Motherhood is the best disaster

You're doing fine, Mama

There's nothing like being a Mom to make you feel like other people have it all together and you're the mess. After many frank conversations with other women who seem as if they have it all together, I'm happy to report that literally everyone is a disaster. Every. One.

My two-year-old son wakes up obsessed with four things - the baby goats currently occupying our living room (they're there until they graduate from the "every-two-hour" bottle schedule next week), scissors, fire (anything lighters), and a broken belt hanger that I bought at Ikea about ten years ago and he discovered hanging in the back of his closet.

As I write this, he's riding his big wheel in the driveway wearing a Hawaiian shirt, a pullup diaper leftover from naptime, light-up flip flops, and the Ikea belt hangar clipped to him. He grabbed the scissors, but I took them back immediately after shooting this pic. Please don't call the authorities.

Whatever your life looks like right now, you're doing fine, Mama.

The older son is camped out in front of the tv. I'm letting him chill all day as he is too tired to function as a human boy. He woke up in the middle of the night and crawled into bed with me, crying because Mother's Day reminded him that I will die someday. I'm not exactly sure why this holiday reminds him of my mortality, but it's nice to know I'll be missed eventually, I guess?

There’s nothing like a 2am, “I don’t want you to die, Mom,” to put your life firmly into perspective and also amp the next day's coffee intake.

Whatever your Mother's Day looks like, know that which feels messed up is temporary and probably completely normal.

I just wrote the previous paragraph, and just to put a fine point on it, here's what happened: I ran downstairs to swap the laundry from the washer to the dryer. When you have two orphaned baby goats and two human children in the house, you do three to four loads of laundry a day. I opened the dryer to find four small brown logs resting on the bottom. "OH NO!! TURDS!!" was my first thought. My second was to figure out what animal they came from - Human? Goat? Dog? Wallaby? All are plausible.

Nope. They were pieces of maple breakfast sausage someone has squirreled into their pockets for later and forgot about, nestled in the bottom of the laundry load. I washed and dried them. Now that load smells deliciously of breakfast with a hint of Vermont. Don't worry; despite washing and drying the sausages, I just put them in the scrap bowl for the chickens. I'm sure they're fine. Waste not, want not.

Anyway.

Yesterday, my husband, Mark, had an all-day sporting clay shooting event for charity out of cell service. About 20 minutes after he left, I got a text from our neighbor, Pam, that she was selling hay but that it must be hauled off "today."

Right now, I'm paying $15 a bale for the hay my goats like. I know they prefer Pam's horse hay as she brings me whatever her horses leave behind, and my girls devour her's first. I asked what she was charging a bale - she wanted $6. Welp.

Since it was the just children and me for the day, I loaded them in the truck, and we headed down to get hay. At first, I thought it was just four bales. Perfect! $24 cost and it would save me $36. Fabulous. Then I drove to the second hay storage spot. Actually, Pam had 72 bales for sale. If I could move and store it, that would represent over a thousand dollars in savings between the hay itself, the gas to take the trips for smaller loads, and the time it takes to go back and forth.

So, I went back home and loaded up the trailer. From my perspective, any hay I could buy at that price was a steal. But I had the human kids. So, I just turned on the AC in the truck, let them crank the radio, and accepted whatever buttons they pushed in the cab was part of the cost of doing business while I loaded hay.

They pushed every button. I don't even know what the truck is doing right now, and I have no idea how to undo it. It's fine.

I loaded and unloaded the trailer with hay. It made me realize that my perspectives on wealth and feeling rich have changed drastically over the last few years. I used to feel rich when I had a bank account that could cover several months - now I get that exact same feeling from a shed full of hay.

After the first load, I brought the human kids and the truck, which was now a stranger to me but would not stop blasting Warren Zevon, home. I made a quick lunch and put them down for a nap to wait to load the next haul.

A few minutes later, Pam and our sometimes helper and dear friend, Olivia, showed up at the door with the remainder of the hay. Amazing. We unloaded that, too. By the time we finished stacking it all, I felt like the richest woman in the world.

This morning, after my late night/early morning mortality reminder from the kiddo, my own body reminded me why stacking hay is a game for the youth. Parts of me hurt that I forgot existed. How does one injure their shoulder blades? I don’t know but managed to do it.

Regardless, we headed to church, where it seemed like a lot of other families were celebrating Mother's Day by being perfect - that is - until the homily dragged on. The skinny woman with the Michael Kors bag tried to pin her son to the pew. The family where all the moms and grandmas had matching corsages started to give one another the side-eye. The woman with six kids who seemed to have it all together pulled her phone from her purse and started playing Youtube on silent to shut her kids up. We're all disasters, every one of us.

And me? I could barely stand and kneel without crying from the haul yesterday - but I looked around at the beautiful disaster of kids and families - and thought of my shed full of hay - and I was rich.