Conscious Choice: Breathing Room

June 2008 | Life, the Universe and Everything

Breathing Room

By Kristy Lund

I want my own room.

It’s the afternoon of a long day and we are all getting tired. I’m sick of everyone touching my stuff. I want a place of my own where I can write, paint, meditate and talk with my friends on the phone.

Am I fourteen? No, I’m thirty-four and a mother of two boys. The whole house feels over-run with kid stuff. I need space to breathe.

So, in a first conscious attempt to take a moment away from my children, I escape to my room, which is shared with my husband who sleeps with me, and my son who sleeps on the floor next to us. Just breathe, I tell myself. Everything is a phase. This too shall pass. Some day you’ll miss this time with the kids.

But I still want my own room.

I like to sit and think. I like to veg. My mommy duties currently require me to be 100 percent in the moment, and usually physically active in some way. That’s something my kids have really helped me with — getting outside and exercising (in a chasing-after-bikes sort of way). But I sometimes look forward to when they’re older and I can go back to my couch-sitting and vegging practices.

I hear my kids entertaining themselves in the next room. Attempting to focus on what is working instead of what’s not, I notice they’re happy and getting along. I also feel grateful to have this rare time of contemplation while they’re still awake. I think about how lucky I am to have my sweet boys. I take another deep breath and walk out.

Just in time to see my two-year-old dumping Thomas tracks into a training potty. Please, God, let there not be pee in there.

There is.

In the five minutes I’d taken for myself, my four-year-old brought the training potty from the bathroom into the living room, peed in it, and then his younger brother took over from there, deciding a full potty was a good place to store tracks.

“Okay!” I demand, my Zen-moment quickly fading away. “Two things! Lucas, the potty belongs in the bathroom! Henrik! You don’t put train tracks in the potty!” They are un-phased by my declarations, continuing to play. I ask each one if he has heard me, and get two yeses.

I sadly bring the potty containing pee and soggy tracks to the bathroom. I have the sudden urge to hit my head on the floor like my two-year-old does when he’s out of internal resources. I remind myself to breathe.

This is small stuff, really small stuff, I remind myself. I start to wash off the tracks, wondering if wood soaked in urine is unsanitary. Realizing only a few tracks made actual contact with urine, I just throw them out. This, by the way, was not covered in any of the parenting books I’ve read.

Noticing my unbalanced state of mental affairs, I pause and say a prayer for assistance. I envision a simple message illuminated in neon above my house, glowing for any benevolent deities that happen to be in my neighborhood. It reads, “Help. Please.”

My husband arrives home and brings in a package sent from his parents. The boys start jumping up and down, begging to open it with him. With the kids entertained, and supervised, I have a moment to myself in the kitchen. I decide to make waffles for dinner.

As much as I complain, or try not to complain, about how hard it is most of the time, even if I could take back these past four years, I wouldn’t. My kids brought me back to me, someone I’d somewhat lost along the path of attaining more of what I thought was important. I now recognize myself in the mirror as the sensitive artist I always was, but am more so now. I have my kids to thank for that.

I hear them tearing open the package in the other room. “We got train tracks!” my son yells, and rushes in to show me handfuls of wooden tracks my in-laws sent for no particular reason. I hug him and laugh, realizing my prayer was answered.

But I think I need to be more specific next time. I re-word the neon sign, and smile as I see it glowing warmly in the dusk.

I want my own room.

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