A Mother Alone, Final Edition

I'm such a loser. My kids have been gone for a couple days, and I totally miss them. Or at least, I miss being with them. Crap. I'm actually feeling sort of depressed and lonely. Maybe if Jeff were here, we'd be having a high time and enjoying ourselves, yahooing it up. But what if - horrors! - he were here and we'd still be missing the kids? How pathetic.

Here, all this time I've had a concept of myself as a reluctant parent. Sure, I've totally devoted myself to my kids, worked very hard to conceive them, feed them, raise them to be good people, blahblahblah, but I've always played the role in a kicking-and-screaming kind of way. Like I could be doing so much more with my life at any one moment. If I weren't cooking for the kids, then I could be writing the great American novel, starting a comedy school, running a homeschool resource center, curing cancer, running for president, learning to juggle. If fact, I know that I've said that to the kids at some of the low moments, "Do you know what I could be doing right now?" (read that in a horrid, shrill voice) "I could be teaching to children who...actually...like...learning...from...me." Ugh. And I don't know how many times I've been doing stuff with the kids and thinking, "I wish I were downstairs writing right now."

And now I have to give some of that up. Because now I have this horrible knowledge that there are times when I'd rather be with the kids than alone!

I have to go back and totally change my act. Rewrites! Rework my character! Shoot that scene again! Now I may have to think of myself as one of those ooey, gooey mothers who actually likes being with her kids and misses them when they're gone.

Gross.