Maybe I Just Need to Make the Table Longer

It is a typical Monday evening and already I am mentally counting down the minutes to bedtime.

I’m feeling overwhelmed. Is that an overused word? In my exhausted mom of three brain, balancing the various needs that three young children bring at the end of a long day, it’s the only word I can recall without the use of the thesaurus app. So overwhelmed is what I shall name it.

The oldest, the first grader, is setting up a workspace with various papers and glue and writing utensils in the name of card making for her friends at school. It’s precious. It’s thoughtful. It’s messy and takes up space.

The three-year-old is there too, taking up his own space, as one does when one is the middle child and must fight for presence. He has a roasting pan filled with some concoction of lentils and wild rice and whatever else was found in the pantry in my inspiring (desperate?) attempt this afternoon to offer a creative space for sensory exploration, but is now, as one might assume, meticulously glittering the table and the chair and the rug underneath. It will end up in the vacuum before long.

Then there is the bouncy seat for the three-month-old, reaching across a good third of the table. It’s empty, of course. Being in mom’s arms is always more appealing, especially at 5:00 when it’s time to cook dinner. But the seat sits there like a vision of hope. Perhaps even as a placeholder. One day, he too will need a place at the table.

But back to me and my exhaustion for a second. It’s quiet for but a moment and so I do what every responsible mother with a lengthy to-do list might do: I sneak a peek at social media. (Not proud, just honest.) I see a post from a mom (in a different stage of life, mind you, but that is another post for another day) welcoming in “puzzle season!” She has an unfinished puzzle spread out across her dining room table in process. “Oh, that looks fun!” I think to myself. “I can be that person! The puzzle doing kind!” I take my eyes off my phone screen and glance at my table.

It’s full.

Between the children and the projects and the mess and the hope, I do not see where puzzles fit on this table. Not to mention the dinner that needs to make an appearance if I ever get around to finishing it.

I don’t have room for puzzle doing, I say to myself.

There really isn’t a whole lot of room for me at all at this table.

Defeat. Honest and yet slightly bitter defeat.

But wait, I think in a flash moment of optimism. Maybe I can work with this.

Let’s see, I could just shove those papers over a little bit. Perhaps take the bouncy seat down (let’s be honest, he’s not into it anyway.)

And wait, isn’t there a leaf in this table?

Perhaps what I need in this moment of overwhelming exhaustion, when I feel pressed by the various demands mothering three brings in this season of life, is not to shrink with the weight of it all. Maybe I just need to find space. Space to fit in next to them, to be creative and explore and observe side by side them at the table. Space to be the mom who writes or cooks or does puzzles or whatever it might be that, despite the exhaustion, makes me feel like I belong too. And I know it is not about the puzzle doing. It really is about wiggling through the cracks of exhaustion and demands to find a little space for me.

Because there is room for me too.

Maybe I just need to make the table longer.

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Rachel, mom of three and wife to a man who is WAY better at cleaning the kitchen, is a Minnesotan newbie, curator of family adventures, builder of epic train tracks, lover of all of the library books, and writer in the in-between. She shares about the confluence of her child development background and the realities of parenting on her blog Raiseandshineblog.com.