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A few nights ago, as my daughter was trying to fall asleep she reached out to me, wrapped her little arm around my neck and said “Mommy, you should come to the pool with me more.” I was a bit taken aback by this as going to the pool is usually a daddy-daughter thing. Then she told me that I should go to the playground with her more. She told me that she loved me, sighed a contented sigh and said “Mommy, you’re not going anywhere. I not going anywhere either” (parroting what I tell her every night when she’s trying to fall asleep—that I’m right here and love her and will always be here; I am not going anywhere).
She easily settled down to sleep snuggled up against me, still clutching my neck and I was overwhelmed with love for this sweet little girl who is so affectionate and shows her love so easily, even at such a young age. But I lay there turning over her comments in my head, struggling to embrace the positive aspect of it—that my kid loves me--and shake off the negative part—that she felt the need to ask me to play with her more and was literally holding me in place and telling me not to leave. Did that mean that I’m not spending enough time with her? Am I working too much and loving her too little? Am I doing too much and not being her mom as much as I should be? Perhaps it was nothing more than a little girl’s pillow talk as she fell asleep, but I couldn’t help but wonder if she was able to see something that I was not about the way that I have been living my life of late.
It’s easy as a parent to fall into the trap of responsibilities taking over your life. The household chores never seem to end and your life can easily become day after day of checking chores off of the to-do list and rushing to complete them. If you are working outside of the home, you balance the demands of work and of home and it feels like you are working right up until you go to bed or until you have so little energy that all you can do is sit in front of the tv and stare at it mindlessly for an hour before you go to bed. If you are a stay-at-home parent, you take on the role of doing every household chore imaginable and run the home like a well-oiled machine, complete with hospital corners. Either way, it’s easy for the doing to take over your life and to forget that it’s important to just be your kid’s mom or dad.
My fondest childhood memories are of when my mom would stop washing the windows, vacuuming, or doing the dishes and just play with me and my siblings. Summer days with board games and Play Doh and the times when my dad would play whiffle ball with us in the backyard after working his 8 hour a day, 6 day a week job. I treasure those memories and find myself becoming nostalgic for those moments. They bring a smile to my face as I recall those summer days and I savor them like I would a fine wine, rolling the memories around my brain so I can experience every subtlety. The idea that my kid may not have enough of those types of memories to savor and that she is telling me that she is starving for them breaks my heart. And it is a wake-up call. Maybe we need to just be moms and dads and run through the sprinklers with our kids more. The laundry will wait but my kid won’t. Someday she will be older, the demands for Mommy-daughter time will stop, and she’ll want nothing more than a ride to the mall or some extra money to go to the movies with her friends so she can get away from her old Mommy. But for now, she’s right. Mommy isn’t going anywhere and neither is she…except to the pool together and then the playground. Hope to see you there.
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