During this peculiar time*, we are all faced with challenges.
*I think that I need to clear this up for posterity. Today, we all know that this "peculiar time" refers ro the Coronavirus - COVID-19 Pandemic that is terrorizing the world. Although Germany does not have strict quarantine rules (rather a regulation that prevents gatherings of two or more people not belonging to the same household, both privately and publicly), my husband and I decided that, for the well-being of the family, and since (thanks to my job) I can, I would quarantine with the children at home. Kindergarten (all schools, actually) are closed, so they have to stay home; I have the privilege of being able to work from home, so it all kind of works out. As I write this, I am in my seventh week of quarantine - 45 days.
Before the pandemic and the quarantine, I used to measure my successes (and failures) in years, months perhaps. I say, filled with sadness, that 2019 was the worst year of my life. And although I stand by that statement, it was the year that I got to fly home twice, and the year I returned to the workforce, and the year I strengthened friendships in my tiny little village. I used to say it was a good week at work, or a bad day with bad traffic or cramps. Ah, the joys of life outside of quarantine.
Now months are all mixed up into one time period, days are blurred and I no longer differentiate a weekday from the weekend. I measure my time in hours. I have good hours and bad hours. Successful hours and failed hours. Relaxing hours and stressful hours.
My day begins at 6 am, and from 6 to 7 I am busy waking up, making coffee and reading and responding to work emails. From 7 to 8 I am both working and tending to kids waking up who want hugs and attention and love and cuddles. From 8 to 9 the computer is off (except for yesterday, when I had a call scheduled from 8 to 8:10, and Christoph decided that that would be the best time to burst in, yell WA-WOU! (his version of "hello"), and start playing the recorder (flute) - luckily Florian was amused and not at all annoyed. At least that is how I choose to remember his reaction), so we chill in bed, kids drink their hot chocolate (currently it is a Hamburg special edition cocoa, but as soon as that is over, they will switch to the off-brand Nesquick we have since before Rolf was born. There's no expiration date on that thing, right?) and I enjoy my third cup of cold coffee (not cold brew coffee, just coffee that has taken me way too long to drink. From 9 to 10 we have breakfast. From 10 to 11 we try to go out to the garden, or we try to play around the house; sometimes it's fun, sometimes both kids are glued to the TV, sometimes one kid is glued to the TV and another kid is glued to me. This is also the time where I try to do laundry or dishes or pick up the toys that I know are going to be back on the floor in a while. From 11 to 12 I spend every minute counting down the minutes to putting Christoph to sleep so that I can go back to work. From 12 to 1 I am simultaneously working, making lunch, putting Christoph to sleep, spending 1-on-1 quality time with Rolf, and looking for some spare minute where I can breathe alone and offline for some sort of self-care. From 1 to 2 I am concentrating on work and getting ready for meetings. From 2 to 3 I am usually in meetings, or using the last minutes of Christoph's nap to get ahead with work, or sitting by Rolf's side, attempting to work while he teaches me how to play the Avengers PS3 game, or he tries to explain the lineage of his Ninjago heroes. From 3 to 4 we all eat some kind of lunch/snack together, usually in the garden outside (weather permitting) or in the wintergarden inside, which is usually warm and cozy - also the ONLY room in the house where both kids are allowed to paint and make a mess without my getting upset. From 4 to 5 I try to decide whether I need coffee or wine, being too late for the former and too early for the latter. From 5 to 6 the kids bathe - sometimes for a glorious half-hour, sometimes for a constant-arguing-whining-and-crying 10 minutes. From 6 to 7 I attempt to get them in bed. Usually this is a lie, a failure, a problem - and it ends up being 8 pm before both have finally closed their eyes. At 8 I turn my computer back on and go back to my unfinished tasks from earlier in the day. At some time, my husband comes home, we have dinner together, talk about our days, and around 11 it is bedtime for us. It takes me about an hour to wind down and process every hour of my day; I review the hours where I failed, I cherish the hours where I succeeded. I think and plan and hope for a good day tomorrow, fully aware that the concept of "day" is misleading. And at 6 am the next day, it starts all over again.
My challenge is to begin the day with a smile, so that the first thing my children see when they open their eyes is a smiling, fresh, energetic mom. It's a mask I wear, of course, because I do not feel like smiling, I am not feeling fresh, and I am no where near energized. My second challenge is to end the day smiling, hopefully having read a book and sang a song and hugged and tickled, because I want my kids to have a happy last memory of the day. It's a difficult act, because at the end of the day the only thing I want is silence. I don't want to read or sing or tickle. I don't want to play. I don't want to wrestle them into fresh PJs. But I play the role I have chosen and I read and sing and hug and tickle and wrestle and tuck them in, and then I tuck their teddies in (Rolf has two), and I kiss booboos on both my kids and their teddies, and I turn the lights off and I silently cry when I turn the lights off because I am so exhausted and I need silence...
I try.
Some hours are good. Some hours are terrible. There is plenty in between. Some hours are OK. Some hours are slightly rough. Some hours are just... well, they just are.
It's a challenge. And I know I am not alone. We are all facing challenges. I was complaining to a colleague (while hiding in the bathroom for a short Teams meetings) that my kids never left me a minute to breathe; and she said that she scheduled calls instead of wrote emails because she is utterly alone and the loneliness is driving her mad. So I complain because I have constant company, and she because she years for it.
I was complaining to a friend that I was having a hard time working full-time and caring for two children full-time and taking care of a house full-time, and she said that she wishes she had work, because she has run out of craft ideas to do with her kids, and even with Netflix and Amazon Prime and Disney+, she wishes she had something else to occupy her time (and her neurons) on than just laundry and dirty diapers.
I was complaining to my cousin that my oldest son hates going out, and that my youngest needs to go out, so I am constantly torn between the garden and the living room, opening the door for one to go out and closing the door for the other to stay in. My cousin said that, in order to go to the park, she has to go down 5 flights of stairs, take a bus, then walk 5 blocks, all that while carrying her not-quite-3-year-old and the bobby car and the backpack with snacks and drinks and toys and extra clothes because one never knows.
I was complaining to my husband that I need time off the children this weekend, and he replied that he will gladly spend alone-time with them, because this whole past week he has only gotten to see them from 7 to 7:30 am, before he goes to work, because by the time he comes home, they are asleep already.
All of my complaints are valid. All of the response complaints are valid. Your complaints - and mine - are not measured up against a Complaint Measuring Stick that qualifies whether they are appropriate or not. You base and measure your life based on YOU. I base and measure my life based on ME.
I know I am privileged, but I am still able to complain.
Of course I say this without actually believing it, because the reason why I am nearing a burn-out is because I don't feel like I am qualified to complain, so I keep it all in and put on my smiling-mask and I play the super-mommy-full-time-employee-also-house-wife role and I set unreachable goals for myself... so that at the end of the day I can sit down and count my failures.
My challenge is to count the successes instead of the failures. They may be few and in between, but there are some. And even if it doesn't seem like it to me, I am doing my best. And my best is enough.
What is your challenge?
*I think that I need to clear this up for posterity. Today, we all know that this "peculiar time" refers ro the Coronavirus - COVID-19 Pandemic that is terrorizing the world. Although Germany does not have strict quarantine rules (rather a regulation that prevents gatherings of two or more people not belonging to the same household, both privately and publicly), my husband and I decided that, for the well-being of the family, and since (thanks to my job) I can, I would quarantine with the children at home. Kindergarten (all schools, actually) are closed, so they have to stay home; I have the privilege of being able to work from home, so it all kind of works out. As I write this, I am in my seventh week of quarantine - 45 days.
Before the pandemic and the quarantine, I used to measure my successes (and failures) in years, months perhaps. I say, filled with sadness, that 2019 was the worst year of my life. And although I stand by that statement, it was the year that I got to fly home twice, and the year I returned to the workforce, and the year I strengthened friendships in my tiny little village. I used to say it was a good week at work, or a bad day with bad traffic or cramps. Ah, the joys of life outside of quarantine.
Now months are all mixed up into one time period, days are blurred and I no longer differentiate a weekday from the weekend. I measure my time in hours. I have good hours and bad hours. Successful hours and failed hours. Relaxing hours and stressful hours.
My day begins at 6 am, and from 6 to 7 I am busy waking up, making coffee and reading and responding to work emails. From 7 to 8 I am both working and tending to kids waking up who want hugs and attention and love and cuddles. From 8 to 9 the computer is off (except for yesterday, when I had a call scheduled from 8 to 8:10, and Christoph decided that that would be the best time to burst in, yell WA-WOU! (his version of "hello"), and start playing the recorder (flute) - luckily Florian was amused and not at all annoyed. At least that is how I choose to remember his reaction), so we chill in bed, kids drink their hot chocolate (currently it is a Hamburg special edition cocoa, but as soon as that is over, they will switch to the off-brand Nesquick we have since before Rolf was born. There's no expiration date on that thing, right?) and I enjoy my third cup of cold coffee (not cold brew coffee, just coffee that has taken me way too long to drink. From 9 to 10 we have breakfast. From 10 to 11 we try to go out to the garden, or we try to play around the house; sometimes it's fun, sometimes both kids are glued to the TV, sometimes one kid is glued to the TV and another kid is glued to me. This is also the time where I try to do laundry or dishes or pick up the toys that I know are going to be back on the floor in a while. From 11 to 12 I spend every minute counting down the minutes to putting Christoph to sleep so that I can go back to work. From 12 to 1 I am simultaneously working, making lunch, putting Christoph to sleep, spending 1-on-1 quality time with Rolf, and looking for some spare minute where I can breathe alone and offline for some sort of self-care. From 1 to 2 I am concentrating on work and getting ready for meetings. From 2 to 3 I am usually in meetings, or using the last minutes of Christoph's nap to get ahead with work, or sitting by Rolf's side, attempting to work while he teaches me how to play the Avengers PS3 game, or he tries to explain the lineage of his Ninjago heroes. From 3 to 4 we all eat some kind of lunch/snack together, usually in the garden outside (weather permitting) or in the wintergarden inside, which is usually warm and cozy - also the ONLY room in the house where both kids are allowed to paint and make a mess without my getting upset. From 4 to 5 I try to decide whether I need coffee or wine, being too late for the former and too early for the latter. From 5 to 6 the kids bathe - sometimes for a glorious half-hour, sometimes for a constant-arguing-whining-and-crying 10 minutes. From 6 to 7 I attempt to get them in bed. Usually this is a lie, a failure, a problem - and it ends up being 8 pm before both have finally closed their eyes. At 8 I turn my computer back on and go back to my unfinished tasks from earlier in the day. At some time, my husband comes home, we have dinner together, talk about our days, and around 11 it is bedtime for us. It takes me about an hour to wind down and process every hour of my day; I review the hours where I failed, I cherish the hours where I succeeded. I think and plan and hope for a good day tomorrow, fully aware that the concept of "day" is misleading. And at 6 am the next day, it starts all over again.
My challenge is to begin the day with a smile, so that the first thing my children see when they open their eyes is a smiling, fresh, energetic mom. It's a mask I wear, of course, because I do not feel like smiling, I am not feeling fresh, and I am no where near energized. My second challenge is to end the day smiling, hopefully having read a book and sang a song and hugged and tickled, because I want my kids to have a happy last memory of the day. It's a difficult act, because at the end of the day the only thing I want is silence. I don't want to read or sing or tickle. I don't want to play. I don't want to wrestle them into fresh PJs. But I play the role I have chosen and I read and sing and hug and tickle and wrestle and tuck them in, and then I tuck their teddies in (Rolf has two), and I kiss booboos on both my kids and their teddies, and I turn the lights off and I silently cry when I turn the lights off because I am so exhausted and I need silence...
I try.
Some hours are good. Some hours are terrible. There is plenty in between. Some hours are OK. Some hours are slightly rough. Some hours are just... well, they just are.
It's a challenge. And I know I am not alone. We are all facing challenges. I was complaining to a colleague (while hiding in the bathroom for a short Teams meetings) that my kids never left me a minute to breathe; and she said that she scheduled calls instead of wrote emails because she is utterly alone and the loneliness is driving her mad. So I complain because I have constant company, and she because she years for it.
I was complaining to a friend that I was having a hard time working full-time and caring for two children full-time and taking care of a house full-time, and she said that she wishes she had work, because she has run out of craft ideas to do with her kids, and even with Netflix and Amazon Prime and Disney+, she wishes she had something else to occupy her time (and her neurons) on than just laundry and dirty diapers.
I was complaining to my cousin that my oldest son hates going out, and that my youngest needs to go out, so I am constantly torn between the garden and the living room, opening the door for one to go out and closing the door for the other to stay in. My cousin said that, in order to go to the park, she has to go down 5 flights of stairs, take a bus, then walk 5 blocks, all that while carrying her not-quite-3-year-old and the bobby car and the backpack with snacks and drinks and toys and extra clothes because one never knows.
I was complaining to my husband that I need time off the children this weekend, and he replied that he will gladly spend alone-time with them, because this whole past week he has only gotten to see them from 7 to 7:30 am, before he goes to work, because by the time he comes home, they are asleep already.
All of my complaints are valid. All of the response complaints are valid. Your complaints - and mine - are not measured up against a Complaint Measuring Stick that qualifies whether they are appropriate or not. You base and measure your life based on YOU. I base and measure my life based on ME.
I know I am privileged, but I am still able to complain.
Of course I say this without actually believing it, because the reason why I am nearing a burn-out is because I don't feel like I am qualified to complain, so I keep it all in and put on my smiling-mask and I play the super-mommy-full-time-employee-also-house-wife role and I set unreachable goals for myself... so that at the end of the day I can sit down and count my failures.
My challenge is to count the successes instead of the failures. They may be few and in between, but there are some. And even if it doesn't seem like it to me, I am doing my best. And my best is enough.
What is your challenge?
My challenges seem very insignificant when I type them out. But the long and short of it, is that when Dave died he took with him all the parts of me that he loved. I struggle to find who I am without him. I am frequently angry, sad and unreasonable. I have lost more friends in the recent two years than I ever imagined. My temper is short, my tolerance low! Did he know I was this ugly inside?
ReplyDeleteIt is silly to believe that the only parts of myself are the ones that he loved. Of course, there is more to me than the person I was as his wife, right? But nearly two years later, I am still finding that I am not sure who I am on any given day. I actually miss the me that he loved, and am surprising myself with the person I am becoming. Some really good qualities that I thought only existed in Dave's eyes are reemerging. Only, just like life without Dave, nothing is the same. So my qualities are changed, morphed into something different. My challenge is to be wholly grateful that whoever I become, whenever I figure it out... I will always be the person that Dave loved.
Hallo. Ab und zu habe ich deine Posts hier zufällig gelesen, seitdem schaue ich immer mal wieder, was du schreibst. Ich mag die Art, wie du schreibst...sehr sympathisch, sehr normal... beim Lesen habe ich festgestellt, dass wir beide, obwohl wir uns nicht kennen, viel gemeinsam haben. Warum 2019 für dich das schlimmste Jahr war, vermag ich nicht zu fragen, aber die Vorstellung, dass dieses Jahr nicht nur für mich existentbedrohend für meinen Geist, meine Seele, mein Selbstbewusstsein, nein sogar meine ganze Persönlichkeit, war, tröstet mich. Nun, eine Trennung, Hausverkauf, Umzug in eine kleine Wohnung, in der ich kein eigenes Schlafzimmer habe, Arbeit, die mich nicht erfüllt hat und die Liebe, die man glaubt, für immer gefunden zu haben, davon ziehen zu lassen, all das zu akzeptieren, zu verarbeiten und als Alleinerziehende Mutter rund um die Uhr für zwei Kinder da zu sein, für die eine Trennung auch nicht einfach ist...das ist meine Herausforderung. Und es ist nicht besser, wenn man nicht im Home Office ist. Ich komme nach der Arbeit nach der Arbeit nach Hause und die Kinder brauchen Essen. Danach geht's an die Hausaufgaben. Ich wäre manchmal froh, sie wären noch kleiner..ab auf den Spielplatz und einfach in die Sonne setzen und zusehen. Ich will dir nur sagen, du bist nicht allein mit deinen Gefühlen. Ich kenne diese Maske und ich will dir sagen, dass du es toll machst! Du machst es für deine Kinder, aber auch die merken irgendwann, dass dein Lächeln nicht echt ist und fragen sich, was los ist. Du kannst froh sein, du hast einen Mann, der dich liebt (hoffentlich) und dich unterstützt. Das habe ich nicht, aber es ist ok...und ich hoffe, so glücklich zu werden. Eine weitere Herausforderung...ja..glücklich werden und mir selbst treu bleiben. Das war nicht immer so. Ich habe in den letzten Wochen und Monaten gelernt zu akzeptieren und dem Mann zu vergeben, der mich so sehr verletzt hat. Aber ich habe auch ein schlechtes Gewissen, weil ich wollte, dass sie alles weiß, dass er nicht einfach da einsteigen kann, wo er eigentlich schon aufgehört hat. Aber was habe ich davon? Nichts, rein gar nichts! Es ist seine Angelegenheit und er muss mit einer Lüge leben. Seine Frau tut mir leid. Ich frage mich, ob ich es wissen wollen würde, wenn ich sie wäre....? Meine Herausforderung besteht also auch darin, mir über all diese Sachen keine Gedanken mehr zu machen. Du siehst also, jeder von uns hat sein Päckchen zu tragen und wir werden es schaffen! Ach, und ich musste sehr schmunzeln...ich trinke auch um 18 Uhr noch Kaffee und um 16 Uhr schon Wein, wenn mir danach ist...Lass dich nicht unterkriegen und kämpfe für das, was dir wichtig ist. Wir haben nur dieses eine Leben!
ReplyDelete