On Frustration (Again) and Mindfulness

Like every other Mama I know, I have been feeling overwhelmed.  I remember when The Boy was born, I thought that the craziness would end someday when he was no longer an infant, and I would be left with calmness and stability.  But now I realize that life with children is just chaos.  All the time.

Emotionally, I keep looking forward to a day when I can just relax, knowing that the laundry is done, dinner is cooked, and the house is perfectly organized and decorated.  But intellectually, I know that day will never come.  Be here now.  I get it.  How many times have I written about this?

I just can’t believe the busyness of life that children bring along.  Not only in their seemingly endless energy, but in the sheer amount of work that they entail.  And I love it.  I love being a mama and I feel that for the first time in my life, I love my job and I am good at it.

But I just can’t seem to finish what I set out to accomplish.  And I have to remind myself that I am feeling a little more frustrated than usual because we are just coming off of nearly three weeks of sickness in our little family of four, and I am worn out.  I’m just coming out of that place where the only things you can do are those essential to survival: cooking, baths, and maybe some laundry.

And I know that if I look back, I actually do get a lot accomplished.  But I never get enough accomplished, it seems.  Isn’t that human nature?  To always want more?

Even though the weather is not very fall-ish where I am, and I’m still running my air conditioning most days, I am internally feeling the pull of autumn.  The cooler mornings, the few red leaves in my driveway, the change in the daylight.  I am feeling that pull inward.  The pull to go inside, literally and figuratively.

And those few moments when I can remember to just let it all go–and just be fully present in the moment–they are magical.  And I seem to magically have endless amounts of patience.  It’s a small miracle, really.

The other day The Girl woke up from her nap, and I went to her and picked her up, and rocked her to ease her transition from sleeping to awake.  She seems to wake up crabby from her naps most of the time.  Sometimes I am frustrated by her grouchiness, and try to get her to go play so I can finish whatever it was I was working on.  But that day I just somehow didn’t.  She had taken a nice long nap, and I actually felt like I got a lot accomplished, and I wasn’t as anxious to get back to it.

I rocked her.  I sang to her.  She slowly came to and then we just spent time together.  We chatted, played a bit.  Then she asked me to paint her toenails, so I put on some music (my Madeleine Peyroux station on last.fm) and we painted our toes.  It was so fun and so sweet.  And I realized that in that moment, I was happy sitting on my filthy floor just being with her.

How is it I get to share my life with these amazing little people?  Some days I’m floored by the hugeness of it.  My heart feels like it’s going to explode with love.

Other days, I’m so overwhelmed I feel like I am going crazy.  What’s the difference?

Mindfulness.  It’s the secret to everything, I’m convinced.