To every mom,
Life changes a whole lot at the Starbuck house but I’m pretty sure one thing doesn’t change much. The life of being a mom! I don’t really get to see it too often because I’m usually too busy being husband, dad, pastor, writer, artist and oh yeah, I’m also usually gone for about 10 days a month. However, this morning was a great reminder to me of just how amazing the life of a mom can be. After today, I can only just smile in and say, well I guess that’s what being a mom is all about!
So you might be wondering what grabbed my attention enough to write about? Well, it’s simple really… it’s the “chain of events” that took place this morning. However it might be more accurate to say the “change of event’s” that took place this morning.
First of all, I actually went to bed early last night to prepare myself to be super dad in the morning. I had it all planned out and it was like a fairy tale in my mind that was just waiting to come true. It was all gonna be amazing and Seth was gonna love the heck out of daddy and mommy was gonna get to sleep in and love the heck out of daddy too!
Well, after waking up about 6:30am and going through the emails, facebook messages, and routine morning stuff, I was dressed and ready to head to the gym so that we would be ready to hit the day early. Then I realized it was already 7:30am and Seth was in his underwear, and we still had a whole lot to do before we could even think about heading out. There was making breakfast, eating breakfast, getting dressed, packing snacks and a change of clothes in the diaper bag, making the right kind of juice, in the right kind of cup because the first one we used was spilling…
An hour later, we were finally ready to go and only about 30 minutes behind schedule. Since we only live 5 minutes from the gym, it’s wasn’t a big deal. We ended up walking into the gym all happy to start our gym experience. Seth was ready to eat his snacks and see his friends, and I was excited to get back into running again.
Then the guy who works at the front counter came up to me as we were walking in and told me that there was a conflict in schedule and there was currently no one to watch the kids. We would need to wait about 20-30 minutes for someone to make it in.
I wish you could have seen the real scene there! Really I do! Seth and I looked at each other for at least 2 minutes, probably more, and didn’t say a word to each other. We were both like…. “Ah, what do we do now.” We had no other option. This was it. Anything else than this plan would just be a waste of time to us.
I finally spoke up and said to Seth, “do you want to go to Kroger?” He said, “No daddy, I don’t want to go to Kroger, I want to see my friends.” All I could say back is, well buddy, there is no one to watch you, we have to figure out something to do until someone comes. Do you wanna do something else?”
After that, I just started listing all the normal places we go to take up time until one finally caught. “Ok, how about Target buddy?” “Yes. Target. Daddy.” he said. I was like, “Awesome, we can go and replace the off-road Lighting Mcqween you lost the other day.” Then Seth got excited and we were off.
From there, I don’t know what happened. We ended up going to target and walking out with a cars ambulance, some eggs, and a box of travel coffee mugs on sale. We got out in the freezing cold by the waterfall at the stones river to make a silly video of us spinning and acting nuts. Then we ended up at the library picking out DVD’s like the wiggles, care bears, little cars and thankfully I got in a few Jesus cartoons.
We got home around 11am. Never made it back to the gym. I made some eggs, he ate about 3 bites and wanted a treat. He ended up eating some cereal and watching some tv while Marlena cleaned the house only too look around an hour later and see shedded dog hair moving around the floor all over again.
I finally got upstairs to get some work done and was greeted by an overwhelmed wife who was not feeling well and a huge list of things to get done in her head before the family comes over for our “Family Christmas” make-up gathering. She asks, “how busy are you.” I say… “extremely.” Then I look over at her for a moment and she just fell on the floor next to me with no words and on the verge of tears. I think there might have really been tears, but I didn’t want to recognize them because then I’d be sunk and putty in her hands.
Anyways, I grabbed a piece of paper and told her to tell me all of the things she needed to get done. I wrote them down and took some of them off her plate and gave her a few to focus on and she seemed to come back to life, a little bit.
I took the list and got my mom and dad to help out too then took off busting through her list of things to do around the house and headed out to hit her shopping list. I still don’t know how I even trudged through our new super duper Kroger shopping mall. Man that place is huge! There is nothing that seems to be next to each other. Who was the one who thought of separating everything thing out a mile away from everything else?
On the way home I stopped into the tiger market gas station and got her a coke slurpy to help her stomach feel a little better. I got home put the groceries away and went into the bedroom where she was resting and gave her the coke slurpy.
She sat up in bed full of life, threw her arms around me and said “your my hero, Thank You.” (Nothing better for me to hear all day long than those words, don’t care what anyone says! That the best!!!)
So, I tell you what. After today I’ll try to remember that mom’s probably have a fairy tale of what they hope the morning will look like, but find themselves in the place I am toay. It’s 4:00pm and I’m still in my workout clothes, but haven’t worked out yet. I’ve got about 15 more minutes until Seth is awake from his nap, and about an hour left until it’s time for family to come over.
So I know moms, my day is nothing compared to your every day. I’m no where close to all of the dreams you have to let go of and the tasks that get put off and off. Thanks for the days your are in your sweats all day, and thanks for being willing to put a smile in our children’s eyes over accomplishing your to do list.
Even though I make it sound dramatic, in the big picture, today was not all that bad actually. I didn’t get anywhere close to where I wanted to be today, but I made my son smile a whole lot and I got to be my wife’s hero. I was given the treasure to appreciate mom’s everywhere and get a few minutes to write about how awesome my wife is. She’s a hero everyday to Seth and I. So thank You Marlena, and thank you to all the other moms who are our every day hero’s. We love you!
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Shawn Starbuck 