The Napkins

  • by Trish Berg
  • May 14, 2014
  • 394
                        
Struggling with loads of laundry, clutter in the kitchen and chaos in your life? Stress can easily steal our joy. Trish Berg reminds us to simplify the small stuff and find Joy in the Journey. It a started with napkins. It sounds silly now, but in the moment, it was a big deal. It was one of those moments in time when your life flashes before your eyes, and this flashback was not very good. You see, I failed, yet again. Failed at motherhood. When our oldest, Hannah, was in grade school, I would volunteer to be the room mother, organize the class parties and attend all of the class field trips. I baked homemade cookies for those parties, shaped like dinosaurs, flowers or bunny rabbits, iced and sprinkled with love. I used to make homemade crafts for the kids, like glass Christmas ornaments filled with puff balls, painted like snowmen. I used to put a whole lot of time into making things perfect for my children and their classmates, homemade, home-baked perfection straight form this mom’s heart to theirs. I even helped make a quilt for Hannah’s Kindergarten class that included a square for each child and their artwork of what they wanted to be when they grew up. I would plan parties with puppet shows and piñatas. I once made a birthday cake that looked like a circus train full of wild animals, and organized a scavenger hunt for plastic wild animals in the yard. I once directed and acted in a live puppet show for Sydney’s 6th birthday party and planned more sleep-overs than I can count. But to be completely honest, though I love all of those memories, and I am thankful I was able to create such fun for my kids, I was really more concerned about how I looked as a mom than about creating fun for them. It was all about me, my ego, my status among other moms. I felt like I was being judged, and I wanted to win the prize. It was exhausting, trying to be the perfect mom with the perfect parties all of the time. So I stopped. Somewhere along the way I either grew older and wiser, or simply got tired and lazy. Whatever the case, I gave up the race for mom of the year, and simply accepted who I am. A loving but forgetful mom who lives life like a speeding train barreling down the tracks hoping I just stay on the right path and don’t knock anybody over in the process. I don’t always get it right. In fact, one year I sent eight year old Riley to school on picture day in a ratty old t-shirt with mussed up hair. And last night, it was the napkins. I was supposed to be in charge of bringing napkins for the cake reception after Hannah’s senior choir performance at Dalton High School. And I forgot the napkins. It caused a flashback moment that broke me out into a cold sweat. Or maybe that was just a menopausal hot flash. Who knows. Thanks to Mr. K, the band director, we made due. We scrounged up enough left over napkins to get by. Then the concert began. I watched my two teenage daughters sing their hearts out on stage and cried along with Hannah as she sang the Dalton alma mater for the last time before graduating later this month. I used to try and make motherhood about being perfect. Now I make it about being who I am, a failure of a mom who loves her children enough to know when to let it go and just be there, present in the moment with them. Because those moments will eventually end. And being there is what truly matters the most. Even without the napkins.


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