February finds me longing for a day off. I don’t want to complain because I love my life and I am INCREDIBLY blessed, and I know this. But I am greedy and what I would really love, what I find myself longing for with an increasing fierceness, is a day that is all mine. A few hours, on one of the days when the children are in daycare, during which I won’t have to work and won’t have to speak to anybody.
I want to be alone, and I want nobody to need me. Nobody to wait for me, nobody to send me emails or briefings, or to call to ask me if I’m happy with my current electricity plan. Maybe I will go and see a movie, or get a massage. Maybe I’ll paint some pictures or spend the whole day writing my book. Maybe I’ll just go for a walk, or grab a coffee. Somewhere where nobody knows me or wants to talk to me.
That day would be pure gold.
And at the end of it I would pick up my babies from daycare and kiss them all over their faces and love them all the better for the new energy I had to give them. I would kiss my husband when he came home from work and be ready to give him the smiles and time and attention he deserves, instead of hiding away in this blog or watching TV because I am too exhausted to talk.
And the next day, when I wake up to little voices calling my name at an hour when little voices probably shouldn’t be calling anything our to anyone, and spend the next four hours
managing meals
cleaning
nappies and toilet-training
getting them dressed
mopping up spills
getting them changed
packing bags
moderating arguments
finding lost toys
finding lost shoes
changing more nappies
more trips to the toilet
wiping noses
washing dishes
(mopping up spills, getting them changed)
dropping them off to daycare
and THEN
starting an eight-hour day of work (emails and phone calls and briefings and research and deadlines and backaches and headaches and hand-cramps and blurry vision and creating things for other people to other people’s tastes) before picking them up and starting all over again…
On THAT day, I will do it all with added joy. Because, the day before? That day was MINE.
Let’s talk. What have you been longing for lately?
Image credit: Doug Robichaud (licensed under Creative Commons)
