On Monday afternoon, when we got back from our weekend in New York, I made the stupid (STUPID!) mistake of taking the girls to the grocery store with me. My mood had been plummeting steadily all day, to my disappointment (I'd felt much better the day before), and neither of the girls had slept much on the drive up. Given these two things, I really should have known better. Even Alastair thought maybe it was too much for me to handle, given how I was feeling. ("Are you sure you'll be OK?") But we needed milk and bread and bananas, and it was something to pass the time until dinner, and I thought maybe getting out and doing something would kick my depressed ass back into gear. So off we went.
We'd barely made it halfway through the produce section when Clio started whining and crying to get out of the cart, then yelling for milk or water or juice (which I STUPIDLY hadn't brought). Then she started screaming for a cookie. Elsa, meanwhile, kept wriggling out of the seatbelt (it was one of those shopping carts shaped like a little car) and standing up with half her body out the front window like some kind of hyperactive labrador retriever.
I was the picture of a stressed-out mom. I looked bad, I felt horrid. I could sense people looking at us, maybe in pity, maybe annoyance, maybe some in smiling, "how cute they are, but what a handful" sympathy. I wouldn't know -- I kept my eyes straight ahead, kept my head down, and told myself to just get everything on the list and get out and go home. And then what? Unload the groceries, keep the girls entertained for another hour and a half, make them dinner, get them to bed, make our dinner, unpack....(These sound like simple enough things to do, but when I am depressed, something as simple as brushing my teeth feels akin to pushing a boulder up a hill.) I half wished I'd collapse right there in the cereal aisle and wake up in a sanitorium -- maybe out in the Berkshires somewhere; the kind where they used to send ladies suffering from "nervous exhaustion." Birds singing. Clean white sheets. A rocking chair....
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