The snow started while the kids ate breakfast, and continued while we drove to school. I took them inside, got them settled in the warm, lively building and shielded my ears and eyes as I walked back out to the car.

I sat with the warm air blowing at my feet for a few moments, and left the parking lot. Not far out onto the road, something caught my eye: in the wind and blowing snow, the white sky, a small black flock of geese flew, struggling to maintain the V shape that keeps them together.

It makes me sad to see them out there and I watch as long as I can before I have to turn onto the road that will bring me home. But I don’t really know if they’re struggling. Are they used to flying in the snow, against the wind, fighting to stay in line, without losing any part of the group?

I can’t stop thinking about them as I make my coffee, while the toddler sleeps upstairs and the big kids start their school day. I realize, motherhood is just like that.

Motherhood is struggling to stay together, through the storm and the winds.

Motherhood is pushing a precarious, overloaded grocery cart into the parking lot, then stopping to bend down and pick up the bags that fell over the side, while the baby cries from being in the store for so long and people brush past without pausing to ask if you’re okay.

Motherhood is asking the big kids to help when the little ones are overtired and uncooperative, telling them to just give her the scooter, I don’t care right now that you had it first, just please, for a minute, let her have it.

Motherhood is breaking through the crowd at the mall, begging the child in a state of potty emergency to keep up, I didn’t bring any spare clothes.

Motherhood is keeping the family together, working as a team to just get through it. Just make it past this part, the hard part, until we can find the sun again.

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