We can be flexible. We can be flexible. We can be flexible. We can be flexible.

If we have a family mantra, this might be it. We have two neurodiverse children that are not known for their go-with-the-flowness. Flexibility is something we’re actively cultivating every damn day in our household. It’s what we aspire to, but it’s not flowing in abundance through the homefront. So try as I might, I model it, emulate it, and preach it constantly.

But yesterday I found myself drowning in a domestic sinkhole, and upon closer reflection, my “flexibility” is precisely the thing that landed me there. All things in moderation…and as it turns out, perhaps it’s even possible to be too flexible. Actually, as it turns out, I know this to be true because once upon a time (just before I married Prince Charming and had two magical half-human/half-wolverine boy babies), I completed a yoga teacher training that left me so impressively limber that my knee cap dislocated at my own wedding dance doing the limbo since my joints have always been a little loosey-goosey and I stretched all my ligaments out so much they stopped doing their day jobs during my training. Too much of a good thing is not a good thing.

So, basically, I should have known the dangers of my being overly flexible well before my husband backed slowly out of the kitchen yesterday looking like he was trying to save himself from a rabid animal that was about to pounce.

In his defense, I am quite scary when I hit that stage of rage. In my defense, holy hell, how far can one human be pushed before snapping like my GD kneecap?!

Let me just paint this picture for you:

1. We’re currently in one of the many False Spring season’s in Denver which means lots of 1) mud, 2) snowmelt salt, and 3) deader than dead blades of grass that stick to abso-freaking-lutely every-freaking-thing.
2. I cohabitate with two young boys, 1 furry dog, and 1 outdoorsy husband. They are profoundly messy.
3. I had just finished running our vacuum for the third time in ONE DAY, and the dead grass and salt was already haunting me again!
4. I dressed in workout clothes when I got out of bed and had deferred my daily workout (because I can be flexible!) — for breakfast, meal planning, errands, then an orientation with a new dogsitter, snack time, lunch time, snack time again, 3rd snack time, meal prep for the mediterranean diet I’m having a love/hate relationship with (I made THREE separate recipes that required a food processor in one session! Plus an instapot and oven!), my husband’s workout, four loads of laundry, dishes, a lengthy disciplinary adventure when I caught my kids playing ding dong dash at a neighbor’s house we don’t know, and tax prep — to a point in the day when my (unnecessary) sports bra had become a torture device.
5. I was literally up to my elbows in falafel when my husband burst through the backdoor and exclaimed “any chance you can help me with something? I am COVERED in mud!”

I did help. I did. But I was hanging by the thinnest thread at that point. I held it together while he hosed off his bike and showered upstairs (because NO MORE MUD, for the love of everything!). And then he charged down the stairs (buzzing from the endorphins of his mud-filled workout, no doubt), enthusiastically scooped up a fresh, hot falafel and somehow accidentally spiked it onto the floor with such gusto that it exploded like a bomb as it hit the cabinet pull on the way down. And that was it. Rage. RAGE. SO MUCH RAGE! I backed out of the kitchen to escape to our powder bath where I could camly shut the door and let the curse words, rage-filled thoughts, and not-fit-for-children gestures safely fly.

And I kid you not, as I pulled the door shut behind me, I was greeted by the tiniest little turd on the floor. [More curse words.] As I leaned toward the tissue dispenser to PICK UP THE ACTUAL TURD ON MY FLOOR, I noticed some little streaks of poop on the toilet seat. [More curse words. More rage.] More panic cleaning just so I could collapse on a toilet seat without actual crap on it to recover from my crap attitude. As I aggressively shot that cleaning wipe into the garbage to (finally!) sink down safely on the seat, my eyes moved to the inside-out poopy pants in the corner behind the door.

My God, where do you even go from there?!

I’ll tell you where I went. On a walk. With my dog that immediately rolled in 1,000,000 blades of dead grass at the park. I called my sister and swear-shouted this whole story to her while we laughed at the absolute absurdity of motherhood. And then I went home, put my kids to bed, put on ugly, comfy pajamas, washed my face, felt my feet on the (dirty) floor, flossed my teeth, and breathed for a minute.

Had I started my day with the same grounding, centered time for me as I ended it, surely the same mud-, salt-, grass- and shitstorm was still headed my way. But perhaps having not yielded at every moment to every other need of every other being would have positioned me to be the kind of flexible that was needed — the mom that could laugh a little more, let a little more go, pick my battles, take a rest, prioritize just one healthy recipe, soak up some sunshine, vacuum once and make peace with the lived-in state of our house. Being a doormat is not being flexible. Saying yes to everyone and everything but myself is not being flexible. Feeling the tension building and taking a pause; saying after this hour for my needs, I can commit to giving you some time and space; realizing my expectations are unreasonable and adjusting them accordingly — that is the kind of flexible I can sustain. I can be flexible.