The 1%

I realized the other day, that motherhood can be dissected on a pie chart. I honestly thought about drawing one out. Just to put it all out there. To give physical proof to what I do. What we all do.

But guess what? There ain't that much to dissect. Sure, you could get technical by whittling down the hours of carpooling, cleaning, cooking, homeworking. But that all just boils down to hard core mothering. With an emphasis on HARD. I'd say that takes up 90% of the pie. It's just about everything. All the time. All the day long.

There is a 9% chunk that can be assigned to those times that are awesome. Like, watching your children's joy in Disneyland. Or seeing them achieve something they've worked incredibly hard for. Those things are amazing. But then again, it's only 9% of the pie.

But then there is the smallest sliver of 1%. That's reserved for the moments when time takes a breather and slows to a crawl. When my soul stills and for a few eternal seconds, mothering becomes magical.

I've had my pie chart in my mind's eye for awhile now. I tend to center myself in the heat of the 90%. The hard stuff. The day-to-dayness of it all. It wears down my corners sometimes and makes me wonder about my purpose.

Then, on an ordinary evening, in the middle of an ordinary week, the 10 year old sends me a text while she is sitting upstairs and I'm sitting downstairs:

"You should not think you are a bad mom because I think you are the best mom. If I could choice witch mom I wanted it would be you. I am not saying you are the best mom ever just because you are my mom. If you were not my mom I would still think you are THE BEST MOM EVER and I mean it I am series. BEST BEST BEST BEST BEST BEST BEST BEST BEST."

I read through it twice. Just so I could soak it down into my soul. And just like that, on an ordinary evening, in the middle of an ordinary week, I forgot about the 90%. It didn't seem to matter. Because there, in that moment, the 1% was all I needed.

Since then, I've redrawn my pie chart. It's all the 1%. All of it. Because that's the part that is true. It covers it all. It makes the work, the dailyness, the endless days, fade to the background. There really isn't any dissecting to do. It's all whole, and it resides within me. It takes my ever failing mothering and turns it into enough. One perfect and complete pie. Just as it should be.