The Problem

The problem with children is that someone has to take care of them.

Since I've been home from DC, this task has felt a bit relentless, I'm sure partly because of the transition from being surrounded by family to being alone.

There is the constant picking up.
The constant organizing, sifting through, and cleaning out toys.
The constant washing of hands.
The constant making of food.
And, of course, the constant demand for time and attention. Constant.

I usually have 5 or 6 hours with a babysitter each week. Which is great, but isn't much. I have a laundry list of things I feel pressed to do -- submit to journals and contests, research presses, revise and write poems, read -- and so many things I'd like to do -- sit on the sand, go for walks, write in my journal, pray without distraction, talk to a friend without also answering 50 quickly-fired questions simultaneously etc.

But the problem is that someone has to take care of kids. And when I imagine doing life a different way -- teaching or writing full time, or living a life of leisure :) -- and having someone ELSE take care of my kids, that feels no better.

And so I am working to back off the urgency to have time and space to myself, and am praying for perspective about how brief this time is, these days when Eden calls me "the other Tink-uh-bell" and asks me to hold her as we fly together to "Nev-uh-wand."