A Dose of Modern Motherhood

I’ve been a single parent most of this week. My husband travels a lot with his work. I used to like to accompany him to most conferences but now, I simply cannot. Life is too busy on the home front.

Yesterday evening, I decided to catch up on a few chores by driving my children around to pick up various supplies they need for their extra-curricular activities. We headed out at 4 pm and did not return until nearly 8 pm–four hours of driving from place to place–we managed to stop at nine different destination locations. I was spent. How does one parent in this age? Three children all needing Halloween costume supplies, piano lesson supplies, new running shoes for gym class, new skates for skating lessons, eye medicine for a sudden case of pink-eye.

I am not an errand loving kind of a girl. I like leisure time. I love having fun with life. So how did this happen to me? I work-out  and walk/run my dogs in the morning, work on my career all day and the evenings/weekends are house/children’s errands, lessons.

There is no leisure time for me. Just before bed I meditate and read a little Dharma. I get up early,

before the sun and head out running with my dogs, and then it all starts all over again. However, running through the forest before the sun is up is truly one of the day’s highlights. Forests smell so good in the damp, cool morning.

I get why people are having smaller families in this century. If I had one kid, perhaps I’d have 3 stops, 2 kids–6 errand stops. I also understand why so many big families home school. If you have 5 kids, I dare say, it would be impossible to keep up with the errand demands if they attended public school. The wardrobe and supply shopping is endless. 

Yes, my daughters love fashion, just like their mom, but having the time to shop for fashionable clothing items is almost unheard of in our weekly errands. I consider that type of shopping, fun, almost like leisure time.

However, I am deeply grateful that I have been blessed with three babes to raise. And I intend to find some way to cut down on the endless errands, so that one day, perhaps, we might actually get to do nothing and go nowhere.