This moment of clarity is brought to you by....

There are just days when I crawl into my happy place.  You know that place that's kept at the back of one's mind.  That center of calm, peace and perfect light.  It's only acheived by sticking your fingers into your ears and humming loudly while rocking back and forth.

That happy place is crammed in with the clutter of a lifetime.  The cobwebs of memories from a fun, free youth.  The mental pictures of bucket lists, of long lost hobbies, longings for lipstick, nail polish and this season's clothes.  Stashed so far back into the recesses that it takes effort to climb over the horded stash.  Things held on to for a time when it could be pulled out again, reexamined and repurposed.  That moment when the kids move out.

That's how parenthood makes me feel sometimes.  Oh sure, I love being a Mommy.  It has it's payoff, certainly.   I have two fabulous little boys.  Still there are just days when I wonder to myself.  "Just what the hell was I thinking?"  Sure when it's measured up against the things that I put aside like privacy in the bathroom and the ability to eat or drink anything while it's still hot or even the ability to read a paragraph once without hearing that ear piercing shrill of "Mommy...L just hit me!"  .  Parenthood wouldn't exactly shine.

I suppose anything that continually gnaws away at sanity, even my tenuous grasp at sanity, it's apt to look a little flawed.  This morning is no exception.  A day like any other day.  The usual morning routine well under way.  Breakfast eaten, kids dressed and on our way to a school drop off.  The kids playing an annoying game of slap, squeal and kick.  My usual response of telling the boys to knock it off ignored.  Then asking them why they continue if they know it's only making me angry?  Then it escalating to full on anger and scoldings.

Two minutes later I'm fighting the unreasonable battle of trying to give the eldest boy instructions on how to retreive the other child's toy from between the carseat and the door only to find that the eldest doesn't have a clue how to listen long enough to hear the instructions.  It was at that moment that I snapped and went running to the happy place.  Once safetly inside, I sat and stared out the window for a moment thinking that they had finally acheived it.  They owned me. Why on Earth was I even having that conversation?  Why was I trying to reason with these beings who couldn't be reasoned with?  How had they worked me into this place?

Five minutes later, in the school yard, I could hear another mother having the exact same arguement with her kids. An instant replay of my own melodrama but with a taller stand-in.  Whoa....apparently, they are trained in the womb to be terrorist.  We aren't bad mommys for wanting some peace.  We've got Stockholm Syndrome!

I looked down at E, smartly, and declared that I hoped someday he and his brother would grow up and get married and have a bunch of kids just like them.  And if he asks me to babysit he could expect to hear some very loud laughing.   Now I understand why grandparents become snowbirds!