Needing backup

I backed out of the driveway at 5:45 p.m. The 15-year-old was riding his bike to football practice. The 13-year-old was just getting started on the dishes she should have done 8 hours ago. The 9-year-old was sitting quietly in the back seat as we pulled out to go to her soccer game, which was supposed to start in 15 minutes. I was late and harried and grouchy and worn thin by a day of the angst of others.

Halfway down the road, her voice piped up quietly from the back seat, "Mom, it's pictures today."

Crap. Yep. It sure is. And pictures start about 40 minutes before the game starts. I was a liberal arts major, but let's look at this for a minute: 6 p.m. minus 40 minutes equals 25 minutes before I left the house. "I'm sorry, honey, we're gonna miss pictures," I said. Her face got that blank look. I said I was sorry again. She cried. So I cried too, guilt and weariness entwining into a knot in my chest.

The evening has a happy ending, as I was mistaken, by an hour, about the time for the game AND pictures. In this instance, I was thankful for my inability to keep all the balls in the air. I screwed up the time. Good thing, or she would have missed pictures.

It isn't always that way, though. Sometimes I drop the balls and then some. It is just as likely that, despite all my calendars and alarms and attempts to keep four schedules, a household, a career and volunteer activities, that I would completely miss something important. Usually I can maintain perspective and push forward. But today, seeing my daughter's face fall in the mirror, the tears on her face, was just too much. All I could do was feel overwhelmed and guilty and realize that no matter how hard I try, I will never be as effective as two parents. Just like the mathematics of making a 5:20 photo shoot when you leave the house at 5:45, one is not two. Never has been. Never will be. And when you are one, that reality is a jagged pill.

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