For what it is worth

There is always someone yelling. There is often someone unhappy. Many days we make compromises; financially, emotionally, physically, or educationally. It feels wrong to be too tired to practice math facts with my kids. It feels wrong to feed the kids crap one more night because I cannot fathom cleaning the kitchen one more time. It feels wrong to spread the wealth to the point that I sometimes have to decide if the true consequences for Ian losing his new shoes should be that he has to wear the old ones--the ones his toes stick through the ends of....
I am often frustrated. Why can't they just be nice to each other? What have I done wrong that has allowed them to have no empathy for each other's hurt feelings? How busy must I have been to have dismissed Ian's disorder for as long as I did? Why is my patience spread so thin and ragged that I teeter on the edge of breakdown over some small thing? These are the questions and the facts that make me lay awake at night. These are the things that make it so that I feel overcome with guilt in some dark moments to the point when I consider what life would have been like if we had not looked for resolution of our infertility.

But just then, in that dark moment, I notice that Hadley is in Ian's room with him, and he has tucked her in to watch her show on his TV. It is just then that I hear him ask "is that good?-can you see okay?" It is in that moment that I spot Ella walking her little sister to the car hand in hand. It is in that very dark moment that I see Holly and Jilly amicably trading rubber band bracelets. When I think about it, there are a ton of these moments. Moments when the triplets are shoulder to shoulder on the couch with their legs in a big pile, giggling about the show. Moments when Ian is able to forgive another child for saying the wrong, mean thing because he understands the angst that comes with social issues. They know each other so well. They weather disappointment better than most (life will give you plenty of that) They understand the words, "not this week, we can't afford it", and they are PROUD of a hand-me-down.


And then,most of all, there is a moment when I find a drawing that fills an entire page with seven stick figures: A tall one, a tall one in a dress, a medium one, three smaller dress ones, and a tiny one on the end. And although the letters might be backwards, their names are all there, and they spell FAMILY.