The Futility of Motherhood

I'm an optimist.

I think.

Or maybe I'm a realist.

All I know is, I'm not a pessimist.

If I was a pessimist, I would have stopped after child number one.

I would have looked at her sweet face, smelled her sweet baby smell, and then looked around at the piles of laundry, stacks of mail I had yet to go through, and baby toys everywhere, and thought I cannot live like this for the rest of my life. No more kids.

Instead, I looked around and thought, This is just temporary.

And it is. Of course it is.

But the thing is, temporary can be a very, very long time.

And the other thing is, it gets worse--way worse--before it gets better.

Especially with several kids under one roof.

While I'm cleaning the bathroom, someone is pouring pickle juice all over the kitchen floor. While I'm cleaning up the pickle juice, they go to the bathroom I just half cleaned and unroll several rolls of toilet paper. As I'm attempting to put the toilet paper back on the roll, they decide to move into my room, where they throw my neatly folded pile of laundry all over the floor.

Yes. Motherhood is full of futility.

I clean. They mess it up.

I organize. They destroy.

I wash clothes. They get them dirty.

I change diapers. They, well, you know.

But of course, I can't just let everything go completely, as tempting as it sometimes may be. So I keep cleaning, organizing, washing, changing. Or at least attempting to. And they keep messing it up, destroying it, getting it dirty, and well, you know. And, I have to say, they are much more effective at their part than I am at mine.

Fortunately, the house is only part of my job.

So I hug them. And they hug me back. And I read to them. And they light up. And I tell them I'm sorry for yelling at them, but I really, really wish they wouldn't pour pickle juice all over the floor.

And they hug me and say, "I love you mommy. It's just that I love pickles, too."

And I realize that some parts, at least, aren't futile after all.