The Unanswerable Question Part 2: "How y'all doing?"

Today I figured I'd answer this question by giving a glimpse into our day. Today is Thursday, August 25, 2022 and here's how it went.

Mornings-Are still hard, and lately they've been getting worse. For a split second today, my eyes opened and I thought, "Okay, I'm okay. Okay enough to function." But within about five minutes, I'm back to, "How can I do this again. I can't get up, I won't."  I looked over and realized that Benjamin had slept through the night in the twin bed in our room for the second night in a row: Definitely counting that win.  As I've mentioned before, I try to schedule everything I can in the morning in an effort to get up and moving. Every Thursday for the majority of this year, I get up and take the littles to play/art therapy. Amira, Benjamin, Joy and Avielle rotate, so we're there for at least an hour and a half.  I knew I had to get up. When I got up, around nine, all of the kids were still sleeping. I yelled for them to get up and get moving so that we could go to Mrs. Katherine's.  With the exception of Kendall, who was headed for a morning at the mall with Mrs. Marcie, everyone got ready to pile into the van. Except for Elijah.  I asked everyone where he was and yelled for him several times.  This week, most of this month honestly, he's been very slow to come downstairs and start his day.  My guess is that he's been dreading his upcoming birthday. I'll post about this later in detail.

Usually I just yell upstairs, but this morning I wasn't having it. So, I charged upstairs to get him myself. When I got up to his room, he was just standing there. I asked him what he was doing, and he quickly looked over and grabbed the cologne and said, "I'm getting ready, putting on cologne." I know my son. My momma-sense went off and I looked at him in the eyes. I told him that I would do just about anything to fix this situation. I told him that it was unfair, and I knew he was angry.  I let him know that he was a great son and deserved his Dad. As we hugged, he held me so tightly while I cried. We were late for counseling.

Counseling went well in the sense that everyone enjoyed talking to the therapist and for the first time ever, Amira stayed with her and allowed me to leave the room to set the other kids up on their schoolwork in the lobby. Because we do schoolwork in the lobby of the therapist office, because that's our life.  At one point, Elijah was struggling with a math problem. He was using online scratch paper and it wasn't working out. So, I broke out my eyeliner pencil, and helped him write out the problem. He ended up with a 91% on the assignment, Max scored 100%. They are excellent at math, but I told them both that I was simply proud of them for pushing through. 

After counseling I visited the Chicago food truck since I was on that side of town to grab pizza puffs for lunch. I got there, ordered and began weeping. The last time I was there, Boyz II Men was playing on their radio. I cried then, too.  I stood there bawling and Joy asked, "Mom why are you crying, what happened?" I replied, "for the next ten years at least, I'll only be crying for Daddy."  All of the kids surrounded and hugged me through it. We only broke up the group hugfest when another patron walked up and said, "Ma'am I'm so sorry, excuse me but I can't get out."  Apparently, I had created a parking space and was blocking all of the other customers in.  We made it home, met Kendall and took a second to exhale from a long morning. 

The kids finally went down for a nap...at 4:15pm, Benji had to be at the YMCA for his sports discovery program at 5:15pm. I had to sit and make a decision whether to let them nap or risk the fallout of disappointment if he woke up and had missed his soccer session. This may seem small but trying to be a good mom, navigate fallouts, on top of vacillating between functionality and soul-crushing disbelief at any given moment is just...I have no words.

After all of this, I take the kids to one Y for Benji, and then back to another Y for Elijah's basketball practice. It's raining, Joy's crying, Avielle is withdrawn and sad, we haven't had dinner and it's 6:20pm, and my phone is dead. Thankfully, my sister and Leon remembered that I said I needed their help, so they met me at the Y and were able to stay with Elijah while I took the other kids home to eat dinner. 

My bed is full of clean laundry, but my kids don't have any motivation to put it away. I don't have enough hands or ears. "What does it matter? Who cares what we wear? Who cares where we go? What's the point of it all?" Some days are like this, and I can't even blame them. We ended the night watching a video of Patrick baptizing Elijah and Avielle last year. I don't know how tomorrow will look, but I want to thank you all, my village near and far, for every single prayer and caring deed. 

Elijah's Bday : Chicago 2019