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The Husband has been feeling better and, with his improvement, has put us on a schedule (timetable if you’re Australian/nasty).

I rolled my eyes the first morning this occurred, as I came downstairs and saw that he was at the kitchen counter instead of behind the bathroom door. He was talking to the boys about Our Day, and I thought to myself how ridiculous it was to have “standards” during the holidays and how breezy I am and how we should all just RELAX.

It turns out that the schedule has kind of saved us.

Gone are the screen-filled days of my tenure and TH’s sickness, the meandering hours with rare, pop-up, complained-about activities like “book-reading” that punctuated the otherwise Roblox-dominated hours. Now the kids are thriving in their workouts and soccer games and (eye-roll/gasp combo) maths sessions with Dad.

And I’m sitting here writing this, so…we all win?

I’ve discovered over the last near-decade that I’m the same thing a friend recently called herself–A Lazy Parent. I do not like to craft, I shudder when the kids want to “help” me bake, and wrestling is a trauma trigger. I have panic attacks during homeschool sessions. If it’s not quiet reading on the couch or, even better, Netflix piled on the bed, I start to feel an itchy urge for my phone. I like to read books about parenting. Parenting itself? It’s a mixed bag.

To quote a friend: “I DON’T WANT TO FUCKING ‘WATCH THIS’ ANYMORE TODAY.”

I love my kids desperately, am consumed with their healthy development and well-being, and if I have to sit through another dinosaur video I may jump off a cliff. All these things are not mutually exclusive; it’s just complicated, being more than one thing. Having kids and a husband who are more than one thing.

The Kid doesn’t love eye contact, but Little Brother positively thrives on someone (me) staring deeply into his eyes every time we speak. This same LB would climb inside my skin if he could, but settles for tangling himself around me like a pretzel, while TK is happy to study his rock collection on the other side of the room without any physical contact for hours (#livingthedream). And TH can’t cook, and is just learning to clean, but his presence brings the boys to life (and his milkshake, to the yard), and he saves me daily in all the ways I didn’t ask for or know I needed.

You learn these things about each other when you move across the world together, when you survive lockdown together, when you get through the holidays together. You learn the twists and turns of each others’ personalities, and flaws, and forgivenesses.

You learn through the redemptive conversations that my therapist mentioned this week–the ones that happen even more often when you’re stuck together and you know your own need for grace–that life is not a straight line but a curving, doubling-back and shooting-forward one, which is much more chaotic and beautiful. You learn that there are parts of you that are brought to life by your family’s mercies (and parts that will likely die if your kid asks you to “watch him watching this video” one more time). You learn that Christmas lasts longer than a day, and not just because you’re too lazy to take the tree down, but because of what it means.

And you learn that sometimes the too-close one wants space, and sometimes the one who doesn’t like eye contact looks so deeply into yours that you swear he can see your soul.

You learn to be surprised, and to see the surprises not as weapons formed against you but as gifts of grace that call you to be more than you were–and then make you into just that.