The Addams Family

"I'm just like any modern woman trying to have it all. Loving husband, a family. It's just, I wish I had more time to seek out the dark forces and join their hellish crusade." - Morticia Addams


Sometimes, Morticia Addams really speaks to me.  Doesn't it seem like that to you parents out there?
 
Okay, so maybe you're not looking for join the crusades of the dark forces.  In fact, knowing that majority of my readers personally, I'd wager that this runs completely contrary to what you do want to do.

But if you stop to think about it, what she's really saying is that there are so many other things she wants to do.  Morticia loves being a wife, a mother, the matriarch of her unique family.  But she knows there are things she had to give up to be that person.  Even with Lurch around, I'd guess that Morticia finds she spends too much of her day shuttling Wednesday and Pugsley (and later Pubert if you are a fan of the movies) to different activities and making sure everyone had everything they needed for all their various things.

Sometimes as a mom, as a wife, I find that I am lost in those roles.  That I have forgotten who I am outside of baseball practice and Girl Scouts and the mountains of laundry that never seem to shrink.  I ask myself why I'm the only one who knows where everyone is supposed to be everyday.  Why I'm the only one who remembers what Jacob has to do for school, when he can't be troubled to remember it himself.  Why I went to the trouble to get Sara out of softball so she could go to Girl Scouts, only to find she didn't bother to prepare for the meeting.  Why I'm the only one who knows where the washing machine is and how to work it.

From 8 AM Saturday morning to 8 AM today (Wednesday), I had driven 354 miles.  If I'm going to drive that far, I want to be somewhere warm and pleasant and alone, not sitting at a traffic light hoping we'll get to baseball practice on time so I can drop one kid off and then leave to rush somewhere else to pick up the other kid before she can be classified as "abandoned".

Everyday I think of things I'd like to do.  Just fun things, just for me.  Scrapbook, read, write, go to a movie that doesn't have something animated in it.  But everyday I get up and go to work and then I drive kids around and then I come home in time to prepare for the next day and then fall into bed and then I wake up and start it all over again.  And I know, I KNOW, they are only kids for a while.  I know that before long, they'll be driving themselves to all this stuff and then they'll be in college and I know that the theory is that I'll miss these days.  But my great fear is that once Jake and Sara move on, move OUT God willing, there will be something else to fill my time.  Something else that is tedious and mind-numbing.  That one day, I'll wake up and be 87 and find that I never had time to do something I wanted to do.  Anything I wanted to do.

I'm grumpy today stemming from an argument with Jacob yesterday.  He has 6th grade graduation next week and the flyer that came home said "Sunday best".  I told him we need to make sure his dress pants and shirt still fit and find a tie.  He told me he wasn't wearing that stuff.  It escalated from there.  Or went downhill from there, however you want to categorize it.  It's all so ridiculous because last year, he and his friends willingly wore dress shirts and ties to school and now I can't get him to put on a tie for a few hours for a graduation ceremony.  It was a little argument really that got blown out of proportion, but left me feeling unappreciated and bitter.

It's times like this that I want to run away from home.  To seek out the dark forces and join their hellish crusade.  To be someone other than "Mom" and "Hon".  Just for a day or two.

And honestly, whatever your personal "hellish crusade" is, isn't that what we all want?