The phone rang while I was napping. This is the reason that we keep a telephone plugged in next to the bed. I grabbed the receiver and answered.
“Hello?”
“Mom. The field trip is today and we won’t be getting back until the end of second lunch. Can you pack a quick lunch and bring it to the school? It needs to be here in the next hour.”
I recognized Kiki’s voice, but both my brain and body were feeling extremely lethargic. About the last thing I wanted to do was jump out of bed to fix a lunch and drive it over to the school. I’d earned the nap. Several nights in a row of caring for a sick, sleepless child had burned me out on the whole self-sacrifice angle of motherhood. I was ready to nap selfishly until I was done being a tired zombie. Add to that the fact that Kiki frequently calls me with requests during the school day. It isn’t every week, but she easily has me running things over to her at school three times as often as the other kids combined. I was a little tired of rescuing her from her lack of organization, even though I’d volunteered for some of the rescues without prompting. I could tell that the lunch was important to her. I didn’t want her to go hungry. But I also did not want to get up.
“I’ll see what I can do.” I answered. It was an evasion. But it got her off the phone. I think I considered getting up, but it is all kind of vague because I was slurped back into unconsciousness.
I did not get to nap until I was done. Gleek was in the house with me, which gave her the capability to poke me until I got up to feed her. Her need for food was more critical anyway since she hadn’t eaten much for three days and her appetite was just returning. Also I’m not yet ready for her to learn to use the stove and she wanted grits. So I was out of bed when the phone rang again an hour later.
“Did you bring my lunch?” It was loud in the back ground, like all the kids in school were standing next to Kiki and talking. Which was close to the case since she was getting ready to board the field trip bus.
No evasions were possible this time. “No. I just didn’t get it done.”
A small exasperated sigh came from the other end of the phone. There wasn’t time for explanations or apologies, she had to go.
Usually I feel guilty for something like this. I feel like a failure for not answering the needs of a child. But apparently the guilt engine had been disconnected. I know the self-sacrifice engine was still out of steam. I stumbled onward through the day, until the third phone call came. This time Kiki’s plan was for me to drive 30 minutes to the bowling alley where they were having the field trip. I could bring her money so that she could buy a lunch. I’ll grant her the fact that she intended to use her own money, but this was the third time she’d tried to rearrange my day. I told her “no” again. She often forgets to eat lunch on the days she is at home, so I knew that it would not hurt her to miss lunch. Plus she’d had a really good breakfast.
I did make sure to have food ready and waiting when she walked in the door after school. Which she didn’t eat, because they’d returned from the field trip in time for her to have lunch. Also she’d had some change in her purse which she had used to buy french fries at the bowling alley. I wasn’t upset, just glad that I hadn’t gone out of my way to provide an unnecessary solution.
I am generally very available and helpful to my kids. On the whole this is a good thing, but sometimes it leads them to simply ask me to solve a problem rather than doing it themselves. I can’t count the number of times I’m called in from another room to fetch things for children who could have gotten the thing themselves. Sometimes I remember to stand back and make them do it. Other times I am ambushed by my own habits. I’m so used to doing all these things for the kids (when they were little they couldn’t do it themselves) that I do it out of habit now. Sometimes neither I nor the child stop to think if the request makes any sense.
This is something I need to work on. It is an important step in helping my kids transition into capable, independent people. And perhaps it will help me conserve my energy so that I have more to give when the giving is truly necessary. I’ll get right on it, once I’m done sleeping.