is just a mommy for the forty-five seconds that remain before the car is parked and it is time to unbuckle straps and salvage tipped-over water cups.
I am sprinkling cheerios onto a high chair tray and planning what I will write for the homework that is due tomorrow night and I am staring at my computer screen, brain-zapped, and I am listening to folk songs in a minor key while the rain falls and someone is shouting for milk but not in that cup.
I’m sitting on the edge of the battered blue recliner in the basement, writing in a cheap spiral notebook with a weak dull pencil. I am outlining an essay and a red silicone crab is bouncing in my eyeline, begging for attention on behalf of my three-year-old. I am guilty after a morning of reading aloud seven books and scrubbing spaghetti sauce out of a tiny T-shirt and playing fire trucks and sweeping breakfast crumbles and finding lost balls. I should write during naptime. No, I should catch up on laundry during naptime. I should pay the wastewater bill. I should read that short story I keep putting down. I should sharpen that pencil.
The baby monitor squawks and naptime is over and the wind smothering the house pushes the back door open a little more and I let it flow over me, cool and silent, for just a moment.
This piece of creative nonfiction has been in drafts since March and some of the information contained therein may be noted, by those who know me well, to be outdated. Including references to the weather. Come soon, autumn.
This is so real. Additionally, when I was in that phase, many people told me it was the best phase. I'm sure this is a matter of personal preference, but my kids are all ages 4-8 now and it is GLORIOUS. It does get a whole lot better. Hugs.
The way I relate to every moment of this essay 😭😅 you captured the feelings so well.