The Upside

Always look on the bright side of life.

Monty Python got it right. (They got a lot of things right.) I wanted to write a blog post about how everything is going wrong. How the kids are loud and hard and constant. How my body is breaking down in myriad ways: eyes, toes, ears, back, pelvic floor. How I sometimes can’t sleep even when I want to. How relationships take work and effort and time (and sometimes money). How I haven’t been working on my manuscript, not really, in ages. How I caught a horrendous virus that ravaged my body for over two weeks at the worst possible time – when I was drilling for a week straight and then my husband left on a work trip for seven days – and none of my support network was around: not parents-in-law, my selfless neighbor, even our go-to babysitter. I wanted to bitch and complain and show the world how much I was suffering, confident that I must be the only one with such rotten luck. I wanted someone else to step in, take care of me, and deal with the kids. I wanted to be somewhere else.

But then, I did a thing.

I asked for help.

When my neighbor returned from seeing her own family, I asked if she could pick up some meds for me. I was having yet another bout of diarrhea, and taking care of two young kids without being able to leave the bathroom, much less the house, was killing me (smalls). And she did. And she also picked up some sports drinks and Coke, to be drunk flat, and made sure I had crackers and her number on hand. I wasn’t sure she would do it, you know, help me, and that’s not a slight on her but the way I was raised and molded by my own path in life: just suck it up, buttercup. Take care of myself. Perhaps that was the problem – I would have been fine taking care of just myself. I knew I needed to rest, stay hydrated, and eat when I could manage. But you can’t do that when you have two-under-five and one of them is still a toddler, likely to get into mischief that only constant supervision can prevent. The four-year-old, yeah, she’s pretty good. I can give her a stack of paper and some crayons, or let her water the garden, or give her a bike or a scooter, or even (heaven forbid) plonk her down in front of the TV for a movie or some Peter Rabbit. But the two-year-old? No way. Even letting go of all my rules about screen time and sitting him on the couch to watch Peppa Pig would not guarantee him staying in the same place. Not long enough for me to get a nap or be horizontal for any length of time. All I wanted to do was rest, stay motionless, hope my stomach would stop trying to massacre itself. But the answer was no.

Still.

My neighbor’s little act of kindness lifted my spirit. The drugs kicked in and I finally felt able to get up from the toilet. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law texted to wish me well. My sister and mother hoped I would be back feeling normal soon. My husband called to give me encouragement and say I was doing awesome with the kids. The clock kept on ticking, I threw pizza down their throats, let them splash in the tub, put one to bed, then the other, and then I crashed. And we all slept.

The upside to feeling ill and like you can’t carry on is that, well, you do. You get over it. You have to. Hopefully, you have help, even the tiniest breadcrumb, to get you through. Knowing other people have gone through what you’ve gone through, even a sympathetic ear at school pick-up, a social media message of support, a voicemail, boosts your spirit. You are not alone. Even though it sucks, and it does, you can see the light.

Two days later, when the kids were screaming and I reverted to wearing hearing protection (ear defenders) to keep my sanity during both dinner and bath time, I texted my neighbor again. It was later than I normally do – I like to give at least a day’s heads up – but I wouldn’t know unless I asked. She said yes. I sent her a kissyface emoji. And at 2000 on the dot, after I tried to salvage my patience while putting the kids to bed, she showed up with a book and a simple request for a glass of water and she listened out for the kids while I went on an 60-minute evening bike ride. It was magical.

Freed of the burden of responsibility, even for an hour, while soaking up the purple shafts of evening sun and gulping cool, country air, was astounding for my mood, my mind, and my soul. The physicality of biking along winding tracks, avoiding (the many) potholes in the road, and conquering the hills leading to the Salisbury Plain forced me to focus on the present. I spend so much time future-planning, worrying about what’s to come and how to navigate logistics with kids, that I forget to stop and just be. Stay more in the moment, like Cadbury. It is a good lesson for me to remember.

Now, when I feel frustrated, angry, irritable, or generally cranky, I try to ask for help. Sometimes, it doesn’t come. Often, it does. I’m trying to make this my new norm, for all our sakes.

And when I can, I jump on my bike and pedal.