Last Monday Aubrey and I took all six kids to the Y for a few hours. At one point we stole about two minutes and 12 seconds to volley a ping pong ball back and forth while the kids played air hockey next to us. “Have you been practicing at the Nawrockis?” Aubrey asked me. The Nawrockis are my mom’s cousins. In the before-times, we went there every Christmas Day and played ping pong in their basement between board games, chatting with family and one particularly great year, looking at 1930s yearbooks from the old Eastern High School. There have been so many two minute and 12 second intervals between now and last Monday, yet, those stick with me. Because I was just me. Not a mom or bottle washer or laundry putter-awayer. Just me, a sister. 

I keep coming to these moments of overwhelm in which I realize that other than sleeping, my first two days of work, and dropping off Arlo at school then riding home alone, I have not been by myself in over four weeks. And then I vow that I am going to push myself to spend alone time or schedule kidless friend dates or exercise, even if I have Arlo in the jogger. But then someone cries or someone poops or someone needs to poop and I proceed as I have been. 

In the short term, it’s easier to eat your child’s leftovers and call it your meal or just not eat at all. It is easier to do chores through nap times. It is easier to continually remind yourself, “This is just a season.” And, “this is the most you’ll ever be loved. Savor it.” It is easier to spend all of your waking hours (and some of your sleeping hours) with people who behave as if they want to crawl back into your womb. It’s easier to “wash my hair tomorrow or the day after.” In the long term, doing these things daily will crush you. You’ll be left a shell of the person you once were, though you are much more full really. With love and constant missions and humans and “things we’re working on.” But you’re empty too. You’re scooped out and hollow and also you’re filled up with something else and it’s beautiful and the most incredible, most fulfilling, most magical. 

So may something snap you back to remembering to feed yourself too or take a nap or demand an hour alone because you used to be someone with the time to play ping pong in a basement on Christmas Day. And just like all the yous you’ve ever been, you are still her.