Kids at School. House Is Empty. Now, It’s About Mom.
I‘m sitting here in my makeshift office, big kid shamelessly sitting on the couch watching Looney Tunes on this gorgeous late-August day in The Maritimes and we are both daydreaming a bit about what the world is going to look like next Wednesday. It’s been an insane amount of change that she and I (and the rest of our crew) have weathered through since the announcement of moving to Halifax hit the family airwaves in May. We waffle between “Oh my goodness, totally amazing” to “Cripes, this sucks” and everything in between on what could now be considered a fairly consistent schedule of emotional wooooooooo.
But, with Quinn in preschool three days a week and the knowledge that second grade in a new school universe is about to take over the big kid’s world, the emotions are finding more of an even plane and we glance across the room at each other knowingly. Mhari grins sweetly. She’s got it dialed in. Wednesday indeed brings with it an unbridled sense of freedom – for all of us.
There’s a part of me that thinks I should be mildly ashamed and a bit embarrassed that I am so looking forward to a house, a workspace, a block of consecutive hours in which the only person in my family I am responsible for is me. But, I’m not.
The kids, they don’t even have one ounce of guilt about it. They know that the last four months in which we have spent every crazy waking (and sleeping) moment with each other through an unholy amount of beautiful, eventful, stressful, emotion-testing and in the end more than a little magical changes in our lives need to end.
Quinn, with more than a bit of glee, tottles into the room at preschool every morning now, tells me how she is going to paint and play in the water all day before hugs and a sweet goodbye.
Mhari, as nervous as she is to be accepted into the fold of a tight-knit, small downtown city school, gets that “Get me the hell out of this house” glint in her eye every time school is even mentioned. She’s got her backpack stocked and her lunch packed. I swear she’d already be on the road for the 5-minute walk three blocks to school if she thought she could stretch the jaunt out over a couple of days. Her heart is full and ready to let new friends and new experiences in. I’m so very excited for her.
A handful of folks have asked me “What are you going to do with yourself with the kids gone all day? Won’t the house feel terribly empty?”
My toothy smile-filled response includes a lovely list of my daily doings and a “Hell yes, the house will feel terribly empty. That’s the point.”
I love my kids – more than I even imagined possible. They have been my world for the last seven years. Yes, I had a business that allowed me the space to live and work in the land of adults. But, really, everything I did revolved around them. It was and is absolutely one of the most soul-feeding parts of life.
But, I also know that giving and receiving as a woman, apart from my kids and my family, is what rejuvenates me to keep giving my whole heart to those sweet people who I want to get the very best of me.
I’m so excited for me!:)
The Robin list is full of things that I have been putting off for so very long under the guise of being Mom. Nothing crazy like losing 50 pounds or writing a novel – those are just dreams that are better left for when I’m asleep. There’s all that work stuff that has got to get piled in there. But, otherwise, my vision is all about sweet bits of self-care:
1. Hot coffee at a favorite spot, which may even simply amount to in front of the the computer working.
2. Reading at least a chapter of something meaningful every day – I haven’t read for myself in so long.
3. Random acts of “Please know how much I love you.”
4. Going to places I would never go with my kids. Once a week. Gotta find my people.
5. Eating food my kids would never even touch. Oh my.
6. Doing my hair. Putting a great outfit on. My personal mantra is “Hoop earrings mean I meant to wear this.”
7. Music. Lots and lots and lots of music.
There’s a ton more. But, really my great vision of Wednesday mostly revolves around the hot coffee and a quiet house. It seems nearly unattainable, like an elusive love just out of reach. But, I know when I walk back home from dropping Mhari off at school, sun sparkling through the stained glass in the front door of a house that is all mine until 3:30 p.m., I will sigh as if breathing out a breath of rediscovering myself. Then, when everyone piles through that door, backpacks hung on hooks, lunch kits dumped in the sink, books on the table later that day, I can give them the best of me again.
Category: INSPIRED ACTION, On Motherhood
About the Author (Author Profile)
Robin Rivers is Our Big Earth’s Publisher and Sr. Partner. Able to survive on coffee alone. Often can be found leaping tall buildings with the help of great friends. Predisposed to odd hats and the color orange. In love with imagination, her kids and that crazy guy who married her.Subscribe
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Robin, I can so relate to your grin when people ask about what are you going to do with yourself all day. My son will start kindergarten on Tuesday. But by Sept 12th he will be in school 8:45 – 2:35 5 days / week. Three of those days I work. But the other two – I don’t. (I thought about picking up more hours but to be honest I need to pick up my self first.) Oh my, I am bursting with glee thinking about the consistent time when I can do what I want to do not what I have to do. I made it. Kindergarten will start and I am coming back. Even better Mum than before.