Home Sweet Home

Because I have been under a couple of weighty deadlines, not only have I neglected this blog, but I missed Mother’s Day.

I mean, it arrived and we celebrated and ate cake and all, but, mentally, I was thinking of better ways to hone the piece I was writing, of better hooks, better endings, better titles.  Distraction–the mother’s most subtle temptress–had hold of me and, I’ll admit, clouded the occasion.  I felt honored, but my joy was thin. The better part of the day, I secluded myself in my bedroom, ‘cleaning out my desk’ with my ‘Don’t talk to me because it’s my party and I’ll hide if I want to’ attitude prickling anyone who came near.

I woke up a couple of days ago and saw my children for the first time in weeks.  Because my head had been wrapped around sentence structure and finding the right word, they had turned to Hulu as their substitute mother.  I was loading the dishwasher and heard the three younger ones chanting away in perfect unbroken unison along with almost every commercial that came on during Gilligan’s Island.  The refrigerator looked like a bunch of orphans had moved in:  a shriveled apple with bites taken out of it on one shelf, milk with no lid on another, dried up hunks of cheese with crude chopping marks on the edges where they’d cut pieces for themselves on a third.

What else did I notice?  How happy Elenia was when I actually listened to her latest story.  How Cooper showed me his latest Lego creation, waiting for my enthusiastic response.  How much they all gravitated toward me, each with his or her needs.  This one needed website help.  That one, boy advice.  They were so happy for a plain spaghetti dinner eaten as a family at the table.  I, too, was excited; to hear their questions, laugh at their jokes, fill another plate, wipe a tomato dribble off a chubby chin.

I’m not sure how to squeeze writing into the fissures of my life.  I’ll admit I am jealous of those people who have all the live-long day to scribble away with nothing but the chirping of birds to distract them.

Agh.

Today, deadlines behind me, a cats-and-dogs rain falling on our little patch of property, I am freshly determined to put the precious six hearts that so depend on me ahead of the deadline.  I know I won’t get as much written. A novel may have to wait a few years.  I will probably watch my writer friends succeed ahead of me, leaving me behind.

But I’ll have to live with that.

What I can’t live with is knowing I short-changed my children or begrudged their needs or ‘uh-huh’ed my way through their soccer games and art projects and shared dreams and hair that smells of pillows and goodnight kisses and repeated Dexter The Restless Polar Bear stories and plain old spaghetti dinners.

I can’t and I won’t.