After this years’ first week of Lent, I feel like a loser mother. Where is the line between low energy and negligence? I have memories of Mom getting lost in her murder mysteries. One day I walked in the door after school to find that someone had given her a box of old mystery novels. I said, “Good Lord, it’s James Patterson. It’s a fend for yourself week!” Between juniper pollen poisoning and a few bad nights of sleep last week, I have no energy for anything. I keep meaning to cut back on reading novels during Lent, but right now all I want to do is read the Starstruck series. Yet again I’m turning into my mother.
I was exhausted again on Friday with more allergy misery. It had been a crazy dusty and windy week. Twice visibility was so low I couldn’t see the mountains from our house. Xenia was supposed to have a voice acting lesson right after school, but she told me to cancel the zoom class when she got home.
“You can’t solve everything with money, Mom. You are supposed to be supportive and help me with things!”
I realized that the homework for her class had been hard for her. I couldn’t remember her asking for help, but I hadn’t been around much and hadn’t asked her how it was going.
I said, “I’ve never been a super involved parent but I’m always glad for you to have opportunities to try new things. It’s just the way I am.” She has piano and voice lessons, but I don’t make her practice. She does gymnastics but only once a week, and I don’t push competitions like some of the other mothers do. She recently dropped out of Parkor and took up voice acting, but there again I haven’t looked into the actual voice acting jobs nor have I helped her develop her portfolio for interviews. I value having fun in life over skill. Managing transportation and buying outfits and equipment is the extent of my support.
Esther was standing around with Misha. She said, “It’s not all bad to have low-pressure parents like ours. On the bright side, you can be a professional philosopher. You’ll just never be a soccer star or a pianist.”
Xenia’s teacher recommended she zoom the next week and in the meantime focus on finishing her homework. With good intentions to look at it over the weekend, I went to bed at six and missed pre-sanctified Liturgy. Mike took Jonah out for his birthday dinner. He’s sixteen! He could have had his driver’s license last fall, but State Farm canceled our insurance, and we were in no hurry to get a new male driver in the household before we had begged and pleaded our way into a new insurance carrier. He should be licensed before summer.
I was up in the middle of the night since I went to bed too early and zoned out all of Saturday morning sitting on the sofa where Justin and Xenia were watching Dr. Stone while I read a young adult novel on my phone. I pulled myself up that afternoon to practice dancing with Jonah. The Albuquerque Regency Ball was Saturday night. I signed up for the lottery when it opened and thought I had gotten a ticket… but that all happened last fall. Days before I noticed on the calendar that the dance was this week, I wondered why I hadn’t gotten any emails about the dance practices but following up on such thoughts isn’t a strength of mine. I did reach out to my friend Kristi whose kids go every year and got a link to the dances they would be doing. I bought Jonah a suit for the occasion and for his birthday and because I like seeing him in a suit. He and I danced all afternoon on Saturday and got our waltzing to the next level.
I had trouble finding the church because it turned out they had two locations and ended up dropping him off a little late even though we left in plenty of time to cross Albuquerque. Then I got a call from him because I had messed up the tickets and it turned out that he wasn’t actually signed up to be there. After Xenia’s fury at me for not being on top of kids’ activities I felt so utterly horrible. Jonah assured me that it was okay over and over, but I was still upset by the time we got home.
I said, “Let me make it up to you. Let’s go to the Olive Garden for dinner.”
“Okay, but let me change my clothes first. I want to get out of this suit.”
I pulled up to the front door, but Mike and John Ben were sitting out on the front porch talking. It felt weird to park in front of them.
“I’ll go in to for a minute.” I told Jonah, “Let me park the car.”
Jonah asked, “Why don’t you ever back into the garage?”
“I never park backwards even though I know you like to.”
Since the garage was behind us and I wanted to be cool like Jonah, I started backing towards the garage. I was busy thinking about what I loser I was and didn’t turn around to look where I was going. The camera showed an open garage door, but it wasn’t open enough, which I realized when I heard the sickening crunch of the top of the minivan with the bottom of the garage door.
Jonah inspected the minivan which was unscathed. Then we tried to shut the garage door. It sensed something was wrong when the middle hit the ground before the rest, decided it was closing on something, and popped back up. Mike walked over and we did another inspection of the door together. Mike had managed the new door installation last fall before it was cold enough to frost the car windshields. The old doors that came with the house didn’t work. Looks like we will need a new panel if nothing more, and we can put it off for a while since spring is upon us and the days of frosty mornings are over. After cutting back on some of the kids’ extra curriculars, it felt even worse to make such an expensive mistake. All Mike had to say was a hint that as we are getting older we need to be more careful when doing things like backing up the car.
I felt miserable when I went into the house and headed to my bedroom. I sat in my chair with a blanket and rested my eyes planning on going to sleep early again. That’s where Jonah found me once he changed into pants and a nice T-shirt. He pulled me up and drove us to the restaurant. I told him to play chess on his phone and escaped into my teen alien romance Starstruck while we waited the forty minutes to be seated. By the time we were texted, I felt a smidge more social. After some breadsticks and salad, I was downright cheery.
Jonah might be as low pressure as me, but it makes us bad homeschooling partners. John Ben has stepped in as Jonah’s tutor this spring and is a hundred times better than I am at keeping Jonah on track. I’ve gotten kicked out of our homeschool kitchen a couple of times when I tried to show Jonah a cute math meme. It was kind of on topic but definitely a distraction.
I hope Basil feels supported from afar. I’m still waiting to hear what his next step in life will be. Justin needs at least an hour a week with me to vest his frustrations to be a happy pre-teen boy, but even that was dropped last week.
Sophia is another child who has space to learn and create without special encouragement from us. The kids broke one of our dusty violins a month or two ago, and I passed it on to Sophia who turned it into the center of yet another beautiful art piece.
Xenia recently texted me, “You are not good at being my mom.” I swear I read that same quote from fourteen-year-old Esther ten years ago, and Sophia definitely felt neglected growing up in the middle of six kids. Over the years I’ve often felt that being any one person’s mother was a full-time job that I could only give part-time attention. Trying to take care of all six is a lot. Teens see the deficiencies better than anyone and aren’t afraid to demand more. I could give little children food and naps to make the world all better. Teenagers have to join all the adults in the fallen world longing for the ideal.
Esther, Sophia, and Basil are happy with Mike and I these days. Perhaps I’m a better parent of adult children than I thought I’d be when all my babies were babies. That’s good though because eventually all of them will get there. We just have three more teens to go.
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