A near meltdown on Mother's Day

On Mother's Day, I made biscuits and gravy at my house, roused the kids, and we took two separate cars over to my parents house.

I woke up at 5am to do my daily routine that I do every day except Saturday -when I sleep in- usually that means I sleep until maybe 6am, but I like having a morning that feels free like that. I was also feeling good, and happy that I have this morning routine that is such a huge support to me. I wrote in my morning pages about how I would spend mothers day if it were up to me, and it was mostly how I was going to actually spend my day. I ended my morning pages by saying It's funny to watch my want to find something wrong, but there's just not anything wrong. Ok. Off to the rest.

I got a bit cranky while I was making the biscuits and gravy, feeling disappointed that no one was making me breakfast, or pampering me, or doing things like vacuuming the house in the name of motherly love. And truthfully that's not surprising- I am self sufficient in a way that can feel pretty lonely sometimes.

My oldest, K, has a sleep schedule that looks totally chaotic to me. It looks hard to deal with from my point of view. I love my routine- I'm washing my face, brushing and flossing around 9pm, in bed by 9:30, so I can get up at 5am and have plenty of time to do my stuff I like to do that helps me feel good about my day. She is a Night Owl- a capital one.

She loves the dead of night. She always has. It's dark, the world sleeping, there's so much freedom and so little pressure. But on days when we have to be at my parents' house at 11am, like Mother's Day, it fucks her up. To compensate for this she tried going to sleep at 10pm Saturday night but woke up at 5am, and by 10am she was cranky and irritable. She painted her nails while I made the biscuits and gravy. I kept thinking there was something wrong with the food because of the nail polish smell, but then would realize oh it's the nail polish.

Can you see where the pressure points are building in this day?

-I am feeling a bit ho hum and cranky because what about me I am a mother and no one is doing shit for me

-My daughter is totally out of whack bc of sleep

My youngest, H, is a last minute riser. Literally. I don't know how he does it, but he gets up and out the door in 5 minutes. I need like 5 hours. My parents live about 15 minutes away, remember we were supposed to be there at 11:00, and I was running about 15 minutes behind because I wanted to go for a run and so I did, and stopped myself from going around the wall twice so we could be on time, but I was still running late and that can annoy my parents so I don't like being late to their house. (the wall runs around Duke's west campus, it's a 1.75 miles loop) H gets up at 10:40.

He may get out the door in 5 minutes, but it is a back and forth 5 minutes full of forgetting things, searching for and grabbing them that makes my organized and prepared self feel more and more anxious. My oldest also gets a bit wigged out by this. My youngest is cool as a cucumber- which is so cool to see, and also so opposite of me and K.

I remember the card, get the kids to sign it, and I also need help carrying things- there is a dutch oven with biscuits in it, and another with the sausage gravy. Those suckers are heavy. K is clumsy like me, H can only keep up with his keys and wallet. Neither of them knows how I'm calculating all of this, trying to manage it all in my head.

Also, every time we all leave the house together they try to let me go first, but I am the one locking the door so I need to be last, so then we have a sort of bumbling scramble of how to get me behind them. H goes out first, doesn't hold the door for K, more stress, then I balance my dutch oven on the porch railing and hope it doesn't fall, lock the door (which is hard to lock and you have to do it in a specific way or you end up not being able to get it locked- it has a sweet spot) and down the porch steps to the cars.

I balance my dutch oven on my hip and open the van door. The van is a 2005, no automatic door. K can't figure out how to open her door while holding her giant water bottle and her dutch oven and so H finally helps. All of this takes seconds, but for me it's in slow motion because I am holding more pressure points now.

The current pressure point list:

-I am feeling a bit ho hum and cranky because what about me I am a mother and no one is doing shit for me

-My daughter is totally out of whack bc of sleep

-H scattered leaving process

-Bystander anxiety of me and K

-Keystone Cops routine getting out the door

-Door locking

-Getting in the van without dropping food

We're off after non verbally figuring out which one of us is going to go first backing out of the driveway- me.

The check engine light has been on in the van for about 3 weeks.

Let me tell you about the van.

Or, let me tell you about vans. We had a gold 2005 Honda Odyssey for many years, it finally died at 265,000 miles in 2018. Meanwhile, my in laws also had a gold 2005 van- a Toyota Sienna, and they gave it to my husband in 2022 (they'd recently gotten a new one) when the 2002 BMW my parents gave us needed a repair that was too expensive to fix. He drove it for a couple years, then bought himself a nice almost new Subaru Forester in 2023, and the Toyota van hung out in his driveway for a year and a half.

Then my youngest got his drivers license and I decided to let him drive my car (a 2012 Honda CRV that replaced our Odyssey) and I would drive the van since his commute to school is 25 minutes on the interstate and my car seems safer for that. Plus I rarely drive during the day. This has been working out fine.

Now, the check engine light. It came on one Saturday morning when I was on my way to meet a friend for a walk. My heart sank. But I knew to take it to the auto store and let them hook up the diagnostic thingy and so that's what I did. It said there was a minor leak somewhere, nothing urgent. So I wasn't too concerned, I'd get to it.

And now, back to me backing out of the driveway first.

We start heading over to my parents house. K and I start discussing her sleep schedule, and it gets tense. We manage it, but I'm already stressed and disregulated, so when the car starts acting funny it doesn't really register. It is making a clacking noise, and losing power, but then totally fine. It does this a couple times. We're almost there.

We pull into the driveway and stop. There is smoke coming from under the hood. A few warning lights light up, and the van cuts off.

Things like this are so hard for me. I don't know what to do. I sit and stare, feel myself thinking about what a psychotic break might feel like. What if I became just...catatonic? Could that prevent me from having to deal with the van breaking down? What if I break down and the van breaks down at the same time?

A near meltdown on Mother's Day?

It's also in times like this when people turn to me for answers. Like I know what to do. I will tell you right now, I do not.

I head inside, noticing a beautiful plant on the bench on the porch. I wonder if this is my mothers day present. My dad heads outside to stare at the van with the kids. He comes back in.

"The hood release doesn't work," he says in an exasperated tone.

"I don't know," I say. H comes in. He figured it out. Dad goes back out. I go to the kitchen, searching on the internet for an answer. My mom follows me.

"Did you see your plant on the porch?" she asks.

"I saw it," I say.

"Oh. You don't like it?" she wonders at me.

I haven't even hugged her hello. My brain is ping ponging in thirty directions. My bandwidth cannot handle this.

"I can't think about that right now Mom! I am at capacity with the van dying in your driveway!" It's the first time I've spoken this harshly to her in years. "Jesus!"

"Yes?" she jokes.

"Don't be funny. I am not feeling funny. It's not time to joke around!" I say.

"I wasn't joking around," she says.

I don't know what to think, I just know that what is happening is not what I need.

It's interesting to watch my brain speak up for me and also feel like I'm ruining mothers day by showing up with a broken van and an attitude. Also, none of us actually cares about mothers day.

My dad and the kids come back in. Dad got donuts, but he hid them and us trying to find them eases the tension. We sit down to eat. Try to recover. I try to be ok. Steer the conversation in safe directions. We talk about TV. Things go sideways when we somehow start talking about Aaron Sorkin and K mentions how the West Wing has hurt politics. My dad doesn't want to hear her talk.

"I'm not listening to a 20 year old lady tell me about politics. You don't have any experience. You don't know anything!"

I shut it down, firmly, no nonsense, not angry.

"We're done. Not talking about this. No more. Immediately."

(BTW, shutting it down is new. I'm learning how to speak up instead of dissociate and act like nothing is wrong. I felt proud of doing this, but it took a lot of energy.)

The current pressure point list:

-I am feeling a bit ho hum and cranky because what about me I am a mother and no one is doing shit for me

-My daughter is totally out of whack bc of sleep

-H scattered leaving process

-Bystander anxiety of me and K

-Keystone Cops routine getting out the door

-Door locking

-Getting in the van without dropping food

-Tense conversation w K on the way

-Coming to good resolution in that tense convo

-Van making weird noises and then smoking in the driveway

-Me needing someone to tell me what to do and no one is

-My dad being totally rude

-Shutting down the convo heading the wrong way

We move on to playing one of our favorite games called Just One. I can tell we're all kind of tense because we play worse than we ever have, but it goes ok. After the game I call my husband to ask if towing is covered on our insurance. Yes it is. No, wait it isn't.

It doesn't really matter, the van has to be towed. Oh wait, it is covered. Cool.

Now the question of when to tow it. It's Sunday. Can you just tow a van to a place and leave it there? Luckily none of us has a lot of experience with towing..? I mean, yes, but also then there are 4 grown ups trying to figure out what to do with a broken down van parked in front of my parents garage where their car is.

My husband wants to bring over some coolant and see if that fixes it. Or to come over and help get the van out of the driveway. Or just to come over and help because he is a helping kind of person.

I can tell my parents are ready for us to leave. The kids are ready to leave, I'm ready to leave. Mother's Day lunch is officially over. The only one not ready for us to part ways is the van.

"Just leave it here," my dad says, in his harsh tone. "Where do you think we're going to go?" he asks, as if I'm totally bonkers for thinking they might not want their car to be blocked in by a broken old van. It feels like he's mad, though part of me knows he's not mad, he's just..my dad.

The part of me that doesn't want to inconvenience anyone is frantically searching for another solution, but leaving the van seems to be the only option. We say our goodbyes, get into the car, start backing out of the driveway. I'm almost crying, bereft. My dad comes out and holds up his hand- wait! I feel worried, oh no.

But he just wants the key to the van. The kids and I laugh with relief, and start to do our post mortem of the whole thing so I can't just cry and wail. I'm the adult in the room, holding the space for the kids, helping them learn better ways to handle stressful situations than what we just went through.

We get home, I get a ginger seltzer and a quilt and lay on the couch and watch 5 episodes of The Summit. H wants me to come in and check out the game he's playing, Rain World, he's wanted me to all afternoon but I told him I just needed to do my own thing for a while.

Later, I go into the kitchen. Grab my watering can. There's a little water on the handle. That shouldn't be there. I feel the pipe under the sink. It has a crack in it. My brain deflates. Isn't a broken van and a stressful lunch enough? Now a leaky kitchen pipe too? Doesn't the universe know I cannot take any more stuff? But it's a very slow leak, and it looks like we can use the other side of the sink no problem.

I take everything out from under the sink, luckily that's only a giant bag of dry cat food and a white plastic dish rack with a couple water bottles and soda stream bottles in it. Then I go to the laundry room for my one bucket like thing. It's more of a pain in the ass to figure out what to do with the random stuff in the all purpose rectangular bucket thing I got at IKEA. Little things like that send me over the edge when I'm stressed.

Also stressful is texting the woman I rent my house from, because anything going wrong makes me feel like I did something wrong, but I override the instinct to hide and send her a message, and a picture, and a video of what's happening so she can see it's not a disaster, just a minor inconvenience. And, she is awesome. Which I know. I just..am me.

The current pressure point list:

-I am feeling a bit ho hum and cranky because what about me I am a mother and no one is doing shit for me

-My daughter is totally out of whack bc of sleep

-H scattered leaving process

-Bystander anxiety of me and K

-Keystone Cops routine getting out the door

-Door locking

-Getting in the van without dropping food

-Tense conversation w K on the way

-Coming to good resolution in that tense convo

-Van making weird noises and then smoking in the driveway

-Me needing someone to tell me what to do and no one is

-My dad being totally rude

-Shutting down the convo heading the wrong way

-Figuring out towing the van

-Taking time for myself

-Leaky kitchen sink pipe

-All the steps to putting a bucket thingy under the sink

-Telling the woman I rent my house from about the sink

I make a sign that says "Do not use this side of the sink" and go to bed.

Monday morning is spent figuring out where to take the van and getting it towed. I do this by physically going to 2 different car repair places instead of calling even though it takes all morning because trying to do all this over the phone would be way too confusing for me. Trying to explain myself when I'm stressed is not my strong suit. The first place is still confusing and also can't get to the van for 2 or 3 weeks. So I go to the Toyota dealership and they can help. The tow company person is awesome and the brightest spot in all of it. He was clear, explained everything in a direct way and answered my questions without a bunch of fluffy filler customer service crap.

Late Monday afternoon I get the text from the Toyota dealership: $1475 to fix what might be wrong, but the engine is probably kaput, and a new engine is $4k. In the text they said "I'm sorry to tell you this..." and it felt so human, like they knew it wasn't what we wanted to hear, but here's the truth kind of thing. I get my husband to call the Toyota place.

We are not fixing the van.

Also, it's not a big problem. I have my car, it's good. It's fine. Now we know.

Monday night I still haven't really dealt with the stress from Sunday, but now I have some relief because we know, but also my household is back to one car. So that kind of leaves me where I was as far as the stress goes.

Usually I just shove it down and make myself ok. No one wants to deal with my stuff. Including me. But for some reason this time it feels like I can't ignore it all. The several separate stresses feel heavy. They are colicky babies, crying for attention, and I can't avoid them if I want to be well. I don't know what to do.

So I start just taking my time. Letting the stress be here. It doesn't feel good, but I can't think of anything else so I'm just being with it.

Tuesday morning I can tell I'm starting to unwind some. I start to feel better. I hop onto the Tuesday Landscapes writing group and feel a sense of routine that feels steadying.

Then my phone rings. Caller ID is H's school. Oh no. My heart starts racing, I answer the phone and leave Landscapes. One of the school admins starts telling me that H has been involved in an incident with another student, they were talking about the outlet challenge (I have never heard of it) and the other student is the one who actually did it, but they are both being suspended for the rest of the day and some other stuff I couldn't understand because I was overloaded. She asks if I can come get him and I tell her he drove to school and then I wait for him to get home.

I pace the house, ending up in the laundry room, I scream "Godammit mother fucker!!!" and "Why!!!" and "What the fuck!!!" and then I Google the outlet challenge (why is this a thing?) and try to figure out what to do. Punish him? How? How to even talk to him about this and how could he do this when he knows this week has already been very stressful?!? I call my husband and neither of us knows what to do. Neither of us is great in situations like this- we both get filled with doubt and lose our ability to steer. We come to no conclusion but I still feel a little better.

I decide to ask for more help (which is not my norm but I'm trying to do things differently) so I text two friends and ask what they would do. That feels better too. I'm not alone. I wait for them to answer, wait for H to get home, standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room, staring at the driveway.

Something shifts. I know I can't come at this in anger. I know taking things from H will not work. He is not a consequences kid. If I take his phone or his computer he will center how much that sucks instead of centering what is the actual point: how to speak up when someone is about to do something dangerous. I decide I need to not lose the plot to punishment, instead I want to talk to him and see what happened.

I think about my capacity. I have 2 things happening for the rest of the day. I cancel one of them. H gets home. We talk. It is frustrating and also good. I parent my kid the way I know he needs to be parented. I care for him and myself and know it probably isn't what the school had in mind. I don't take anything from him. I don't punish him, I talk to him. He's rarely in trouble. He asks me to remember that, and I tell him I do. Instead of punishing him I try to help him learn what to do if something like this happens again. I tell him what to do when things like this happen. We hug. He spends the next 2 hours cleaning out his backpack and working on school stuff. I do my one thing.

I feel Tuesday piling on to Monday piling on to Sunday and I can't shake it off. I decide to keep being with it even though I don't know what that means.

On Wednesday my landlady comes to fix the kitchen sink pipe. We're glad to see each other. We catch up some, I tell her about the van and she tells me she just sold her mom's house (her mom died at the beginning of the summer last year) and now that that's done she wants to sell her mom's car- a gold 2003 Toyota Camry and it has new tires and brakes and a pretty new battery. She says she'll sell it to me for $2500. I tell her that sounds good, and I'll think about it. She's in no rush and says to just let her know when we can come test drive it. She makes 2 trips to the hardware store, the pipe is fixed.

What I didn't tell you was that the week before the van broke for good I drove K to an appointment in it. On the way I got a vision in my brain out of nowhere of the van rolling over at high speed while I was driving it and my daughter K was in the passenger seat. I kept having a feeling of it rolling over, of the roof crushing in on us, the dizzy lurching feeling of skid and roll when it happened. It happened on the way home too, a sense that the van was going to roll over at high speed.

This week I can't stop thinking about this. That I had the feeling the van was going to roll over, and then the next time I drove it it died in my parents driveway, and that same night the kitchen sink got a leak and so I had to call my landlady and it just so happens she has a car to sell me. It all feels so serendipitous. It makes me feel like we are meant to live, and that the van stopped working so K and I aren't mangled or die. I wonder if this can be true. It feels true.

On Thursday I'm still in overwhelm. I spend my early morning writing group off camera laying on the floor on my yoga mat, stretching and holding instead of writing. I ask myself what would make life easier. I decide I am not going to run in the trail race I registered for back in January on Saturday morning. I text my running pals. They understand. I am so relieved that I'm not making myself do it, I know that this is a one thing that will help me start to shake off this week, to start to recover. I know that on Saturday morning I will feel glad that I don't have to be around a bunch of people. I know it would be too much to ask of a system that is already overloaded. So I don't ask.

I'm figuring out what to do when things happen, when life is so so big and instead of shutting down and numbing I am trying to see what it feels like to me so I can take care of the person I am instead of trying to be the person I think I'm supposed to be.

Listing out the stresses of last week helped me see how much I was dealing with, it helped me see that it made sense that I was completely overwhelmed, and that I was not wrong for feeling that way. Some of the things on that list of stresses have come to resolution- the van is sold to the Toyota place, the sink is fixed. Many of them are ongoing- K and her sleep, my parents and how they just are, H learning how to navigate the world, and me, figuring out that instead of rushing to try to escape discomfort by acting like nothing is happening, being with my self in a way that is honest, and human, and full of care.