I've been rehearsing for the stake musical recently and it's been refreshing to do something that's not mothering for a little while. I just finished reading Anne of Ingleside (finally! (after losing my copy multiple times and reading several books in between!)) and I daresay I've been feeling a bit like that Anne lately: tired, washed out, "sick-and-tired of never-ending, monotonous duties . . . "
Last night I left the children (all save Zoë, who still comes with me everywhere because all food is disgusting and bottles are evil and she'll never learn to eat and I'll still be nursing her to sleep when she's in college) at home with Andrew and drove to my friend Marian's house, where she and Laura and I had met to carpool to the stake centre, all three of us leaving our husbands at home with our bunches of children.
We stopped at a traffic light and a man started approaching our car so we quickly locked our doors.
"I just want to ask a question," he called to us.
But the light turned green and off we went. It sounds callous but you can never be too careful.
"You'll have to ask someone else," Marian said. "Perhaps a car not filled with women."
I suppose there are strength in numbers and we could have protected each other, should it have come to that, but still. It was dark and we felt vulnerable.
"So, I kept having these thoughts today," said Laura, a self-proclaimed non-worrier. "Like, imagine if Marian drove us off the road and we all died. Three mothers of young children. All in one ward. How tragic would that be? What would our husbands do? How would the ward even cope with that?"
"And I'm the compassionate service coordinator!" I tacked on.
We had a good laugh about that—who would coordinate the needed service?!
To be fair, I'm co-coordinator, so my co-coordinator would take care of things. Still, it lightened the rather dour mood that had settled on our car after Laura shared her thoughts.
Andrew laughed when I told him about this because I'm always dreaming up worst-case scenarios when he goes out of town (or even sometimes when he's late coming home from school). I'm always like, "Let's take a picture of you with the kids for no reason at all right before you leave." And he's always like, "It's in case I die, isn't it?" And I'm always like, "I have no idea what you're talking about. Okay. Yes. That's the exact reason."
But I'm a self-proclaimed worrier so I expect myself to have thoughts like that. Somehow it's reassuring that a self-proclaimed non-worrier sometimes has the very same thoughts.
Last night I left the children (all save Zoë, who still comes with me everywhere because all food is disgusting and bottles are evil and she'll never learn to eat and I'll still be nursing her to sleep when she's in college) at home with Andrew and drove to my friend Marian's house, where she and Laura and I had met to carpool to the stake centre, all three of us leaving our husbands at home with our bunches of children.
We stopped at a traffic light and a man started approaching our car so we quickly locked our doors.
"I just want to ask a question," he called to us.
But the light turned green and off we went. It sounds callous but you can never be too careful.
"You'll have to ask someone else," Marian said. "Perhaps a car not filled with women."
I suppose there are strength in numbers and we could have protected each other, should it have come to that, but still. It was dark and we felt vulnerable.
"So, I kept having these thoughts today," said Laura, a self-proclaimed non-worrier. "Like, imagine if Marian drove us off the road and we all died. Three mothers of young children. All in one ward. How tragic would that be? What would our husbands do? How would the ward even cope with that?"
"And I'm the compassionate service coordinator!" I tacked on.
We had a good laugh about that—who would coordinate the needed service?!
To be fair, I'm co-coordinator, so my co-coordinator would take care of things. Still, it lightened the rather dour mood that had settled on our car after Laura shared her thoughts.
Andrew laughed when I told him about this because I'm always dreaming up worst-case scenarios when he goes out of town (or even sometimes when he's late coming home from school). I'm always like, "Let's take a picture of you with the kids for no reason at all right before you leave." And he's always like, "It's in case I die, isn't it?" And I'm always like, "I have no idea what you're talking about. Okay. Yes. That's the exact reason."
But I'm a self-proclaimed worrier so I expect myself to have thoughts like that. Somehow it's reassuring that a self-proclaimed non-worrier sometimes has the very same thoughts.
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