I’m dancing as fast as I can….

As a young adult when I was trying to balance school and two jobs (teaching at a university and starting up a catering business to pay the bills my meager university salary did not cover), all while maintaining the ever important social life I remember always feeling harried mostly because I expected nothing less than perfection from myself. Anything less than an “A” was unacceptable, having perfect survey results from my students, and being the life of the party would take its toll on even the most organized person. Back then my mother and I had a favorite saying, “I’m dancing as fast as I can”, we used it over and over again when we felt overwhelmed with all there was to do.

Perhaps this phrase has never had more meaning for me than it does now. No matter how much I am able to accomplish in a day I still feel as if it’s not enough. By the end of the day I never seem to finish my “to do” list but what I’ve done I’ve done and I get to cross it off my list. Sometimes all the logistical tasks wear me out and I have little energy and even less patience. Of course this is not the recipe for the perfect wife or mother. Now I have no illusions about receiving the “Mother of the Year” award but I hope that someday my children will look back at their childhood and realize their mother did the best she could with the resources available to her. (Much as I have come to realize about my own mother.) I danced as fast as I could. I hope they will remember this and not all the times I screamed at them like a lunatic for every small infraction of my rules (and believe me both my kids will tell you I have many rules – some good, some bad and others just ridiculous). My husband insists I missed my calling as either a military officer or dictator. Parenting is never easy, we all know that, but parenting a “typical” child who is now a teenager with all that that implies and one who is anything but “typical” I always feel like I’m coming up short. I can never make everyone happy or give them enough. I worry that Ellie is being short-changed because Max is so time consuming. I worry that she will resent her brother and all the attention his medical issues necessitate. But in the end I know she accepts what our life has become because she is mature and wise beyond her years. I worry that Max will feel we’re coddling him too much. I worry about the frustration he will feel as he grows up and we can no longer protect him as we have if we ever expect him to be independent. But I also know that he is strong and has more courage then all of us put together and these are the very qualities that he needs to do well. At the end of the day we have all been dancing as fast as we can for the last seven years. I am very proud of both my kids (and my husband!) for the way they have accepted our “norm” even if we know it’s not so normal. Maybe it’s my kids who have helped me understand “perfect” doesn’t exist.