The Motherlode: Finding Balance Where There is None

It's 10:24 am and I have but one precious hour left of time before having to get the twins from their preschool. The minutes hang over my head serving as a constant reminder that I do not have enough time. I have a deadline to keep, I am writing about my trip to Nevis and going through hundreds of photos; editing and trying to organize my post so it's not too long, so that it stays interesting. This has been weighing on me for weeks, and I keep procrastinating. Must. Keep. Going. I have at least eight hours of stuff to do today, but they will not get done. I know this. And it adds to my frustration. Obligations, expectations, personal wishes, distractions, lists in my head, important decisions to make, a business to help run (but I don't because I leave that to Scott by default, causing him stress as well)... It's crazy hair day tomorrow and next week Isla needs to dress like she's one hundred years old. These sorts of things are icing on the cake that I do not want to eat. Do you know how hard it is for me to get out of the house with my kids by 8am!? And now I need to give her rainbow troll hair!!?? (Insert GIF of woman sliding down a wall slowly in exasperation) All of these things combine with about a million other tiny things - including my own personal struggles, wishes and desires (which get pushed to the side and ignored) - and chip away at my sanity, my peace. I freeze. I opt for an evening with friends drinking strong cocktails as opposed to tackling the contents of the overflowing cupboard or doing some much-needed yoga. I'm simply too tired. The devil in my mind shakes her head in disgust: "You are not enough."

Welcome to the motherlode.

***

I know I'm not alone. It's not a new concept; the mental load that a mother bears. It's well documented and every single woman who runs a household knows exactly what I am talking about. Lots of people see me and think that I have it pretty together. And sometimes, I do. But deep down, I'm just grabbing at straws like everyone else. Things that are currently bugging me (this just off the top of my head): my computer is a mess, files everywhere, 18K+ photos just floating around with zero organization, and in desperate need of a backup. Our lockers, cabinets and drawers? Dear GOD they are ALL overflowing and jammed shut. Hidden away. Is this a metaphor for my life? Tidy on the surface and a mess underneath? I ponder this question regularly. Our fridge needs cleaning and organizing, and speaking of the fridge, I really need to step up my cooking game because I'm failing there too. Must do more family dinners....I need purge some of our stuff; kids clothes, toys, extra markers and all. the. things. Living on a boat means it encloses around us much more quickly until I snap and just start grabbing stuff and throwing it in bags. Confession: I keep almost NONE of my kids art and crafts and when it comes home in their bags, more often than not it goes right to the trash. Am I the only one? TELL ME I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE.

I want to take pictures of their creations and scribbles as keepsakes for them, maybe set up email addresses for them to act as a time capsule where I send them cute things about their lives and their days but FACT: I can't be bothered. Will I regret this? Thoughts like these keep me up at night. I yell at my kids too much and sometimes their attitudes make me see red. ACTUAL RED, people. Am I failing them? Kids are, after all, a mirror unto ourselves. Each day when they are mean or sassy or hurtful I think: "Did I do this to them?"...I spend too much, am careless with money, and have no idea how to do taxes or properly manage finances. I have approximately 4K emails in my windtraveler inbox, many of those from wonderful and loyal fans and followers who deserve a response, but I just can. not. do. it. I simply do not have the energy or the time to craft thousands of email. I have so much I want to say, want to write...but I'm blocked. I feel pulled a million directions and instead of it all lighting a fire under me to work work work and #getitdone, I freeze. Am I lazy? Am I a failure to launch? Am I living up to my potential? I don't like the answers I give myself. "You are not enough."

This is just the little mundane stuff. I won't even get into the fact that our livelihood and business still dangle precariously in front of us, our future almost totally uncertain. The next 18 months are critical. I push the thoughts out of my head...

And people wonder why I cannot sleep at night.

It's not one of my better traits, this tendency to stand like a deer in headlights in the face of a mountain of tasks. I get overwhelmed easily and my knee-jerk reaction - the carnal fight or flight instinct that evolution has fine tuned for us - is to run. I escape in many ways; some healthy (spending time with friends, talking, writing it out), others not so much (drinking in excess to distract, wasting precious hours on social media). But to tackle it is all too much. I want to take a photography course (my skills are so limited), get back into health and fitness (I'm a former marathon runner and medaled triathlete), I want to write at least once a week and resurrect this blog... I want to be a better mom, a better friend, better sister and daughter...I want to submit articles to magazines, maybe even start a novel and there are SO MANY books I am longing to read because one every couple weeks isn't enough.... These are just a sampling of a long list of wishes and desires I have but instead I let out a heavy sigh, lay down during my downtime hours and scroll on Facebook or find some other distraction. "Another day" I tell myself. My energy level is too low. My inspiration gone. I need more coffee... Which reminds me, I really need to drink more water.

On the flip side, I am also hyper aware that we are in an intense stage of life right now. Everyone tells me this and I get it. We are "in the trenches" as it were... We had three kids in less than two years (chaos is an understatement), are the parents of twins (well documented to add stress to a marriage), live on a sailboat (stressful) on an island where we are complete outsiders (and often made to feel unwelcome), and we run a (now fledgling) business. Our lives were completely overturned and future made uncertain by the largest recorded hurricane in Atlantic history, adding insult to injury. To steal a lyric from my favorite 80's rock ballad, we are "living in a powder keg." I still am looking for the spark. Maybe it will get my tush in gear?

We are lucky, I know that. I feel guilty for even winging about this because WHAT RIGHT DO I HAVE? There are many people with real problems; terminal illness, family death, poverty, abuse...the list goes on. My litany of stresses and worries are of the first world variety and I know that (adding guilt to my self-deprecation list right now). I know that what matters most in life are people and our relationships with them. That our health is our wealth. We have three beautiful, healthy children and wonderful family and friends. We get to live in paradise, enjoy international travel and our lives are full of adventure. I am grateful for all these things, believe me. Will I be on my deathbed and wish I had written one more blog post? Most likely not. Will I sob at the mountain of email I never got back to or wish I had cooked more organic vegan dinners for my children or lament that my drawers were a mess? The dispatches I read of hospice nurses tell me unequivocally "no". I will wish for more time and maybe that I had spent mine wiser. I will think of my family and friends and hope I made a positive impact on their lives, in their worlds. I will lament hours wasted agonizing about things that don't matter, days like this. And this is what I think I need to keep focusing on. One foot in front of the other. Day by day. What is important right now is to make someone smile, help a friend, have a laugh, make a memory with my children... I remind myself that soon enough all three of our girls will be in school all day long and before I know it they will be grown and suddenly I will have many hours throughout the week. I will miss these days. I will look back and think how wonderful - maybe even how easy - it all was. And I will long to come back here.

But for now, it feels like the motherlode.

***

Yesterday, I bought three cans of colored hairspray for Isla's rainbow hair tomorrow. When I showed her she would be able to have the hair she wished for she jumped up and down with the biggest smile you could imagine, threw her arms around me and exclaimed, "Oh my gosh!! Thank you SO much mommy, you are the BEST! I am so excited!" In that little moment, I was winning, and everything else was just noise. This morning, I was more than enough. And that's good enough for now.

Reunited with Captain Daddy

This past Friday night, Scott returned from the islands.  Lucky for him he just missed the polar vortex that was Chicago, but he still looked very out of place as he stood in shorts, flip flops and a glowing tan in baggage claim among the backdrop of black puffy coats, pale faces and snow encrusted winter boots that signify wintery Chicago.  Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore.  Luckily he had some shoes and jeans in his bag to change into as well as the coat and hat I brought him.  While the 30 degree temperatures were positively balmy compared the -20 we had earlier in the week, it was still pretty dang cold out.  Especially for someone who just flew in from the tropics.

We're used to reunions of this sort in our family.  Since getting his job with Island Windjammers, Scott and I have endured many separations ranging from 4 to 8 weeks at a time which - while grateful for the opportunity - has been challenging.  Such is the lot of the captain's wife.   This particular separation was the hardest, particularly for Scott.  He told me that with me being so pregnant and Isla being so aware, interactive and soaking up life lessons like a sponge, he really felt a longing to be with us more than ever.  Not that it wasn't hard before, because it was, but this time was particularly poignant.

He landed at 7pm and Isla was fast asleep so we had to wait until the morning for the big reveal.  Isla and I had been counting down the days till Daddy came home for a week and Skypeing with him regularly, so she knew something was up - but I don't think anything could have prepared her for seeing Scott's smiling face as it hovered over her little tent bed when she awoke sleepily calling, "mama...mama...mama" on Saturday morning.  Scott wanted me to sleep in but I couldn't stand to miss seeing the looks on both of their faces when they registered one another, so I went with - for no other reason than to bear witness to the joy.

To say she was excited would be an understatement.  Her sweet, sleepy eyes immediately lit up at the site of him and almost instantly she threw her arms around his neck in a big hug.  "Daddy!" she exclaimed with a smile.  Scott, obviously, turned to mush in an instant and the three of us cuddled together on the bed with Isla drawing each of us closer together by working her little arms around our necks and saying "group hug!"  She's been so "go with the flow" her whole life that it never really dawned on me that she would feel a void that her daddy was gone or really grasp the fact that our family had been "incomplete" for six weeks, but clearly she did.  She wanted us together, she wanted to be in the middle and she was super happy to have him back.  It was yet another lesson in just how astute a tiny toddler can be.  She literally never ceases to amaze me with her childhood brilliance and innocence.

So we are back together and all is right in the world.

We had a lovely weekend as a family, hanging out together, catching up and, of course, Isla had to show daddy all her new tricks.  At 22 months, this child is talking up a STORM.  There is almost nothing she cannot say and she repeats just about everything we tell her with alarming clarity.  Needless to say we are having to be extra vigilant about "bad words" which is a bit of a challenge for this former potty mouth.  She's singing songs; ABC's, Itsty Bitsy Spider, Wheels on the Bus and Humpty Dumpty are a few of her favorites.  She's grown fiercely independent and the phrase of the month is "Isla do it!" because she wants to do everything on her own.  She continues to be a fearless climber and aside from going "up" - she's running, jumping, and taking all sorts of risks and tumbles which we are happy to oblige.  Her physical prowess and incredible balance (no doubt thanks in part to boat life) has led me to believe she can absolutely handle skis so we're going to take her skiing in the next week or two.  I can't wait.  While it hasn't come up much since this has been a sailing blog - Scott and I are huge into skiing (I started at age 2 and Scott lived in Park City for five years) and both of us have every intention of turning our girls into little rippers on the slopes.  We're so excited to share two of our biggest passions, skiing and sailing, with our girls in the coming years.

So that's where we are right now.  Lots and lots of together time and simply trying to enjoy every moment of these last few weeks before we go from three to five overnight.  Woah.

Catching up on world events....in the comics.

We do a LOT of crafting these days.  Here she is showing Scott her finger paintings.

Fun outing in the sled (Daddy LOVES snow!)

Here I am at 31 weeks!! (I am now a day away from 32!!) Whoo hoo!! On the home stretch.  Pun intended.

Happy Thanksgiving

It's turkey day back home, and - to be totally honest - if it wasn't for Facebook I would have forgotten all about it as, obviously, they do not celebrate Thanksgiving here in St. Maarten and a cruiser who actually knows the date is something of an anomaly out here.

But despite of the lack of football, turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie - I find today as good a day as any to reflect on all that is good in my life.

I have so many things to be thankful for - too many to list, in fact - and I am grateful for the gifts that have been bestowed to me every single day... But today, I am mostly thankful for this little person who has enriched my life beyond belief, taught me more about love than I could have ever imagined and makes each and every day better by just being her amazing little self.  I feel like I won the lottery every morning I wake up to her and the gift of motherhood is by far the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.

I love you sweet, little Isla.  More than you will ever know.

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans, may you - and everyone else out there - find something to be grateful for on this fine day.  Asante sana Universe.