Fleeting

These days pass so quickly and every single one is filled with self doubt and uncertainty. I worry ceaselessly that I'm not showing up for my kids like I need to be. I fret when I lose patience with them-- when I don't share enough joy--that I am modeling living like a robot. I worry that my work is mediocre, that I am clocking in without effecting real or lasting change; since my job involves the quality of the exams my patients receive, quiet quitting or accepting my lack of bandwidth feels impossible. I worry deeply about regret, about the things left unsaid or undone. I worry I will have wiled the years of my life away doing most things halfway. I fret and I fret and I fret and yet there isn't a release valve because there is not a thing in my life that I can stop doing; my children are the center of my universe, my job provides us with health insurance and opportunity, and the limited self-care I squeeze into the day feels essential to my mental health.

In the midst of the chaos, though, I am mostly happy. I held my youngest yesterday in the middle of a park in the middle of a rainstorm and her small, warm body pressed against mine and I was struck suddenly with the magic of having this little person in my life. Not in one thousand years was she in my dreams. Not in all of eternity did I think I could be so blessed to have the company of such extraordinary and bewildering little people. To think I lived so many years without them feels impossible.  And being their mother is the best thing I will ever do.

I worry about the increasing bandwidth they occupy in my life because their actual job is to grow up, pursue their interests, chase their goals, and leave me. They must go. But I know, even now, that it will leave me shattered. My life will fill again with travel, interesting meals, and friendship that can take place after 7pm, but I suspect those things will leave me empty and hollow and yearning for the little bodies that grew big and adventured onward.

This stage of life is a cluster of obligation to all the things with too little bandwidth. It is bursting at the seams. And yet, I have the sneaking suspicion that not too far in the future, I will miss these numbered, endless days.