I absolutely adore my children. But man — they do not allow for a single moment of peace.
I want to be clear that this is not a complaint. This is a documentation. A love letter and a therapy session rolled into one, written in the small window of time between someone asking me for something and someone asking me for something else.
Take dinner, for example. A meal I prepared (that did not include yogurt). A table I set. A moment I looked forward to all day — sitting down, eating something warm, maybe having an actual conversation. What actually happens is this: I spend the first ten minutes of dinner not sitting at all. I’m assembling a very specific yogurt situation. Yogurt first. Then fruit. Then granola. Then honey — and do not, under any circumstances, forget the honey. I have forgotten the honey before. I will not make that mistake again.
I finally sit down. My food is lukewarm at best. Everyone else is halfway through their plates. I pick up my fork.
“Oh and mom? Can you get me a glass of milk?”
I get up. I get the milk. I sit back down. I pick up my fork again. If I’m lucky, I start eating. What is more likely to happen – someone spills something or needs something else.
This is my life. And the wild part? I wouldn’t actually change it.
There is something about being needed this completely that is both so exhausting and (very) quietly beautiful. My kids hang on me — literally, physically hang on me — while I’m trying to think, work, write, or just exist for five consecutive minutes. They sing things out loud for no reason. Full performances. No audience required. They narrate their own lives like a nature documentary while I’m trying to have a single coherent thought.
I have started a sentence approximately four hundred times today and finished maybe three of them.
But then we snuggle on the couch before bed and catch an episode of Kids Baking Championship or Full House and it feels whole.
Motherhood is anything but quiet. It is not still. It is not the peaceful, candlelit version of itself that I occasionally fantasize about. It is loud and sticky and constant and layered and so full it sometimes feels like there is no room left for me in it.
But it is also the thing I am most proud of. The thing I would choose again. The thing that, on my hardest days, I have to remind myself is not happening to me — it’s just happening. Loudly. Constantly. With a side of yogurt, fruit, granola, and honey.
Don’t forget the honey.
I know I’m not alone in this. What’s your version of the milk moment? Drop it in the comments — I genuinely want to know. 🤍
XO, Sabrina
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