Take Them to the Park

I have worked some hard jobs.  I've mucked horse stalls, been a weekend closer at McDonald's (after teaching English all week), and spent five summers standing on my head picking strawberries, zucchini, and green beans.

None of them compares with being a mom.

It doesn't seem like that much on the outside.  You cook a few meals, run your Dyson once in a while, throw in a couple loads of laundry, read a few books, color a few pictures, and splash in the bathtub.  What's so hard about that?

Now don't get me wrong: I LOVE being a mom.  I love being my kids' Mom. 

But there are days when the very perpetuity of it is draining, exhausting, numbing. Today was such a day . . . almost.

My son is in that delightful independent stage in which the only response when Mom asks him to do something is to do . . . nothing.  I call his name.  No answer.  No footsteps.  No break in the conversation he is having with "Sharptooth" (thanks to The Land Before Time!).  Nada.

So after the umpteenth time saying, "Please get your clothes on," I follow with, "If you don't get your clothes on, we're not going to Story Hour."  (He loves Story Hour at our library!)  No response.  "Ok, no Story Hour."

Now there's a reaction . . . a fit.  He gets put in time out.  I'm sitting there thinking, "What am I doing wrong?" as the tears push against my eyeballs. 

Then, divine inspiration.  The park.  We live on three acres.  I never take the kids to the park.   I think, "They don't really deserve to go to the park.  They have not done one thing I've asked today."

Then a voice says, "No, they don't deserve it.  But they need it.  And so do you."

So we go to the park.  The kids tear around the jungle gym like they're on holiday.  My little boy tackles the high bars with me nervously spotting every second.  My daughter attacks the slides like a girl possessed.

And I make the decision to spend the time being present with them.  I put the mortgage and the bills and the writing assignments and the blog and the social media in a closet and close the door.

I watch my kids.  I play with my kids.  I enjoy my kids.  We sing "Higher, higher, much, much higher!" as I push them on the swings.  I swing on the swings!  We run around the infield of the baseball field. We admire the two ospreys nesting on one of the light poles. 

On the way home, we pass LicketySplits.  I think, "We should get ice cream . . . .no we shouldn't . . ."  I turn the car around.  It's lunchtime, we've only had a granola bar at the park, and I buy us each a cup of cookie dough ice cream with sugar cones on top for the kids.  (Mine was chocolate peanut butter cookie dough, by the way . . . AMAZING!!!)

When we get back home, I wipe the drips from their ice cream lunches off their car seats and my daughter says in her sweetest voice, "Thank you for the ice cream, Mommy."

And it happens.  For a brief, shining moment my son, my daughter, myself, this day, all our days are bathed in Grace.  And it is good.