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January can be so austere.  My birthday is coming up on the 28th–I’ll be thirty-four years old.  Wild!  It’s been quite a week.  I had the immense privilege of meeting a dear friend’s new baby just minutes after his birth.  I’m still brimming over with the contagious happiness that was in that warm house full of older siblings, grandparents, and glowing, gorgeous mother.

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I have been making a concerted effort to actively seek out one-on-one time with all the kids.  We have a new routine this year, which involves my taking Horus to karate, and then just the two of us hanging out afterwards–sometimes swimming, and sometimes just sitting and having tea together.  I love our time together, and it is very gratifying to see that Horus does have the capacity for civility, calm, and even manners.  I have had flashes of irritation during our “dates” (why can’t you behave like this at home with everyone else?) but I am able to assuage those emotions fairly easily.  I am the oldest among my siblings.  Living with other people can be triggering (to say the least).

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I don’t treat my children equally.  It’s a painful realization, and true, probably, for every parent.  I love all six of my kids completely, passionately, wholly, and I relate to all of them differently, and they irritate me in wildly different ways, which seems to cover the entire spectrum of possible ways that I might be irritated (some days), and none of it is fair, and I do sometimes feel a pang of guilt here or there, but I also know that I am the perfect mother for all of them, because, well, here we are.  I have no doubt that all my kids will grow up to resent me to some degree or another.  I hope that they will also always know that they are loved, and I very much hope that they will eventually come to terms with my failures as a parent, and move on, which is, I guess, called growing up.   I do, however, try to stay conscious and observant of the way the power dynamics of our household play out, and where and how I give my energy and attention.  This sounds very anxious, but I don’t mean it that way, and I don’t really feel spread thin, but I do try to really let each kid know that she/ he is important to me, that they have my attention, even if I’m not always able to give them exactly what they want each moment.

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This afternoon, Lee came home and it started to snow, so I sent the kids outside to play and I followed them out, to do some work around the yard before everything turned white again.  Lee stayed inside with Cosmo at first, and Treva needed a snack, and then it was just me and Felix out there.  I had wanted to get some boxes cleared out of the upstairs barn studio, but when Felix tugged on my arm and said “Come sliding, Mum!”, I couldn’t resist, so we took his new bike (from Santa!  With skis on the wheels!) up the hill and he and I slid down and scooted up and came down again, and he was so happy to just be with me, and he kept murmuring softly “I like this, Mum.  I like this”, and I felt so poignantly that this was such a precious time, and that to be loved so exclusively by someone so small and so trusting is both painfully fleeting and also so expansive and massive and so beautiful that I will somehow have that afternoon forever, knitted into my very cells.

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Later, Lee came out too, with Cosmo in the backpack, and Horus and Treva as well, and we did some more sliding while the snow fell softly, and by the time we came back home, Queenstown was dark.