My antidote

Last week, good friends of ours--Lily's favorite friend--moved out of the neighborhood. I was so sad that dinner consisted of Lily and me snuggling on the sofa, eating chicken nuggets and watching Frozen.

Yesterday, I spent the better part of the morning panicking about how laundry, grocery shopping, and general tidying were all going to get done. My panic sent Jeff into a tailspin of his own.

I burned a batch of granola today--the batch Lily had carefully helped me put together that she was so excited to taste.

Mom guilt hangs over me all the time. A thousand articles and blog posts and Facebook updates and tweets have been written on the topic, and I'm not sure I have anything new to say. But I do know this: my mom guilt comes not from any external force but from that nagging voice in my head, the one that reminds me that too much screen time is bad and too many pasta dinners are bad and too little time spent reading is bad and too many moms do this better than me (and with more kids and harder jobs and husbands with longer hours to boot).

But--and here's the good news--I think I've found an antidote. It doesn't always work, and, just like any medicine, the dosage isn't always exactly correct or administered at the right time. But she's an antidote all the same.

Now, let me be clear before I proceed: Lily's job is not to make me feel better. It's not her responsibility nor her goal. But sometimes a lot of the time, she manages to heal me without even knowing she's done it. Because here's the amazing thing: for all the times I mess up, for all the shame and guilt I feel that I'm not doing well enough by her, for all the nights I worry and days I struggle to get through, she's a pretty amazing little girl. 

Will you indulge me a moment's elaboration?

Last week, we returned from two wonderful weeks' vacation in Florida to hit the ground running back in Virginia. Jeff worked Monday through Wednesday, which meant we were both run ragged by the end of that stretch. Wednesday, Lily had been through the ringer: she fell off our bed and bumped her knee, resulting in her favoring it, resulting in a pedi visit, resulting in x-rays. Turns out she was just fine, but it was a long day all the same. And, to make matters worse, I had an important after-school meeting at school and Jeff couldn't fudge getting into work by a second. We made it work: I left early (another working mom covered my job at the meeting without blinking an eye), Jeff stayed home 30 extra minutes, and Lily was happy to take a long walk in her trike. Still, by the end of the night, Lily and I were both "all done."

After getting out of the bath and arriving on the blanket in her room for snuggles, I attempted to use our NoseFrida, this snot-sucking device that Lily usually tolerates when she's got a stuffy nose. However, she wasn't having it that night. After a brief tug of war, she tossed the various parts across her room, then looked at me and laughed. I had no patience left, so I simply told her "big girls don't throw things" and left the room to replace her towel in the bathroom and take a deep breath myself.

When I returned to Lily's room, I found her quietly seated on her blanket. She had carefully reassembled the NoseFrida (not an easy task for an adult!) and positioned the tube in her nose. Looking up, she handed the mouthpiece end to me. I knelt beside her and carefully cleared each nostril. When finished, I told her how much I appreciated her and how proud I was of her. And then, to my astonishment, she very seriously turned her eyes to me and said, "No throwing." 

For all my failures, for all my shortcomings, our daughter understands her world. She reminds us to say grace before dinner, politely says "tank oo!" when given a treat by someone at church, and remembers (when prompted) that "sorry" is in order if she's taken a toy from a friend. Something about how we live our lives--in the moments I'm not trying to be a good mom--gets in there. She sees something in me that I don't even have the ability to see in myself--and she reflects it in her joyful, kind, smart approach to life.

Now, don't be misled--the guilt is still there almost every day, and the worry rarely subsides. But when I can step outside myself long enough to look at the silly face by my side, the one that shouts "Hi Mommy!" and "I love you, too!", I can remember that...

I'm doing okay.

She's doing okay.

We're doing more than okay.