Devotion, Exhaustion, and Three-Wick Messaging

Oof. The things I’m seeing about Mother’s Day. The things I see every year. Every day.

We try to turn motherhood into sainthood. Or vice versa.

Bear with me because I don’t know a lot about sainthood, and I don’t have an exhaustive understanding of motherhood, but “exhaustion” and “motherhood” are two words that, if I am ever turned into a school worksheet, will be included in the word bank.

Candles are involved in both sainthood and motherhood, especially this time of year. Big Candle may be trying to sell us on something a little rank.

Don’t get me started on Big Bubble Bath, Big Pedicure, Big Buffet, and Big Five-Minute Power Nap.

(For the record, I love most of those. Try to tear me away from a good buffet and I will ruin your hairdo.)

They want to offer us something utterly restorative in the time it takes to pumice off whatever barnacles have grown on our feet as we walk, run, crouch, wipe, shuttle, rescue, worry (oh, the worry!), and attend in every meaning of the word. A little something instead of space to sit with how wonderful and how hard it is. We get to trail our fingertips in “wonderful” and are told that the “I’m exhausted and doing my best” commentary is something private, something publicly unutterable unless you’re willing to, in the same breath, bring it back to the tonic chord: “But I love my kids.” Amen.

Our expressions of depletion via devotion don’t mean we don’t love our kids.

Quite the opposite. Because why else would we do it?

It’s the love.

It’s the love.

It’s the love.

This love, though? It’s superhuman, and we’re only human, so we try to breathe a little without inhaling the three-wick Cashmere Woods messaging that we’re adequate as long as we’re perfect.

It’s ok to have all sorts of words in your word bank.

Your kids are lucky to have you. We’re lucky to have you raising your kids.