Motherhood and More: It's been a long time since my time was me time*

I am having trouble coming up with a topic to write about.  I mean, it’s not like my wild children don’t give me excellent material, what with all the jumping off the couches and standing on tables and general exuberance that out-exuberances anything I’ve ever seen.

Maybe I could write about the weekend where it truly, wonderfully, finally felt like fall.  We built fires and roasted marshmallows and had soup and apple pie and wool socks and soccer.  We worked outside and inside and I spent 90 percent of my time in the kitchen and the kids even played together a bit. 

Or maybe I could write about soccer itself, how addictive it has become to watch my son grow as a player, and how my little guy has got skills and I’m not just saying that because I’m his proud mama.  (No, really.)

Or my daughter, and how I see her growing and maturing a little bit every day, with far, far less tantrums and meltdowns.  It’s a relief, really.  Conflict is not my jam and that little girl would thrive on it.  And now she’s almost reasonable, going whole days without calling her brother a poopy head.

But it’s all life, yeah?  This is my every day.  I’m a parent and wife and employee.  Sometimes it’s hard to remember who I was before all of that.  We all change as we grow older, that’s just how it is.  We mature and learn and the things that were so very important to us at 17 now seem inconsequential at 33.

Still, though, it would be nice to be that person again, just for a bit.  To have the freedom to spend all day in my room writing songs and playing my guitar.  Or reading a whole book in two days because there wasn’t anything else keeping me from it. 

Now, when there’s free time, there isn’t really free time.  The time that is my own is small, and it’s usually filled with responsibilities.  As in, I may have a day off at home by myself, but the chores don’t stop.  Or if I do have a bit of time, it’s such a small chunk that I try to fit in all of the ‘me-time’ activities but instead still feel rushed.  That’s not to say I don’t appreciate that time, I surely do.  But I never truly stop being Mom or Wife. 

I don’t want to, though.  It’s who I am now, and who I will be.  I love those titles.  I love taking care of the ones I love.  It can be hard.  In fact most of the time it is.  But that doesn’t stop it from being the most important thing in my life. 

So really, there is no need to be 17 again because I like where I am now.  Everything was so tragic then, and there were far too many unknowns up in the air, far too much drama because I was still trying to figure out who I was.

I do miss the freedom, yes.  But I don’t miss the ambiguity or the angst.  Or the bad poetry.

I know I've used this photo before but LOOK HOW AWESOME MY ROOM WAS!

*This column originally published in The News-Enterprise on October 22, 2014.