The Things I Carry

I go through diaper bags the way some people go through lipstick, a box of diapers, or a week’s worth of food. At one point, I used four or five different bags as diaper bags, hoping one would “fit” just the right way, that the weight I carried would feel less heavy, and my shoulders wouldn’t ache at the end of the day.

Inside my bags, I carry all the essentials for a preschooler and toddler: at least four diapers in a wet bag with a full pack of wipes, allergy medications, an inhaler for my son, band aids, Neosporin, toys, granola bars, applesauce pouches, cheddar bunnies, and something for myself to snack on. Always, the snacks, for my pregnant and always-hungry self, and the never-ending pits that belong to my children.

I didn’t think it would be this hard to find a bag that didn’t weigh me down. But the diaper bag has come to represent something different to me five years and 10 diaper bags into motherhood: I think if I find the magical bag that makes the physical weight of motherhood lighter, then there is hope I can find the magic solution to lessen the mental load of motherhood.

I had never considered the mental burden of motherhood until my first baby was wrapped up and placed in my arms. However, I did have articles and blog posts and advertisements thrown at me for nine months, telling me all about the best diaper bags and the best essentials to carry inside said bags. I wanted one that was cute and functional, something that didn’t make me feel like I was carrying a bag for my baby. I used totes filled with makeup bags of all sizes, in which I kept extra clothes, snacks, and diapers. Everything had a place and with every bag I easily switched out what I needed for each excursion out of the house. And yet with every one, I felt weighed down.

As my children grow older, I am surprised by the weight of motherhood, and it turns out my diaper bag is not to blame.

***

My three-year-old reaches for my hand as I maneuver the car seat with his baby sister in my other arm. My dad walks behind me, carrying my diaper bag in his hand, keeping his jokes to himself about how heavy it is. I’m not in a laughing mood as we walk up to the Children’s Hospital Therapy Center for my son's evaluation. He barely speaks, and, when he does, it is nearly impossible to understand him. I ignored my motherly instincts for a year, hoping and praying it would resolve on its own. Now there is no ignoring the fact there is something wrong.

I sift through the diaper bag, picking out the smaller bags and explaining the contents to my dad in case the baby wakes up from her nap. He nods as if he will remember anything I said and goes back to rocking the car seat with his foot, reclining his head against the wall. I take my son’s hand, and we walk through the door, down a narrow hallway, to a room where we will spend the next hour with a speech pathologist.

Once the evaluation is over, we meet my dad in the lobby, and I am overcome with gratitude that I didn’t have to go through this alone. He picks up my diaper bag and my sleeping baby as I grapple with the weight of my son’s diagnosis—Apraxia of Speech, a neurological speech disorder.

***

My three-month-old has been sick for a week and doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Her cough sounds like a barking seal. I Google “cough barking seal” and am immediately met with the symptoms of respiratory viruses. I load up the diaper bag, expecting most of our day to be taken up by doctors and nurses in the ER, since it is a weekend and her doctor isn’t available.

After a few hours in the hospital room, I receive a text from my sister asking how my daughter is. I tell her we will be here for quite a few more hours to keep an eye on her oxygen level. I also tell her I am starving. The hospital is a five-minute drive from my sister’s house, and she comes to check on my daughter as we wait to see if her oxygen levels go up. She brings lunch and company, and for a few moments I am able to relax and forget about the aches and pains in my body from sitting on a gurney for hours.

Eight hours later, my daughter and I leave the hospital with an oxygen tank attached to her and instructions on how to carefully drive home without bursting into flames. I am petrified as I walk out of the hospital with a sick baby, a car seat, a diaper bag, and an oxygen tank. The fear of the unknown is heavier as we settle into our new normal, not knowing when the machines and tubes will leave my daughter’s side.

***

Motherhood is a heavy job. Raising real people who will go on to live real lives should be heavy work, but I don’t want to mess anything up. I spend so many hours throughout the week fearing I am not doing enough. Is my child ready for kindergarten in the fall? Is he self-sufficient enough to get through an entire day without me? Will my children be kind and compassionate adults, always willing to lend a helping hand? Will they look back on their life with me and say I did a good job?

The moment I announced my pregnancy I was met with advice about the gear I would need for the baby—which store has the best clothes, which swing feels just like mama’s arms, the diapers that don’t leak, and the diaper bag that is guaranteed to fit everything, including the kitchen sink. The tangible stuff is what makes money, it’s what is sold to every woman with a growing womb. We make room for all of the stuff we are told we will need yet are rarely told to make room in our minds and in our hearts for the real work of motherhood.

The long days that turn into long nights, the incessant tears from the newborn and the exhausted mama, the cough that turns into an ER trip and ends with a baby on oxygen for a week, the hours spent in an observation room watching a preschooler learn how to talk. These are the things I carry with me every day, the things that weigh me down when I think of all that motherhood is.

***

I am a few months away from having my third child and am considering—for the 450th time—which diaper bag would be the best fit for a kindergartner, toddler, and baby. The choices feel overwhelming and, at this point, I am most concerned about the health of my back while chasing three kids around.

I know what it is I am looking for in a diaper bag: a backpack that allows for two free hands, enough space for the snacks and the diapers, and maybe a notebook for myself to record my thoughts, which is the only way I have found to lessen the other load I carry on my shoulders. I know that my full-hands are about to be outnumbered, and I have yet to find that magical diaper bag that fits everything I need, that is comfortable and easily accessible. I’m sure it is out there waiting for me. I also know it isn’t the diaper bag I have to worry about. It just feels like the easier choice.

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Guest post written by Jacey Rogel. Jacey is a wife and a mama to three. She is living in the newborn fog and surviving with the help of coffee. When she's not sleep deprived, she can be found reading while her older children go on grand adventures in the backyard. Writing has been a salvation for her since she became a mother, helping her through the hard seasons that accompany motherhood. Her writing has appeared on Coffee + Crumbs and The Village Magazine. She occasionally blogs at jaceywrites.com.

Jacey is a member of our Exhale community. To learn more about Exhale and how you can join this amazing community of creators and dreamers, visit www.exhalecreativity.com.

Compound Interest

Today my oldest child, Nadia, got braces. We walked into the teal-walled office and Jill, a woman wearing buttoned up black cardigan, welcomed us with a smile. She invited me to enjoy a coffee from the Keurig machine on the well-stocked coffee cart in the spacious waiting room after showing Nadia the video game console. Why thank you, Jill. Yes, I think I will have a free cup of coffee while my daughter plays video games and I wait to pay you all my dollars to make her teeth straight.

I sat down with my coffee and went over the rest of my day: grocery shopping, preschool pick-up, soccer practices. Then my mind wandered back to my own orthodontic experience, twenty-seven years ago: a small wallpapered waiting room, the big decision over what color bands to get, watching my mom write out Fifty and no/100 on a check in her flawless script at every single visit.

“Nadia?” asked a solidly-built guy in black scrubs. My daughter walked out of the game area and lifted her hand in a half wave/half “I’m here” gesture. With eyes that disappeared when he smiled, he said, “You ready to get braces?” She nodded, looked a me for reassurance, then followed him to the back of the office where I’d meet her in a few minutes—Jill and I had a quick date with some payment plans.    

***

When I was a junior in high school, my math teacher, Mr. Henderson, spent an entire class period for an exercise on compound interest. He’d been a teacher at our school for something like 39 years and explained to us that outside of school, he did some financial investing. He wanted us to understand the exponential impact of time on our investments.    

Our supplies: a sheet of paper. A calculator. A pencil.

The math problem: You are 22. You invest $2,000 each year, from age 22 to 28, at a fixed return rate of 8 percent. You invest no more money after age 28. How much money will you have at age 65?

The reason it would take an entire math class: we weren’t using a formula. We would work as a group, but individually show and plot the progress, year by year.  

At first, the initial excitement of adding pretend money to our imaginary nest egg was fun. But after a while, somewhere around those 40s ...  our calculations started to get tedious.

The line on our graph felt like it was barely changing; it just got longer. Year after year after year, it just felt so … so slow. So repetitive. Does this little increase even matter? How many more years of this do we need to do?

But somewhere in our imaginary late-50s, the barely-north-of horizontal line started to hook up. And, with each passing year, it’s orientation changed to vertical.     

Mr. Henderson spread his hands out wide in excitement and brought them back together with a clap! He quickly rubbed them back and forth with a mischievous smile, “This is where it really gets good.” We didn’t need to hear him say it, his chuckle gave it away, This is so fun!

That day, we learned that when you invest $2,000 each year for seven years, given a return rate of 8%, after 37 years (by the time you get to age 65 in our scenario) you’ll have $1 million.

“What you do early matters” he said. “And just think of what you’d have if you kept contributing and gave it time!” The bell rang and we packed up our pencils. Before we started to walk out, he put both his hands up in the air, as if giving us a solemn definitive blessing, “Compound interest!”

***

Back at home after the appointment, I looked through the pictures I took of Nadia with her big new smile, metal brackets glued to every tooth. I texted one to my dad, stepmom, and siblings. The caption read “Braces!! Such a fun way to spend five grand.“

(Sometime last year, a friend warned me: Get your head around spending $5,000 for braces. I promptly put the information in the same category I’d put “After you give birth, you bleed for 4-6 weeks” and “breastfeeding doesn’t come naturally to everyone.” The category was called Maybe for you, but probably not for me. I’ve since moved those to the category called They were right.)

After I sent the text, gratitude towards my parents overwhelmed me. Not just for braces, but for everything they did for my siblings and me. Growing up, I thought we lived such an average life. We had a house. Two cars. We took a vacation every summer. Went to church every Sunday. And Wednesday. (And sometimes Thursdays.) There were piano lessons. Family dinners. I love yous. I’m sorrys.

Goodness gracious. As a parent, now? Absolutely none of that feels very average. It all feels very significant. And remarkably intentional.

At almost every turn, my husband and I make conscious choices for our family—ones that I now realize my parents also made for my siblings and me, ones that will have impact, long term. And none of it seems very average on this side of it.   

From the bedtime stories to family dinners around the table. The I love yous and I’m proud of yous. The discipline. The prayers over their bodies and minds and hearts. The playing play dough. Going over spelling words. Making cookies. Brushing hair. Singing lullabies. The quick kisses before leaving and after arriving home. The planting of one’s parental hind end in uncomfortable bleachers during any number of sporting events. The showing up for recitals or dance or choir performances.

When we’re adding numbers to the family and every month there’s a new milestone to celebrate, it’s exciting. But somewhere along the line, after years and years of daily routines and bedtime rituals, giving and offering, prepping meals and paying for field trips, when the monotony of minivan chauffeur life and needing more milk starts to give you tunnel vision, you might think: Am I doing this right? Are we making a difference? Will any of this add up to something?

I looked at my phone and sent another text, “Also, Dad—thank you for paying for my braces. Pretty much all of my life these days is a big lesson in ‘what I didn’t realize my parents did for me when I was a kid.’”

What we put in while they’re young may not look like much. But it does matter. It just might take 27 years and a set of braces till you really start to see the effects.  

Where's the Village?

“I had this idea,” she explained, her voice sounding far away, like it does when you’re mourning the loss of a hope unrealized. “This idea that I’d bring my baby home and my friends would come to visit, and some of them would bring us meals, or maybe some of them would just stop by to have coffee and hold the baby.” She shrugged and continued, “Nobody brought us a meal at all. My best friend came once.” She trailed off and shook her head gently. This mama, a casual friend whose path I crossed infrequently, wasn’t looking for a pity party. She wasn’t complaining. She was sharing from her heart and telling me something true when I asked her how motherhood had been so far.

“You know how they say, ‘It takes a village to raise a child’?” she asked. I nodded, I knew. “Well, it feels like the people I thought would be my village have disappeared,” she said. “It’s messy and hard, and I guess I just thought they would care more.”

I think about all the messages I frequently see on Instagram. Find your tribe. So thankful for my tribe!  What would I do without my tribe? #ItTakesAVillage #blessed

But this sweet mother hadn’t found a tribe for her new stage of life, and she certainly wasn’t feeling blessed by friendship. She felt like the rest of the village had left for vacation while she stayed home alone with a new baby, a case of mastitis, and a desperate prayer for sleep.

“You know?” she asked, her eyebrows raised in a question above her lovely, weary eyes.

I did. I knew. I had mourned in similar ways during my 11 years as a mom to four kids.

I knew the loneliness of having a baby at a time when none of my friends did. I knew the disappointment of new motherhood which accompanied the eye-opening realization that this life’s work is not as blissful and pretty as I had hoped. I knew the distress of looking in the mirror after growing an entire human being inside me. I knew the painful desperation of sleepless night after sleepless night. I knew the discouragement of not being able to make it through the day without crying. I knew the shame and doubt and anger I sometimes felt toward motherhood. And I knew the longing for a girlfriend who understood, who cared, who was in this stage of life with me—not just a Park Chat Friend, but a friend of my heart.

And so I nodded. I did. I knew. I knew so deeply, hearing her words mined my memories and brought tears to my eyes.

But I knew something else, too.

The knowing started gurgling in my stomach as soon as she began answering my question: “How’s life as a mother—how are you doing?” The gurgling soon turned to a knot because … here’s the other thing I knew: I had thought about bringing her a dinner after her baby was born, but I had decided not to.

I didn’t just forget or run out of time. The dinner didn’t slip my mind. It wasn’t another example in my life as a busy mom with lots of littles which I could shrug off with, “It’s the thought that counts,” because I had thought about it, and my thought had landed on NO.

I felt a nudge in my heart to reach out to this mom who I didn’t know all that well, to honor her as a new mother, to celebrate her baby, to show up for her.. I felt the nudge, but I had decided to ignore it because I doubted myself.

I doubted myself because sometimes I wonder if I’m too much—if I go too deep too fast; if I let friendships become out of balance because I care too much. I prefer to skip the small talk and get into the meat of things. Maybe my personality isn’t too strong, but sometimes I worry my interest is.

Maybe this time I should hold back. Maybe I’m learning—after being hurt by unappreciated and unreciprocated love offerings—that sometimes I need to leave more space. And who am I to bring dinner, anyway? We don’t know each other very well. Who am I to ask for her address and bring a meal for her to eat with her husband, who I’ve never even met? Nope. Not this time. I don’t need to jump into everyone’s lives.

Even though I understood this brave and honest mama so deeply, I hadn’t experienced exactly what she was going through; I hadn’t lived without a village. During my hardest periods of first-time motherhood, I had a supportive network of family and friends. They helped me in tangible, practical, and emotional ways, even though they couldn’t fill—and shouldn’t have—the myriad vacancies (from crevices to canyons) I was sensing as I learned to navigate life as a mom. They put meals on the table and in the freezer. They provided moments of respite for my stinging eyes and tired rocking arms. They answered my questions about breastfeeding—latch? hold? duration? pain? burping? schedule? They saw me through.

If I had never experienced the highs and lows of having a baby, if I had never been on the receiving end of meals and lots of love offerings, I may not have thought to bring a dinner to this friend.

But I had, and I did, and then … I didn’t.  

Months later, when I heard her voice her feelings of disappointment about community, and about support, and about her village, I no longer heard my own voice questioning, Who are you to ask for her address so you can deliver a dinner? Instead I heard God asking, Who are you to ignore the nudge I gave your heart?

So today, going on a year after I talked myself out of an act of kindness, I have a dinner for her family simmering on the stove because it’s not too late to cook up some love. It’s never too late for that. It’s never too late for tangible, practical, emotional support for a mom. It’s never too late for a card which says: you’re doing it; a meal which says: you deserve a break; a knock on the door which says: I see you and I care; a fellow mother who says: welcome to the tribe, Mama. I’m so glad you’re here

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Guest post written by Molly Brumfield. Molly Brumfield is a wife, a mama of four, a used-to-be-teacher, a pacific northwest enthusiast, a lover of all things food and wine, an organized procrastinator, a social introvert, a children’s literature super-fan, a wannabe minimalist, and a family girl practicing resting in the love of our One Maker. She blogs about this wild and precious life at www.mollybrumfield.com.