Not My Own

 She's been complaining all week that she didn't have preschool.

Naturally, I thought that she'd be excited to go this morning. 

We picked out a cute outfit for her to wear, the same one her sister wore to school on her fourth birthday. Probably my favorite of all the size 5 clothes in her closet. I let her play on the tablet while I curled her hair. We practiced her smile. 

And as soon as our neighbor's car pulled into the driveway to take her to school, she curled up like a potato bug in a child's hand. 

This child, my youngest, is the most cleverly manipulative of all my children. Just yesterday, I told her I needed to go talk to Dad before we could play baby dolls. After about five minutes of sitting in his office, we heard a boom crash above us and then little footsteps descending the stairs. She burst into the room, handing her dad a package of crackers so he could have a snack. How sweet, you might be tempted to think (and her Dad certainly thought so), but I could see the working gears grinding in her head. Bring Dad snacks. If he's eating, he can't talk. If he can't talk, Mom can come play baby dolls with me. 

Meet my Sophie, blog world. You don't really know her, because life got admittedly 1000 times crazier after she was born. She is no stranger to social media. She has quite a following on my instagram account. My mom always reports to me that "so-and-so said she loves your Sophie Stories." Chronicles of Sophie, my mom calls them. 

Coping mechanism, I call them.

Last fall, we signed her up for soccer. She showed the most promise of all our children, naturally dribbling a ball across the backyard during our family scrimmages.  Boisterous and bubbly, we thought for sure she'd be the one to get in there and be aggressive and confident. 

No, instead she stubbornly sat on the sidelines and threw funny fits and I decided that instead of getting frustrated at her not playing, we should just roll with it, and I started recording her antics in my instagram stories. Thus Sideline Sophie was born. 

Yesterday I was looking for a blog post I wrote years and years ago, and I chuckled when I came across one titled "The End of the Threenage Year(s)." Curious, I clicked on it, and immediately felt guilty because I used to be so much better at recording my thoughts and feelings. Blogging was the coping mechanism that allowed me to survive Kevin's early childhood. As I read, my guilt morphed because I had such a hard time remembering Kevin as I described her in that blog post. She turned nine two weeks ago. She's now a confident third-grader who finishes her library books within two days and loves to play card games, roll her eyes at her dad, and tackle new art projects. 

What if I forget what Sophie is like that this age? I wondered as I formed a bow with the yellow ties on her dress. I've been so terrible at journaling or blogging. What if I forget how she says funny things constantly? How she joins Scott and I for lunch daily and when I tried to excuse her behavior toward him the other day, she said, "Nope, Dad, I was making fun of you." And then, ten minutes later, "Dad, I'm still making fun of you!" Or how she goes grocery shopping while the big kids are at school and thanks me for "Mommy and Sophie Time" as if she never gets enough of it? Which, clearly, must be true because she inevitably crawls into my bed every night. And in the morning, when she's just waking up and her arms start to snake around my neck and I ask her why she's in my bed, did she have a bad dream? She whispers, "No, I just needed you."

I love being needed, but I am exhausted. I don't sleep because I need that hour of reading time to myself in bed after Scott starts snoring. It's the only peace I have, knowing they are all asleep and I can breathe and be me.

I picked my little potato-bug preschooler off the ground and cradled her as I walked out the door to put her in my friend's car. "You can't stay home with me, sweetheart, I have to go to the dentist this morning." 

Buckling her in was a tag team effort. I told myself she'd stop crying as they pulled out. After all, her best friend cried all the way to ballet when we carpooled for that on Tuesday and then she was just fine. I went inside, fixed myself a cup of Nestle hot chocolate with just a hint of Stephen's Raspberry Chocolate flavoring. I sat down and folded my arms, out of habit, and I started saying a prayer in my mind, out of habit. I thought of my crying daughter and my prayer changed into a pleading with my Heavenly Father to please help her be brave and take care of her. 

I went to the dentist. I got home and there was a message on my phone from her preschool teacher. "Hi. CALL ME." 

I did. Picture day was not going well. "She only says she'll do it if her Mom is here." 

It's the first time I've ever had a teacher call me for any of my children, asking me to come. I've gotten calls for Kevin about clumsy playground accidents, but they usually ended with, "She's fine now, I just wanted you to know." I've never had a teacher complain about Sly. Ever. (This is probably the most surprising thing about my life, as Sly these days is a whole other blog post I'm not sure I'm ready to write). 

So I put on shoes and a jacket for the second time this morning, and Scott emerged from his office to come get a snack. "I guess Sophie doesn't want me to be a writer," I told him, trying not to be frustrated that my writing time was being further interrupted this morning (going to the dentist is bad enough). I'd promised myself long ago that once my children were in school, I would use that time to write. When we registered Sophie for preschool last spring, I was ecstatic thinking that time was almost here. For four hours every week in September, I wrote. For four hours the first two weeks of October, I wrote. And then life happened. I spent that time helping chauffer my parents to my dad's melanoma surgeries and appointments in Salt Lake City. I was happy to help. Then, when it seemed like that hurdle was conquered, Sophie's school went into a soft closure for two weeks. That began a three month journey of two weeks in school and then two weeks out of school for Covid closures. In between all that was Thanksgiving break and Christmas break and pretty soon, I was scheduling Relief Society meetings and  dentist appointments and doctor appointments and errands while Sophie was at school because it was just easier.  I told myself I'd get back to writing, that I would become like those lady authors I started following on bookstagram, that I could do it too, even though I don't now how any of them manage to publish books with smaller children than mine at home. Don't compare yourself, I constantly lecture my psyche. You do you. Now is not the time.

I drove to the school, thinking about what part of my manuscript I would have been writing had Sophie not needed me. Self-conciously, I tried to manuver my mini-van through the waves of teenagers leaving campus. I know what I look like to them, I thought, glad a mask covered up most of my make-up-less, uneven countenance. A middle-aged soccer mom in unfashionable clothing, waaaaaayyy out of her element. 

Still, my daughter needed me, so I parked the van and started walking to the school. My phone buzzed. A text from Sophie's teacher.

"We got her to take a picture! It turned out so cute! She's fine now!"

After confirming that she did not need me after all, I told Teacher Sue I would let her be and to tell her that I'm proud of her for being brave.

Climbing back into the van, I removed my mask and took a deep breath. If I hurry, I can still have 45 minutes of writing time before I have to come back to pick her up. Then I let out a groan and welcomed the familiar complaint: my time is not my own.

Immediately, a picture came to mind of a man sleeping in a boat. Weary and sorrowful, He was seeking time to himself to sleep and grieve the loss of his cousin. But the winds and the waves and his companions on ship would not leave him alone. 

His time was not his own, either. 

He got up from a needed rest. He calmed the winds and the waves and the storm and the sailors. 

And my heart.

I've always believed there is a season in life for every thing I want to accomplish. Sometimes those seasons overlap, like when I get to take a break from normal life to travel someplace different and new. I pointed out to Scott yesterday that this year marks 10 years since I graduated from college, and next year will be 10 years since I've had a real, paying job. I don't regret leaving the workforce. I don't regret choosing to stay home with my children. But the absence of regrets does not always equal the absence of restlessness and the desire to be and do more. 

"I'm just too tired," I told Scott as I bemoaned the fact that I wanted to go help our neighbor get her house ready to sell but I didn't even have enough energy to take care of all that my house needed. 

On Sunday, a friend of mine shared a story in a sacrament meeting talk about Henry B. Eyring and his father. Hal was having a hard time with a physics problem, and his father was trying to help him but realized his son was stuck. Brother Eyring was surprised that his son didn't think about physics all the time like he did. This led to him telling his son to figure out what it was that he thought about when he didn't have to be thinking about it, and then choose a career in that field. 

For the past several days, I have tried to pinpoint what I think about when I don't have to be thinking about it. Mostly, it's sleep I crave. Then I think about my to do list. Then, my children. Then, what book I want to be reading. Occasionally, I think about what I want to be writing. But I'd be lying if I said I thought about writing all the time. 

I feel like in the last nine years of motherhood and ten years of marriage, my identity is constantly being put in the Lost and Found bin of my brain. Who am I and what am I doing? I have no idea. What do I want from life? So much, but ask me later because I'd rather take this moment for me.

Back to Sophie, because I have two minutes until I need to go and pick her up for realsies this time. 

I do not regret giving up my writing time to go to her school and not enter. If she needs me, I will be there. But I am equally grateful that she is discovering that sometimes she does not need me. 

Right now, my time is not always my own. That's okay. I've always wanted to be serving God instead of myself, and raising a family is what He has asked of me. And I won't regret feeling weary or tired or taking a nap, because even the Greatest of All did the same. And I will try not to grumble the next time an REM cycle is interrupted by fuzzy, fine blonde hairs in my face and a little body settling into mine, breathing deep sighs because she has found relief.  

It is a wonderful thing to be needed. It is even better to be wanted. 

And, life will not always be this way.

In six years, life will look different, and it will be a different daughter whose threenage years are a fuzzy memory instead of a stark reality. 

Hopefully by then she is sleeping through the night in her own bed. So I will take my 45 stolen-back minutes and I will record my feelings and I will get back to basics because maybe, just maybe, that is where I will find myself again.