Anouther Day | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Anouther Day | Previous Challenge Entry
By Olivia Stocum
04/30/08
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Another Day

Six AM. Pull the covers over my head; keep out the daylight streaming unwanted into the room. Next to me daddy does the same. We both know that at any minute the same sunshine that blinds our tired eyes brightens theirs.
Six-thirty. I hear giggling. There’s a thump on the floor as Dolly is tossed unceremoniously out of the crib. On the opposite side of the twin toddler’s bedroom I hear her sister laugh in delight over the other’s antics.
Maybe they’ll keep themselves entertained, I think. Maybe, just for a few more minutes . . . Thump, thump, thump. Down the stairs, into our basement bedroom stomps our eight-year-old.
“Mom, can I get on the internet?” he asks.
Daddy sighs and rolls out of bed.
I pull back the covers and squint at my son. “It’s,” I glance at the clock, “six-
forty-five in the morning. What could possibly be that important?”
The blond-haired boy shrugs, his cowlick flopping around the back of his head like even his hair is proud of its ability to be disobedient. “Just my Webkinz.”
I roll out of bed, reach down to let our Jack Russell Terrier out of her dog crate.
“What’s wrong with your webkinz?”
“He’s hungry, and he needs to go to the bathroom.”
“So does she,” my husband ads, from across the room, pointing at the squirming
dog in my arms.
Our little boy crinkles his nose. “Oh, dad . . .” He looks at me. “So, can I?”
I shove the dog into his arms. “Put her collar on her, and put her outside, then you
can play until I get out of the shower.”
“Right.” He skips out of the room and then up the stairs, walking right by the end table where we keep the dog’s collar at night.
I poke my head out of the bedroom, knowing that he completely forgot what I just told him. “Did you forget something?”
He stops, hand on the doorknob, struggles to balance the little dog that practically has her legs crossed by this point in time. “Wh . . .” his lips form the sound.
“The collar?”
“Oh.”
My husband trudges past me on the way to the bathroom. “That kid would forget
his own head if it weren’t screwed on.”
I can’t help but agree.
Upstairs, one of the twins is calling out, “Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma.”
She wants her milk. But by the time I get up the stairs to the main level of our
ranch-style home, daddy has already beaten me to it. I’m glad for the help, and really appreciate it, but I know he will be leaving for the office shortly and I still have the whole day, and a night to get through all by myself.
Well, not quite by myself. I cross the living room and switch on the Christian radio. As a familiar contemporary song fills the room I am reminded of my greatest flaw; trying to stand on my own two feet, instead of kneeling, and daily submitting control of my life to Christ.
It’s the only way I will get through the day without losing what few marbles I feel I have left. And I know that. But still . . . . I struggle.
The girls are calling again. My husband is just finishing up in the shower. I go into their room, and can’t help but smile despite the fact that daddy and I were up until two AM last night, all because the youngest of our twins refused to go to sleep. The toddler in question picks up her sippy cup and jokingly throws it out of the crib. The top pops off and I watch helplessly as the milk sinks deep into the carpeting.
“Yup. Just another day,” I say to myself.
“Oh, no,” she says, pointing to the mess she just made.
“Oh, no,” mirrors her twin.
Shaking my head, I put on their favorite CD. The one I use to distract them with
so that I can take a shower. Then I hand them each a book, clean up the mess, refill the cup, and close their bedroom door.
Daddy gets a kiss goodbye. He promises to call us after dinner, since we won’t be seeing him again until tomorrow night.
I watch the front door close and feel really, very lonely.
But the music is playing and I am reminded that I am never alone and that there is
nothing that He and I can’t handle together.
I turn away from the front door, walk down the hallway to the bathroom.
Just another day. It’s hard sometimes, and this world so unfair, and I fear for my
children, and I fear for me husband, and I fear for myself.
But love is bigger, and brighter than the sun now pouring in through every window. And somehow, I know we will get by.

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