Baby steps .... Baby steps ....
Sometimes I have days where I feel I could accomplish everything. Days where I get up, shower and clean the bathroom and wolf down a bagel while ascending the stairs to get the baby ready for the day. I’ll feed her a bottle and baby food and make it out the door with five minutes to spare to drop her off. Days, where after eight hours of work, I can plunge back through the door, baby on my hip, and make a tasty and, to top it off, nutritious dinner. I can take it all on; I can feed the baby and encourage her social skills; I can make dinner and do the dishes while the pot boils, all the while singing to the baby.
Then there are those other days, which happen to make up most of my weeks lately. Days when I’m grouchy from the first flutter of my eyes as my husband nudges me and mumbles again, a little more loudly, “Jess, it’s 6 o’clock. You gotta get up.” When each outfit I try on doesn’t quite look right, or after I finally settle on one, I notice a stain on the sleeve. Days when my hair looks terrible, and I still have to step away from the mirror calling a truce with everything wrong I see before me, flat hair and worn clothing regardless. Days when I must eat breakfast, after first spilling orange juice on our new sofa sectional that I really shouldn’t be eating anything on at all, while holding an unhappy baby who woke up an hour earlier than usual.
Sometimes, OK a lot of times, a mother just needs all the help she can get. What’s wonderful is when a mother comes across someone who recognizes those moments and does nothing but help. On Monday, I went to the store determined to get a shopping cart with the infant seat attached, which makes the trip a lot more pleasant for everyone involved and ended up walking the length of the front of the store with an 18-pound baby slipping off my hip, and my lower back screaming out in protest before finding a store employee bringing in carts from the parking lot. After asking him if he’d seen such a cart, he wordlessly turned around and went back out the door he’d just come in, and right when I thought he might not come back, that he hadn’t heard me or didn’t fully read the desperation on my face, my savior came back pushing a cart with an infant seat. He just smiled and walked away while I thanked him repeatedly and emphatically.
On Thursday, there was the lady at the post office who kindly stooped down, placing her own package on the floor, to help me tape up a large, heavy box overflowing with hand-me-down baby clothes I was mailing to my cousin, as the baby repeatedly threw a plastic fish across the floor from the stroller.
Then there was Friday morning. After yelling at my husband for mistakenly feeding the baby (which he kindly offered to do after seeing I needed the help) without a bib to cover her new outfit, and the bottle leaked all down her front, I was forced to change her, stripping her soaking wet clothes from her body. I remember the stinging words that came rushing out of my mouth: “You see you’ve helped me, but you didn’t really help me.”
A short time later, after he’d left for work, we struggled out the door, she bundled up in her hat, mittens, and a coat, and I cajoled her into the car seat by humming and singing “You are my Sunshine.” I tossed my keys and purse into the front seat, accidentally hitting the automatic lock on the key chain. I didn’t think anything of it, as she continued to wail despite my sagging attempts to be calm and soothing.
I got out of the backseat and shut the door. But, when I reached for the driver’s side door handle, it refused to budge. Neither did the back door. I am a mother who is trying valiantly to do it all and failing miserably, who scolded her husband for merely not using a bib, and who locked her 9-month old child in a freezing cold car. As if the action would help matters, I yelled, “NO!” and slammed my hands against the cold tinted window, and peered through it at my child who looked at me quite quizzically. As my heart struggled to restart, I frantically dug through my pockets, thanking God for the cell phone I pulled out or else I would have had to go door-to-door for help. After speaking with a secretary at my husband’s work, while my voice and hands shook, he was located. In the end, my husband was able to get a ride home from none other than his boss, and Lilith and I were rescued, and my heart returned to its normal rhythm.
Some days, most days for me it seems, a mother needs all the help she can get. At some point, I’ll come to realize that I cannot do it all on my own, and that’s alright. I’m sure I’m not the only mother who doesn’t know any nursery rhymes, who is incapable of sealing a jar of baby food correctly, and as my husband says, I’m not the first mother to lock her kid in the car. I’ll learn to ask for help, the more often the better, and I’ll be sure to become even more unhealthily paranoid about the location of my keys. I’m trying. But, you know, baby steps, baby steps.
Jessica Gray resides in Princeton. She can be reached at anmlhouse5@live.com.
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