When the House Goes Quiet: The Year My Kids Were All in School

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When the House Goes Quiet: The Year My Kids Were All in School | Des Moines Moms Blog

It’s like being caught in the middle of an F5 tornado for years and years, swirling around so fast sometimes you can’t catch your breath.

There are times when your head hangs low into the toilet as you heave and heave with a swollen belly from all the movement of new life. Sometimes your eyes are puffy and red from night after night of wide awake and screaming baby love. Spinning and spinning and laughing from joy and crying and cleaning and wiping noses. Another empty checkbook with carbon copy pages flapping in the wind, and your eyes squint in the semi-lit room as you find a way because another one is coming and another one is coming soon. Cleaning and scrubbing and scraped up knees, band-aids and it will be just fine. Reading the same story so many times that you don’t have to glance at the page to know what it says. Run your fingers through their hair. Lavender and oatmeal. You smell it on their heads. You get up this time… please? Dishes, bottles, poop up the back of a onesie in the middle of Target. Buy yourself a second latte. Dance and soccer, a slushie spilled in your van, crayons melted to your seat. Play dates at the pool, sunscreen, school supplies, meet their teachers, down to two kids, this is easier, you miss her, you miss them, down to one, and summer is back, no more naps? This is so great! Pool every day, the sun, vacations, a constant stream of friends. They eat all our food? Don’t break your arm on our trampoline, please. We drop way too much on school supplies for everyone this year. Clothes, clothes, clothes, set the alarm, they are ALL clean and ready, smile for the picture kids, the bus comes, then…

STOP.

When the House Goes Quiet: The Year My Kids Were All in School | Des Moines Moms Blog

I stood in the middle of my kitchen as the bus drove away and my world stood still. My world stood completely still. For the first time in years, my world stopped spinning. The tornado dropped me off in the middle of my kitchen on a way too humid August morning in the middle of my kitchen, my unblinking eyes wide open in disbelief and misunderstanding, as a small bead of sweat rolled down from my forehead. I guess I didn’t see it coming at all.

I had been doing this for so long, spinning frantically in this awesome and crazy whirlwind for so long, I had never taken the time to think about what it might be like when they weren’t all in the house anymore. What would it be like when the last one boarded the bus with the big ones? What would it be like when it was just me in this house? What would I want to do? What would I want to eat? Not Dino nuggets? I’m not bound by nap or snack or Legos or movies or Disney or anything?

Allow me to attempt to lay out the mom stages that I went through within this new life that I’ll now call The School Age.

STAGE 1: SHOCK and AWE

  • It was like meeting myself for the first time in 13 years…. I could eat whatever I wanted? I could do whatever I wanted? WHENEVER I WANTED?! So I did. I found that I enjoyed skipping breakfast and eating my lunch at 10 a.m. in front of Price is Right.
  • I found that I loved running with my dog before it got too hot, hanging clothes on the line, and napping on the couch like I was a Kindergartner. I learned that shopping at Target alone brought indescribable joy but was also extremely dangerous for the budget, and I also actually missed my partners in crime there. Sometimes.
  • I found that I could keep a clean house and find my stuff again for the first time in years. At 4:06 p.m. this all went down the toilet again, but during the day, you should have seen my house.
  • I found out what single people meant by “finishing the laundry.”
  • I worked out. I lost weight. I bought new clothes. I had time for myself for the first time in so long, and it felt good. I felt really good.

STAGE 2: STANDING STILL

After a time and somewhere along the way, I got lost. I missed them. Sometimes, I wondered if I had been frivolous with the time that I had been given with them. Had I? We had always lived life to the fullest, right? I had done what I was supposed to, hadn’t I? Now what do I do? With my days… and my time…. I was standing so still, and I had no idea where to go next.

  • Shopping lost its high.
  • I didn’t feel like doing much.
  • I quit doing much.
  • I didn’t want to see anyone.
  • I didn’t go anywhere anymore. It was getting colder anyway.
  • I quit the things I loved.
  • I quit seeing the people I loved.
  • I didn’t eat much.
  • I slept a lot.
  • I woke up and showered and cleaned up before they got here and put on a good face because I loved them.

One day, I met my husband for Chinese food at a place we lovingly call Bad Service Place, but we go back over and over because the food is so great. I sat across the table from him and with tears in my eyes, I completely blindsided him with the fact that I needed help (words I don’t think I had said ever one time in my entire life).

STAGE 3: GET BUSY LOVING

If there’s one thing I love to do, it’s to laugh and to make people do the same.

I spend my days finding ways to make people happy. If I can, or if there is a way, I want to find it. I am not always feeling great, and I am most definitely not always a ray of sunshine. But I am in repair, and I know that I can do the one thing that I was made to do: love them.

Simple as it may be, in the time I’m given. That’s the thing I’ve learned through this transition. It is all about time. I was given all of this time with my kids in the beginning, and it went so fast. It didn’t feel that way because it was so messy and hard and lovely all at the same time. We spun around so fast we didn’t feel the time fly by, until it stopped. For me, it was when they were no longer hanging out with me in my house day after day. It might be different for you. Whatever or whenever it is, that’s okay. But time, it keeps on going. I may not have all day, every day with them like I used to. I may not be spinning around like I used to. But I have mornings and nights. I have time to be intentional in how I love them in that time. I have time to be intentional in how I find ways to bring them joy and make them laugh. I can love them deeply in those moments. When they run up our lane from the bus. Watching them from the bleachers as they play their sports. Packing their lunches and watching them eat dinner and listening to them talk about their days.

This is our time.

When the House Goes Quiet: The Year My Kids Were All in School | Des Moines Moms Blog

It’s not over. Times change. These are our moments now. I’m not spinning so fast or standing so still that I can’t see that.

2 COMMENTS

  1. You’re BACK! This piece is incredible. I *know* this time is coming for me…not right away, but faster than what I’ll be prepared for, surely. I have tears in my eyes just thinking of it, for me, for you, for the passage of time. Thank you for writing again!

  2. amazing post mel! so glad you are BACK!!!!

    goosebumps reading it. been that crazy mama crabby at life and the demands of motherhood lately with a busy 9 month old on top of crazy 6 year old life. i needed this. and i know so many others did too.

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