Tell me you’ve had this day before, please.
A cattle-prod pain deep in the tailbone pulls you from sleep. Your children and your alarm are clanging in the bedroom. But you’re stuck in a dream. You can’t open your eyes because you stayed awake until midnight when this position hurt, and this ached, and this was agony. The muscles you exercised yesterday are getting stronger but right now, they burn. Once you finally lay on your back, the thoughts moved in, the story ideas, the taunting characters.
So, you drag yourself out of bed and into the hot relief of the shower. When you emerge, your eldest is yelling at your youngest. The small one is sitting there, tears streaming down her face, in a tartan skirt with ruffles. Neither have had breakfast. There is no time for you to have breakfast. You run from bedroom to bathroom to lounge, finding the uniform, doing the hair.
You throw some things into their lunchboxes, listening to the wheeze of the little one’s breathing. It is like an accordion and you know you have to sort it out now. The smallest won’t eat anything portable, so you pack cereal into a plastic container. By this time, your heart is pumping with stress and exertion. You are really late.
You get to the car and your tyre is deflated, like that helium balloon from the fair that the children wanted to keep in their room for six months. Your hip is hurting so that driving is agony. At school, the principal and receptionist watch as you stumble in, gently herding the children through clenched teeth. You sit with the youngest while she eats her breakfast, painfully slowly. Then you say good bye and surreptitiously escape to wade blissfully into the largest cup of coffee in the world. And a cookie for breakfast.
The rich enticing smell of coffee in your nostrils, biscuit poised in mid-air, you realize something. It hits you like a slap to the face and you stop, mouth hanging open.
You realize that a friend recently learnt her eldest child had tumours. You realize that a mom in your network is carrying on the family without her husband. You realize that every day, people are learning of a crushing prognosis. And any chronic pain you suffer, any childhood illnesses, any behavioural issues, mechanic’s bills, sleep problems, parenting fails. Well, you realize those are all but crumbs.
I hope you’ve had a day like this before. It really puts things into perspective.
