Present Over Perfect

some! Look, you didn’t even notice I was gone, what with
all the perfectly folded clothes and perfectly washed grapes
and perfectly planned activities. I hate being gone, so I
make sure that when I’m home, I’m super-home, lots of
homemade meals and clean closets, as emphatically home as
possible.
And so, on that first morning that Henry was sick, I was
cleaning up from the party we’d had the night before—ten
adults and ten kids. I was unpacking our bags from our trip
to South Haven the day before that. I was laundering new
bedding for Henry’s room and stuffing a duvet into its new
case, puttering around, putting things away.
This is what I call fake-resting. I’m wearing pajamas.
The kids are watching cartoons, snuggling under blankets,
eating waffles. Aaron’s reading or sleeping. It looks like I’m
resting, too. But I’m not. I’m ticking down an endless list,
sometimes written, always mental, getting things back into
their right spots, changing the laundry, wiping down the
countertops.
Some might say this is being a mother, or a homemaker,
or this is what women have been doing for generations:
tending to the home stuff while men and children go about
their leisure. Maybe so, but this woman and mom is
exhausted. And tired of being exhausted.
So I fake-rested on Saturday, and then again on Sunday.
The kids and Aaron napped. They played with Legos and
went to bed early. They watched movies and ate leftover
pumpkin pie. And I caught up on emails and ordered