Ever feel like a failure?

Do you ever have one of those mornings that make you feel like a failure? I suspect it’s more common than we care to admit, especially for families with young kids.

This morning was like that for me. I usually get out of bed earlier than the rest of the family so I can have a bit of time to write and get organized for the day without having someone beg me to read Harry Potter or get her a glass of milk or ask if I’ve seen her a) underpants; b) library book; c) the underpants she was using to hold her place in her library book.

(Kidding about that last part, but I know some librarians and you wouldn’t believe what people stick into books. Bacon, for example.)

So there I was, awake before dawn, ready to work...and I couldn’t find my glasses. My vision is bad enough that I can’t see my glasses without feeling around for them. I felt around on top of my dresser. I felt under the bed. I shuffled to the bathroom and felt around on the shelf where I sometimes put them. Nothin’ but my contact lens case and assorted children’s toothbrushes.

I shuffled back into my bedroom to feel for my glasses again and promptly tripped over the stool Lucy had put in my closet so that she could steal envelopes for some creative but slightly nefarious purpose she has not yet disclosed (we still send a lot of correspondence to fairies, gnomes and other supernatural beings even though we’ve removed Santa from our mailing list).

The sound of the my leg hitting the stool and the stool hitting the ground woke Adam, who offered to help look for my glasses, but his generosity proved unnecessary; another good grope under the bed was all it took. Too bad I knocked over my glass of water in the process.

No longer blind, but somewhat damp about the knees, I headed downstairs to brew up some decaffeinated coffee, my morning drink of choice after I decided I no longer wanted to feel like I’d been possessed by bees.

And that’s when I saw the wreckage of the entryway, which I hadn’t noticed the night before when I returned home late from a meeting. Shoes, backpacks, artwork, homework, pencils, the tiny fake skull of a rat Alice got in her box of synthetic owl poop (her birthday present from Lucy), which had somehow  become permanently attached to a child-sized chopstick.

Then I scanned the coffee table. School uniforms shucked before ballet lessons, single socks, the pleated brown paper cups that once held chocolates, fruit leather wrappers. The kitchen was no better. 

As the water heated for my coffee, I tidied stuff up and tried not to feel like the day was already lost. And before I knew it, both kids were awake, hungry for breakfast, and eager for Harry Potter (Lucy’s choice) and another installment from nonfiction book about the water cycle (Alice’s choice—she informed me proudly that “this is true, ALL TRUE,” which is her primary criterion for a good story).

Then it was time to make lunches and get the kids off to school. I guess I was distracted, though, because Alice forgot her backpack and I didn’t notice until we were almost at school because we were so engrossed in a conversation about the fog that curled along the sidewalk.

“This is just water,” Alice said. “Aren’t you GLAD I got that BOOK?”

When I did finally notice that Alice was without her backpack (and shivering in the fog), I sent the kids on ahead to walk the last 50 yards to school on their own.

“Get my lunch, too,” Lucy hollered over her shoulder.

Apparently she’d put an empty pack on and was just hoping it was light because of her extraordinary strength.

I ran home, grabbed the pack, the lunch and ran upstairs to snag a sweatshirt for Alice, and that’s when I saw the swirl of clothes, books and toys covering the floor of what had, the day before, been a clean room.

That was the last straw. I’ve told them a million times not to dump out their sock baskets on the floor when they’re looking for a pair. I’ve told them a million times not to leave all their drawers open, and I’ve told them a million times not to pull all the clothes out when they’re looking for a long-sleeved shirt.

I started to anticipate the choice words I’d dump on the kids when they got home from school.

And then I stopped myself.

What would make this time any different? All it would do is give the girls one more memory of me mad at them—the last thing I want to do.

The truth is, my kids are slobs. I’ve failed to teach them how to organize their things. I’ve failed to teach them how to care about it, and I hate looking at the messes they leave because they are a reminder of these personal failures.

Then I walked into my office and sat down, only to get a good look my own mess...the IRS stuff I’m working on, stacks of books I need to read, my empty mug of decaffeinated coffee and the ring it left on the desk.

My kids are chaos factories for a good reason. They inherited it from me (and possibly from Adam, who has what I think of as the Circus of Coffee Mugs on the windowsill of his den).

Together, we are a messy family. MESSY. Messy, with a big smelly dog who sheds.

I think I know what it means that I wish we weren’t like this. I think it means I wish I had things under control, because then I could labor under the illusion that if I did everything right, life would turn out just as I wished.

So maybe these ongoing endless frustrations we face as parents don’t mean we’re failures, after all.

Maybe they just mean we’re living life as best as we can. And even though some people seem to have everything organized—their houses are clean, they don’t forget lunches and backpacks—it doesn’t mean we’re failures by comparison. It just means we’re being ourselves.

Some people are messy. Some people are clean. Some people don’t forget lunches and backpacks. You have no more control over who you are in this regard than you do over your hair color. Yeah, you can change it up. But the roots will eventually reveal all. 

In any case, I know that my kids are lovable even if they’re walking disasters and for the most part, I am, and so are you. There’s no failure in that. And so, for the first time since I found my glasses this morning and put them on, I feel like I’m seeing things a little more clearly.

(P.S. When it comes to calendars at least, I am organized. Thanks, Cozi.)