Fish guts

There are some things that come up in motherhood that one should be aware of...or actually, no, one should NOT be aware of these things, or maybe no one would venture into this chaos of motherhood. Yesterday I spent 20 minutes detangling fishing lines, baited hooks with huge squirmy night crawlers, grabbed fish with my own hand, ripped stuck hooks from fish gills, tramped through poison ivy, and more. I found myself wiping my worm gut hands on my shorts and grabbing daddy longlegs out of my trunk with my fingers and tossing them onto the ground.

Deep down, I am a bug-o-phobe. Terminix knows me by my first name.  However, it seems that often life can force you to overcome your fears, your insecurities and your struggles, just by doing what life does...continue on. A Firefly flew into the house the other day - I couldn't let it live here, I couldn't kill it in front of the kids, I had to grab it and throw it outside. I could not refuse to bait a hook yesterday. I told the kids I would take them fishing. My husband was at work. My uncle (whom's pond we were at) was away. I had to bait the hook. Then it dawned on me that the kids may actually CATCH a fish. I was going to have to do something with the fish. I toyed with the idea of leaving the fish on the end of the fishing pole as new bait for a bigger fish, and then leaving the bigger fish on the end of the pole as new bait for an even bigger fish, but looking at that Dora the Explorer 18 inch fishing pole, I was pretty certain that the little blue gill I was staring at was about as much as that little pole could hold anyway - so my genius plan was ruined. I had to grab the fish. First try - flip flopping and moss spewing, mud-flying adventure. 2nd try was a firmer grip, and by the 10th fish caught I was dehooking and slinging those fish back in the pond like a pro.

Life moving on is not only a useful truth in fishing and debugging one's home. So many issues, insecurities and struggles are made to be gotten over just by necessity of having children, and those children needing their mom to keep moving on. I used to be quite OCD. I washed my hands a ton. I checked, rechecked and rechecked light switches. I stared at the stove and oven controls for endless minutes before heading up to bed at night. When I left the house, I would sometimes return after having gone 2 blocks, because "I may have left my curling iron on." These may not seem like big issues, but when trying to arrive places on time and trying to get everyone out the door as a mother, they are HUGE. Eventually one has to trust herself that she can do things, that she DID turn off the lights, that if she did not wash her hands that very second germs would not kill her. Five kids later I am soooo much more concerned with the more immediate issues; finding everyone's shoes, getting the kids in the car with no one going out into the street, making it to a 5 yr old friend's birthday party on time, making it to their first soccer game to see them play, making it out the door for dinner with my husband. The light switches, the excessive handwashing and the checking the iron 20 times are not at the top of my priority list any longer.

Perhaps that is why when my husband and I arrived home last evening from a nice long much needed date - I found my hair straightener still turned on in my master bathroom. The good news is this: the house did not burn down because of it. Once one makes it through a few absent hand washes, or lights being left on and realizes that life moves on anyway, and all are well...then one can obsess a little less. Thankful to  my kids for helping me overcome some fears, and just keep moving on. (however I was pretty bugged by the hair straightener when I found it on - I would hate to slip over into the 'absent-minded" realm.)