It turned into about three pages of whining about our crappy day.
Blah blah, blabbity-blah.
I get tired of hearing my own voice when I whine.
By nightfall things actually turned out ok.
All of the earlier inconveniences and mistakes of the earlier part of our day were thankfully washed away by this steady cold rain that has been pouring intermittently on our little house since morning.
My son did eventually stop screaming at the top of his lungs about the scab he accidentally pulled off his own knee while putting on pants. It may have taken an hour and a telephone call to his father at work to get him to calm down, but ultimately he did get dressed and we left the house before 11.
My husband did ultimately drink his morning coffee AND get the shipment of the router for his office he's been waiting for, improving his mood immensely.
My younger children and I did (after 2 hours of driving in circles in the pouring rain) eventually find an imaging center that was open and willing to take their chest x-rays.
Their pediatrician's office did, finally, fax over the correct paperwork to aforementioned imaging center... and we did AT LAST get two chest x-rays taken to rule out pneumonia.
Despite making a lot of crazy sounds and clunking around, our brakes did (happily) work as we drove home on the freeway in the rain.
We did manage to pick up their big brother from school and get back to our house before it started to really downpour in our neighborhood.
The doctor DID call us back with GOOD NEWS! We learned after a full week of fevers and deep thick coughing that our children not only DON'T have pneumonia (yay!!!) but also that our daughter's former pneumonia from the summertime has been confirmed by x-ray to have fully resolved.
AWESOME!
Lastly, even though it took until 8:30pm I did manage (FINALLY!!!!!!!) to experience ten full minutes where I actually felt like a good mother. You see, after days of promising my four year old that I would cook him chicken noodle soup from scratch, I actually did it!
This is what a successful homemade chicken soup contains:
A whole organic chicken, boiled and simmered.
A lot of carrots and celery.
Fresh cloves of garlic, whole chopped onions.
Zucchini (thanks to the advice of our great friend).
Cilantro.
Salt, fresh-ground pepper, Bay leaves.
A little chicken bouillon.
A TON of patience, especially when working on the broth.
Genuine love for the people you're cooking for.
(Fresh noodles for your bowl are optional, but delicious.)
I've got to say that I went into the cooking process this evening really dreading making the soup. I felt grumpy and forlorn, reflecting on the overall lameness of our day, my own twinges of bitterness, and general exhaustion.
Yet by the time I'd boiled, skimmed, chopped, strained and simmered for a few hours -
I felt better.
I felt so good in fact that I cheerfully read Star Wars stories to my kids for an hour, bathed and tucked them into bed and found myself smiling as I listened to my daughter talk to me through her door about the sound of the rain beating on her window.
(Little Missus, you are supposed to be sleeping!)
Before my kids went to bed, the six year old got out of the shower and pronounced:
"Mom, something smells GOOD in here."
"I guess it's the soup," I nodded.
"It smells YUMMY!" his little brother squeaked happily.
For that whole moment, looking around our bright kitchen at the faces of my little children so eager about a pot of soup that I made myself from scratch - I actually felt like the mother that I yearn so badly to be.
I want to be the mom who makes homemade broth from chicken bones (using all parts of the animal, for which I always give thanks and say prayers of gratitude).
I want to be the mom whose kitchen smells inviting and warm, a place you'd always want to stop by for a cup of tea and a chat.
I want to be the kind of mom whose children are proud of her... and well-fed!
I want to be the kind of mom who has it all under control. Keeping the peace, making the kids happy. Taking care of business.
I'm not normally that mom - not really any part of her. I would say that from 95% to 99% of the time, I am not that mom.
I certainly wasn't her today as I cursed on the freeway and gripped the steering wheel tightly in the rain, praying to get the kids home without crashing.
I wasn't that nice mom when I seriously told off the pediatrician's lunchtime answering service for insisting that I had to wait an hour with my two small sick kids in the lobby of the busy imaging center because the nurse had not faxed over the doctor's x-ray order correctly.
I wasn't very dreamy when I snapped at my sick child for whining all afternoon in the car, knowing that he wasn't feeling well.
But for ten whole minutes tonight (until one son head-butted the other and we began the inexorable march toward bedtime) I was a good mother.
Good Housekeeping magazine could actually have come to my home during those ten minutes and I would have been their covergirl.
A model of composure. An aspiring chef. Adored (hahaha) by my children.
* * *
In the end, I think it's those little moments of perfection that keep me trying so hard to do this job. I mess up so often it isn't even funny. I get so frustrated with myself a million times a day.
But every now and then, just for a few minutes, I catch a glimpse of myself as the mother I have always wished to be.
Tonight I was actually the mom who makes homemade soup on a rainy night.
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