My son woke me up on Saturday morning fully dressed in his soccer uniform, shin guards, socks, cleats and all.
Mom, can you help me tie my cleats?
What?! What time is it?
I squinted at the clock. It was 6:30 a.m. His game was at 10 a.m.
Hey, Buddy, you don’t need your cleats yet. We’ve got some time.
I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, to no avail.
When I finally dragged myself out of bed and got my contacts in, I looked at my son. He was SO EXCITED. He had so much enthusiasm for his day ahead that he couldn’t bear to stay in bed one moment longer while all I wanted was to stay in bed one moment longer.
When does this change? When do we go from full of enthusiasm, ready to take on the world, tons of energy to a sluggish, tired working mother?
I tried to recall a time when I awoke every day full of energy like my kids. Certainly, some days are better than others. But most of the time, with everyday life, it’s kind of hard to rally.
As far as I can tell there was no one incident that drained me of my energy. Rather it’s been like a slow dripping faucet that you barely notice until it’s too late and you are 40 years old on a Saturday morning and your son is waking you asking you to tie his cleats.
Earlier in the week I was with my three in Stop n’Shop. All of them were being a little too hyper, a little too full of energy. I was reprimanding them, directing them to “CALM DOWN!” As I write this, I am realizing that perhaps the reason their over-abundance of energy is annoying to me at times is because I am grieving the loss of my own.
We had made it all the way to the back of the grocery store by the milk when an older woman, probably a grandmother, came up to me and said, “I wish I had some of their energy. They are beautiful.”
I was stunned. Here I was, kind of embarrassed by their over-enthusiasm trying to rein it in, when here she was looking at them with some nostalgia probably for her own kids when they were the same age.
This woman, a complete stranger, helped me to take a step back from my situation and realize that these kids of mine with their unbounded energy and enthusiasm won’t always be like this.
So when my guy came in with his whole uniform on, I had to smile. And drag myself out of bed.
