the hardest thing i'll ever do

Being a single mom to an infant is the hardest thing I've ever done. That's not necessarily saying a whole lot, because I am not really one to "stretch myself" or anything like that. Nevertheless, it is by far the hardest thing I've ever done, and I'm hoping it will be the hardest thing I ever do. Lying awake at night, wondering how on Earth I will ever pull off a successful attempt at parenting this tiny person who needs everything and whose needs are my sole responsibility to meet...facing the prospect of the next 18 years rearing this child...possibly all by myself for the duration.... That's really hard.

But the good news is that I am doing it anyway. I am scratching out a life for my son and me. It's not always on my terms and it's definitely not the life I ever wanted or planned, but I'm doing it. He is healthy and he is very happy and bright and secure, and I still have most of my hair. The inability to cope has been more about the circumstance of parenting solo while battling crippling fear than the actual child being parented. I knew it the minute I knew he was coming along that this baby is special, and he really is. He is my gift.

But motherhood has been really, really tough. Through no fault of Gabriel's -- he is the easiest toddler I have ever met and I am not just saying that because he is my child and I am blinded -- it's been almost too tough. I am too hard on myself. I second-guess too much. I am sensitive to anything remotely less than perfect and I am quick to assign blame and failure to myself. Compounded by a chronic lack of sleep and an ongoing health concern lately, my resolve and capacity have been faltering. I've stalled out, emotionally. On the outside, I'm moving along; on the inside, my thought life is a wreck.

I went through a period this summer during which I doubted everything, most off all my ability to do this parenting thing. Everything looked like failure to me, from my inability to provide enough for myself and my son to be fully independent and autonomous, to inability to get laundry folded and put away within three days of being washed. I just didn't think I could do it. I set a high bar for "success," whatever that is, and then I vilified myself for not meeting that standard. No matter that the standard is tough for a fully functioning family led by two adults in a healthy marriage and I am doing it on my own. Nevermind that my kid is a great kid. Nevermind that I am doing a good job as a mom and anyone who knows anything about kids has made it obvious that they think so. I couldn't -- still can't -- escape the constant feeling that I am not good enough, that I most assuredly will fail, and that whichever decision I make in this moment will ultimately set the trap that will break my leg down the road. I expect to fail. I anticipate it. And I try to move forward despite "knowing" that, sooner or later, something will turn into disaster.

I'm starting to come out of that dark hole of despair. I caught myself falling, and I started asking for help. It's ok to accept help, sure, and I am getting better about that, but more importantly I am coming around to the truth that it's ok to need help in the first place. We all need help at some point. These days I might be on the receiving end, but then I'll get a leg up and I'll be able to turn around and help the next person. And as one sweet friend recently reminded me, there are people who want to be able to give their help, and I should let them have the opportunity to do so. Helping is a two-way exchange, not one-way.

Through deliberate effort, I am examining my negative scripts and imposing changes. People are rallying for me, giving me new lines, challenging my expectations, putting candles in the dark corners. I am hearing that I can do this, that I am doing it, and that I am smart enough and capable enough to keep doing it, no matter what. They are telling me this over and over and over, across the board, from every direction.

One day, maybe, I will believe them.

In the meantime, my task is to keep moving forward. One hour, one clean-up, one whispered prayer, one menu plan, one Pat the Bunny, one desperate plea to God at a time.

sick babies

There's a slew of sick babies on my facebook news feed. This is one of the reasons I tend to avoid facebook. I prefer to remain ignorant of sick babies.

These generally are sick babies who are born to families that love and adore and very much want them. Often they're born to parents whose marriages are intact, and maybe there are older siblings. These are stories that were supposed to be good and are ending in tragedy. It's heartbreaking.

But for me, it's also terrifying. Because I don't have an adoring husband right now. There's only one pitter-patter on my floors. And as much as I'd like that situation to change, the fact remains that for now, it's just the two of us. So if my baby were to become a sick baby, I would be the only one left. I can't look at the photos without seeing my son. I can't read the stories without playing the scenario out in my personal situation. I can't breathe for all of the "what if that happened to us" crowding my lungs. So I look away, scroll down, close the browser window.

Maybe this shows just how self-centered I am. And I do struggle with my own selfishness, every single day. I think that's what being a parent is -- a daily confrontation with your own selfishness. If you're a parent and you give a rat's behind, then you know exactly what I mean.

When I read about sick babies, dying babies, babies that didn't make it, I cry. I say a prayer for the child, for the caregivers, for the families left in the wake. I pray for the parents and their marriages, sending them strength in the face of unspeakable, potentially destructive pain. I pray for any older and younger siblings, that their heritage not be one of shadows, loss, and shoes that are impossible to fill. And I find my little boy, catch his eye, and try for a smile....ever grateful that he is there and smiling.

The truth is, though, that I very rarely read about these tiny children fighting their enormous battles. But their stories are never far from my mind -- the ones I know and the ones I don't. The heartbreak, the fear, and the gratitude, always braided together in the background.

Kyrie, eleison.

a hope for this year

With like 7 hours to go, a new friend decided to come over and ring in the new year with Gabriel and me. She's awesome. We had a nice time getting to know each other, marveling at the baby, eating way too many snacks, watching an episode of Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and then watching the final moments of coverage from Times Square.

New Years has never been a "big deal" holiday to me, requiring fancy plans and new dresses and lots of people. I've got some pretty spectacular memories of new year's eves past, but I'm also no stranger to ringing the new year alone-plus-five-dogs. I had fully expected to welcome 2013 by myself, and that was fine with me. But then my sweet friend came over, and I realized how happy I was to have her there.

I haven't really put a whole lot of thought into this new year. I would crack a joke here about not having time for things like thinking, but it's not really a joke. Mostly, though, I think I've been afraid of 2013, with its promise and its potential and its blank slate...its decided lack of answers.

The truth is, I'm afraid of the (un)foreseeable future. It's so....unknown. In previous years, I had my plans (grad school! career paths!) and my life-structures in place (marriage!) and an inkling of what the adventure might be - or at least a sense that the adventure would be unpredictable but good. These days, there's nothing but a to-do list I know I'll never conquer, a sense of urgency that I can't seem to shake, and the two questions that always lurk just behind my eyelids, ready to pounce when I stop moving for half a second: is Gabriel my only child? and am I doing right by him?

The fact that I don't know the answer to either of those is no small issue for me. In fact, it's kind of terrifying. And this "new year" business conveniently overlapped with Gabriel's first birthday and the year-markers of a bunch of milestones in the demise of my marriage, making my big, scary questions feel bigger and scarier, like a recurring chest pain that might be a serious thing or might just be heartburn, or one of those sores in your mouth from biting your cheek, that you keep re-biting it because it's all swollen and in the way. I'd retire a shirt to the bin of clothes he'd outgrown, and I'd wonder if I'll see it on another baby or if it will be sold to the consignment store in five years. It'd take me weeks to take apart some unused baby gear because I would distract myself while looking for a screwdriver, afraid to acknowledge that he is done with the bouncy seat and maybe we are done with the bouncy seat forever and if he's my only baby, why am I wasting my time on things like folding the laundry and drying the dishes when all I care about is him?

So it was a very big surprise when, at the stroke of 2013, I felt a surge of joy.

Anything could happen this year, I felt somewhere inside. That includes good things. Big things. Happy things.

So I relinquished to God my 2012 and all it brought, I smiled at my new friend, and I sat for a moment, grateful for years passed and for years to come.

tornado watches

I've been a little off-kilter this morning. Brian had mentioned a few days ago that he's switching his day off from Mondays to Fridays during the summer. So, today being Friday, I was in the whole 'Brian is home today' gear. Brian home days are often different from Brian at the office days. My emphasis shifts from things I need to do, to a combination of things we could do and what I'll be able to do with a built-in doggie sitter (read:

contract SEO work). So I was in that gear this morning, until about 7:30 when I heard his alarm going off. I figured he'd forgotten to turn it off last night. And then 5 minutes later I heard it going off again. Weird. It wasn't until 8:10 when I went into the bedroom to put something away that I realized he was putting work clothes on. Enlightenment (finally) came shortly thereafter. NEXT week begins the new day off thing.

I usually plan my day between 6:30 and 7:30am. So I've been fairly derailed. Which has been good, because in my determination not to have another listless day of mediocrity and frustration (I've had a few too many of those in recent weeks), I was GOING to DO STUFF today. So I have. But when it was time to sit down and do my Company Girl post, I was kinda lost.

Until I read Rachel's tornado commentary and looked at that photo (OMG OMG OMG). 

I grew up in North Carolina. In the south, we get big scary things like hurricanes, and floods, and electrical storms, and the occasional ice storm or race riot. Not to mention oppressive humidity. We do not get tornadoes very often, if ever. 

As such, I am no-sweat about hurricanes, but I am TERRIFIED of tornadoes. Ter. Ri. Fied.

But now I live in Denver. Where we don't get hurricanes, and flooding doesn't seem to be a major concern, and snow storms are a way of life (and are usually melted off by lunch time anyway), and people don't even really notice race, let alone riot about it (which, hello, there are more important things to notice than skin color).

Denver's in the mountains, right?

NO. Wrong. Denver is NOT in the mountains. Denver is near the mountains, but Denver is in the plains. 

That's the other thing about growing up in North Carolina. We have the beautiful (and they are beautiful, people!) Appalachians in the west, the rolling hills of the piedmont in the middle, and the flat-tastic coastlands to the east. Heading west, you kind of build up to the mountains with hill after hill after bigger hill after the-mountains-are-just-past-those-big-hills. 

Out here, it's flat-flat-flat-flat-whaBAM you're going up a mountain. And Denver is in the flat part, at the edge of the plains. 

That means we get snow in May (true story - and the snow was gone by 11am an the high was like 60 or something that day) and we also get tornadoes sometimes. 

Wednesday threatened to be one of the tornado days. My county was under tornado watch for many hours. Too many hours, if you ask me...9 or 10 or so. I start getting heart palpitations when there's a tornado watch anywhere within 200 miles of me...when there's one in my own county, I go into hiding. Even if it's just a watch. 

So what did my crazy-pants self do? I made a spur-of-the-moment tornado kit, aka a laundry basket containing my cell phone and wallet, 2 oranges and the last banana, an empty vinegar jug filled with water, a giant quilt, the garage door opener, our checkbooks because our accounts are new and I don't have the numbers memorized yet, a couple books, and some plastic bags for...I don't remember why I had those. 

Can you think of all the things I should have put in there instead? I can, now. Candles. First aid kit. Maybe some extra clothes or at least some sturdy shoes. Maybe some toilet paper, haha. And a million other emergency safety things that would occur to me in any other situation. Our 'weather radio' doubles as walkie talkies and those were at the church, so that wasn't an option. I was afraid to look up 'tornado kit' lists, on the off chance that I wouldn't have something and then I would REALLY panic because WHAT IF I NEED THAT THING WHEN THE TORNADO HITS AND I DON'T HAVE IT, WHAT WILL BECOME OF ME?? WHAT WILL BECOME OF THE DOGS??? ALL BECAUSE I DIDN'T HAVE A BAG OF KITTY LITTER AND SOME GOGGLES!!

Our safest room in case of a tornado is our laundry room / dog crate room / hallway to the garage. All their food and water was in there already, as were all our not-good towels and most of our tools since that's where those things live. So I had 'tornado drills' with the dogs. No, seriously. We would practice. I would give them the crate command with great urgency, looking concerned but strong, wrap myself in the quilt, and take off for the laundry room. I even thought about crawling into Rory's crate with her. That's how out of my mind I was.

Over a tornado WATCH.

At least I didn't time us. 

Suffice it to say, if we ever have a tornado within spotting distance, I will be the lady wetting her pants in the laundry room, not the lady out on the porch with a camera.

I've linked up with Company Girl Coffee this morning. Company Girl Coffee is a fun weekly link-up at Home Sanctuary. Check it out, and come on in!