Just Don't Look Under the Couch!

I had some other moms over yesterday morning, and as they sipped coffee and sampled the raspberry coffee cake I had made that morning, one of them, a young mother of one baby girl, commented demurely, "How do you get everything done?" I almost laughed out loud as I mentally flashed back to about fifteen hours ealier, to the scene of myself lamenting to my poor husband, "I just can't get anything done! I'm exhausted, the kids have been underfoot all day, and the house is a mess! How am I going to have everyone over tomorrow?!"
Thursday had been a pretty rough day, it's true. That morning we had tried to catch up on laundry, do some schoolwork, and keep the house clean all at the same time as we prepared to go to Chick-Fil-A for a playgroup lunch. I should know by now that there's no world on which that can really happen, and result is always the same - nothing at all really gets done. We did get to Chick-Fil-A (priorities, you know!), but even our playdate there was cut short when all the kids carefully escorted a screaming Ryan to where I was sitting and I realized something was really wrong with his left arm. I called Dave, and he and I (with the older two at our friends' house) spent a good part of the afternoon at Urgent Care, where Ryan was ultimately and successfully treated for nursemaid's elbow. After we were done there, I picked up the kids and we returned to the house, all pretty tired. By dinnertime I was so tired it took me an hour to put together a simple taco dinner. I should have taken a thirty-minute rest sometime after Dave came home from work, and that would have saved a good deal of time and energy in the long run, but of course I didn't remember that until too late, so our late dinner (which only half of us actually ate) was pretty stressful and was the stage for my aforesaid scene. Venting a little actually helped me feel somewhat better, but I was still exhausted and went to bed early, leaving a good deal to do for the next morning. I woke up early Friday morning, put on a DVD after breakfast, and hurriedly scrubbed bathrooms and floors, straightened up, and made the coffee cake, just in time for my guests to arrive.
So in that split second as I thought about my friend's comment, I saw what she must have seen as she looked around my fairly clean house and ate my coffee cake - she saw the math lesson on the white board and imagined me happily educating my dear students, she ate the cake and imagined me cheerfully baking with the baby sleeping peacefully on my back, she saw the clean kitchen and imagined me floating through my clean house and caring for my four children with a strength and ability she can't fathom for herself. Mommy -vision is so deceptive! If she had only see the day before, or even an hour or two earlier that morning - if she had just looked under the couch in that instant - she would have seen that things aren't always what they seem. In answer to her question, I simply smiled and said that I don't always get everything done, and that the things I do accomplish with four children are simply a result of toning and strengthening "mommy muscles" over time. But what funny creatures we mothers, we women, are - comparing ourselves to each other, without really seeing the whole picture. :-)