The Morning I Stopped Apologizing for Five Quiet Minutes

I want to tell you about a tiny rebellion. It happened this morning, somewhere between Mark's truck pulling out of the driveway at five-thirty and Noah's first sleepy thump down the hall.

I locked the bathroom door. Just the bathroom. Just for five minutes. I drank a tall glass of water with half a lemon squeezed in it, I sat on the closed lid of the toilet like it was a velvet throne, and I opened the little robin-egg-blue journal Megan slipped into my birthday gift bag back in March. The first page was still blank. I have owned that journal for almost three months, friends, and I have written exactly zero words in it. Today I wrote four: I am still here.

That is the whole entry. I am still here. And then I sat there and felt how true it was. I am thirty-four. I am still here, in this little blue house on Sycamore Street, in Cedar Falls, with the wallpaper Mark and I keep meaning to peel off and a husband who works construction and a seven-year-old who draws horses on the backs of her math worksheets and a four-year-old who refuses to wear any shirt that isn't dinosaur-related. I am still here, and somewhere along the way I started saying sorry every time I tried to be here on purpose.

Sorry for closing the door. Sorry for the cold coffee. Sorry I haven't returned the casserole dish, Joanne. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I think most of us moms are walking around in an apology so constant it's like the hum of the fridge. You don't even hear it until it stops.

So this morning I stopped. I let Biscuit whine at the door, and I let the laundry sit in the basket, and I let the world wait for five whole minutes. When I came out, Noah was on the couch in his velociraptor pajamas, completely undisturbed by my absence, asking if pancakes were a possibility. They were not. Toast was a possibility.

The thing nobody told me about staying in shape, staying attractive, staying like yourself in this hurricane of motherhood, is that it doesn't start at the gym. It starts at the bathroom door. It starts with the lock clicking and the lemon water and the four words on a blank page.

By the time I walked Emma to the bus stop the sun was hitting the maples just right. By the time I came home and folded Mark's work shirts I was humming. By the time I picked Noah up from preschool I had already done one round of squats in the kitchen during the spaghetti water, which I am counting as exercise, thank you very much.

Mark got home tired. We ate at the table because I made us. Emma told a long story about a girl named Harper who eats glue. Noah pretended his garlic bread was a pterodactyl. Biscuit waited under the table like she always does, hopeful and patient.

Now it's almost six o'clock and the kitchen is quiet and the light is gold and I am going to close this laptop, because the bath is running and Emma needs her hair combed and Mark wants to show me something on the porch about a bird he saw.

But before I go: try the lock. Try the five minutes. Try the four words. I love you, Lucy.