The Race I Run
By Tiffany
Lewis
It is said that our hunter-gatherer
ancestors exerted daily energy equivalent to that of
running a marathon. Times have changed — I only pull
out the club and beat my chest on rare occasions — but
when that first baby arrived, without even knowing it
I registered for the daily Mommy Marathon.
It begins with the sound
of the gun (or my son yelling from his crib). I strap
on my shoes, crouch down for a prayer, and I’m off.
Pant, breathe, pant, breathe.
It doesn’t matter if I pull a muscle, have double ear
infections or was up all night with the kids. I just
put one foot in front of the other and go, go, go.
It’s cornflakes and soggy
morning diapers and exercises and showers. It’s bed-making
and laundry and breakfast dishes and scriptures and
prayer, then morning activities. Pant, breathe, pant,
breathe. Miles to go before I sleep. Grocery shopping;
Costco shopping; Target shopping. Doing it all with
sturdy shoes and stashes of fruit snacks for the kids.
Then nap time for the younger
kids and “quality time” with the older kids. Cleanup
from the morning: bills, papers, folding laundry.
My fingers break out in
a rash from the baby wipes. I bang my shin making the
bed and burn my fingers in the spaghetti sauce. Ice
the pain, then go, go, go.
Wash the car. Vacuum the
car. Return phone calls while sweeping while stirring
while spanking. Recycle the newspapers, flatten the
milk cartons, throw away the molding sour cream.
Change the soggy afternoon
diapers. Nurse the baby while reciting “Goodnight Moon”
over my shoulder while running after the toddler who
grabbed the steak knife.
Play trains. Play monster.
Play hide-and-go-seek. Play restaurant. Sing “The
Wheels on the Bus.” Dance to the Mickey Mouse Club
theme song.
Mid afternoon I sneak in
my glucose break — fudgesicles in the freezer, or leftover
banana bread.
There are glorious moments
of momentum when I feel like I could keep this pace
forever: pop out a kid every two years, five loads of
laundry per day, three meals to make and nine people
to visit teach. I could do Costco blindfolded and pregnant,
dragging ten kids suffering from no-nap-syndrome who
also skipped breakfast. Bring it on.
And there are moments when
I hit The Wall, when the idea of plugging in the vacuum
or dealing with one more toilet accident is just more
than I can bear.
But I’ve done this long
enough to know that if I, the mother, lag for even a
minute, the entire race comes to a screeching (or screaming)
halt. Diapers collect in the corners, the kid-to-clothing
ratio seems to decrease, children go to church in their
pajamas, and it’s cereal morning, noon and night. I
love my husband, but we moms just run at a different
pace from our spouses.
A marathon is simply putting
meaning into one hundred thousand steps. The challenge
of the daily marathon is putting meaning into one hundred
thousand scattered seconds. I make a day out of three
meals, running errands, dropping off kids, and cleaning.
A marathon runner fights gravity. I battle monotony
and entropy.
The kids throw dirt. I
sweep it up. They smear peanut butter on the walls.
I wipe it up. They destroy. I reconstruct. Nine-minute
miles. Keep the pace. In the waning hours I survey
canned corn, ground beef, diced tomatoes and elbow macaroni,
and somehow turn it into a meal.
That final stretch is always
the killer: Dinner, bath, bedtime, cleanup, collapse
at the finish line. I look back at the miles I’ve run,
littered with crusted milk, wet towels, sandy shoes,
and three peaceful boys asleep in their beds. I crawl
into bed, knowing that I’ll wake up tomorrow and do
it again.
