This is Not a Sitcom

January 9, 2022

The rain feels fat and semi-solid, like snow that has only just melted moments before landfall. We’re holed up indoors, except for one intrepid trip down treacherously compacted-snow-covered back stairs: time to put the Christmas decorations away, now that we’re in Epiphany; time to empty a week and a half of frozen compost that’s been sitting outside, covered in snow; time to pull recycling bins into the garage before a neighbor fills them with half-eaten Subway sandwiches. Garbage maintenance is tied with cat litter as my least favorite house chore. My husband normally does both, but he’s nursing this ankle injury and those stairs are a little too death trap. At least I get some fresh air. It is satisfying, in a way–so much order re-created with one short walk. And any trip down the back stairs is an excuse to traverse the garden. I wrest up from a thick dusting of snow two glossy dark green rosettes of still-perky tatsoi, volunteers self-sown from last spring’s plants, which become the only fresh thing in our from-the-pantry lunch. Eventually I’ll get groceries, but for now there’s garden tatsoi.

We’re at the end of our second consecutive week of hibernation, first avoiding spreading Covid after our post-holiday plane ride, then avoiding contracting it before the kids are slated to go back to school. When we’re not trying to juggle simultaneous full-time paid work and child wrangling, the confinement can pass pleasantly enough. Creative projects, sweet snuggles, an unhealthy dose of screen time to buy a respite from the chaos. But by this evening, we’ve worn through all the first and second wave of pastimes, and now we’re just stir-crazy. The kids are picking fights with us and each other, pinching, poking, prodding, knocking over magnatile creations and stealing stuffies. It’s a war zone. The air is thick with howls and screeches, punctuated with the occasional huffy scream from me to let them know I’m serious about just how naughty they’re being and how we really won’t stand for it. 

Discipline–not the screaming part, but the actual calm and consistent enforcement of consequences–is hard, tiring work. We keep at it for long stretches, aiming for textbook application of the strategies we’ve carefully talked through (you know, in the dregs of time we can snatch from the end of an exhausting day), and then, snap. Something tips one of us, usually me, and all that patience collapses and I’m yelling at the kids to stop yelling. If I’m going to write about parenting (with wonder and awe, unveiling how I see more of God through these little terrorizing miracles, etc. etc.), there’s a certain pressure to have a positive spin, to end the story with a nugget of deep truth gleaned through the rough day. 

But in the moment, wails and protests and whines careening through our living room, I’ve got nothing. Sometimes it is just hard, a slog I chose, to be sure, but a slog. I’ve been exhorted to practice, as an exercise in grasping God’s love for us: “Picture the delight you feel when you see your child! Imagine God looking at you that way!” When I’m fed up with my kids’ imperfections and willful defiance, all three-to-five years of it, I can look at them primarily with weary annoyance. Does this regrettable but all too human response subconsciously cross wires with my theology? Do I stealthily project my frustration onto God, limit the vastness of God’s love and patience with my own meager capacity? At least I’m certain God isn’t as selfish as I am. 

The next morning, I sneak in early to wake the kids for school. Nestled in bed, they still have that gorgeous drunken dazed look, soft sleep smiles, lighting up when they see me. My daughter reaches out her arms and enfolds me, pulling me in with a sigh of contentment: “Mommy!” She gazes into my eyes and murmurs, “I want to do the things mommies do. Mommies feed people and take them to the doctor,” then embraces me again. It is heavenly. For a moment I think, here it is after all, a glorious light, a nugget of truth! I’ve made it to the other side. Ten minutes later someone is screaming again and I heave a great exhale of “how long til they’re back at school and the house is quiet?” 

The truth is, the story doesn’t pull together like a sitcom episode. Not daily, not by turn of the calendar year. There’s no apparent arc, no ending–happy or otherwise, at least while we’re living. Moments of bliss and moments of struggle are intertwined, each as much a reality as the other, each with an argument for defining the narrative. I can artificially pull the curtain at any point, frame the day in a way that makes sense for the story I want to tell. But what is most true is we all make mistakes and fall short of the good stories we want to tell about ourselves, but we also have potential for writing a new direction. New day after new day, often more frequently, snuggles overriding the screams, not like January, but like snow.