The Day I Got Comfortable

Saturday, 19^th June 2021

The first day

On Thursday last week, I finished my work and floated away from my desk.

It had been a good workday. Each of the tasks I had been given, I executed excellently and was rewarded with incredibly positive feedback. Apparently, I was “professional and conscientious” and had “a keen eye for detail.” Also, I grasped things very quickly. Remember that unicorn-in-fantasy-land Excel function I told you about last week? I figured out how to do it—and with very little guidance! That one only really attracted a perfunctory (and virtual!) pat on the back, but I didn’t care—I was doing a great job and that was all that mattered. As I shot off my last email and shut down my computer, I was in a fantastic mood. I glided about the house, singing to the boys, and leaving little traces of sunshine on everything I touched. Life was good.

But underneath my delicious relish was something slightly sour: it was the afore-taste of the realisation that for every day that left me feeling as good as I did, there would soon be one that left me with an equal and opposite reaction.

And on, Monday, that law was proven true.

It started with an impossible to do list which was made even worse when, soon after logging on, I discovered that the list was missing two vital and complex tasks—one of which had a deadline I didn’t know about until I was told an hour before it was due. My to do list went from impossible to just plain ridiculous. And the day was just getting started with me.

By midday, I was a weeping mess. I was completely clueless about how to do most of the tasks on my list, running behind on all of them, and just when I thought I was getting on top of it all, I realised with horror that I had sent the wrong file to a client, which meant that I had inadvertently missed the deadline on the right file. Everyone was really nice about it, but it didn’t matter: I had failed.  

On top of all of that, Lu and I were not talking (I don’t even remember why now), I felt immensely guilty about not having any time for Temi and knew that I would be working late and would therefore not have time for the other two either, when they returned from school.

And then, because the equal and opposite reaction of walking on sunshine is drowning in the sewers, it just couldn’t end there, there had to be more to come.

When Timi came home, it was with a bad report from his teacher. Timi, who took great pride in the fact that he had never been moved down from the green card of good behaviour, or that he had never lost any behaviour points—that Timi was reported to us as having been unkind to his friends and unwilling to put good effort into his work.

My golden boy! My competitive “Mummy, I have the highest reading level/only Lucy’s writing is neater than mine/do you know that I do the hardest Maths sums?” good boy was bringing home a bad report!

I had already been feeling anxious about not being able to keep up with his reading or to follow closely the updates his teacher had been sending on what they were learning—this report gave solid ground to all my fears: I was a terrible mother, and I was failing my boys. Their lives were going to be ruined! I could just about hear the prison doors clanging shut.  

(Of course, none of all of this was helped by the fact that during one of my Zoom meetings later on, I became keenly aware of my newly developed double chin.)

At the end of the day, I crawled into bed. Sure, I’d had a good talk with Timi, and yeah, Lu and I were somewhat reconciled, but I wasn’t happy. It was just the start of what promised to be a heavily loaded week, and that first day had not been a good one.

***

The following days

I was right. It was a heavily loaded week.

On Tuesday, I had to wake up at 5am to start work—and, given the deadline I had to work towards, that was late! Especially because I managed about 45 minutes of quiet work time before the blood hounds smelled me out. I tried to work with them screaming and climbing all over me, and when I gave up and went to get them breakfast, I returned to find my laptop on the floor—crashed and frozen.

It was fine when I managed to turn it back on, but I wasn’t. The task I was working on was one that was taking me twice the amount of time that the project manager had predicted that it would. I had already asked for the deadline to be pushed once, and although it was certain that I would need to, I was loath to ask for another extension. After kicking myself for carrying my nonsense ‘over promiser-under deliverer’ behaviour into this job, I got back to trying to mop up the sea.

In the end, I asked for the second extension, and it was granted. “By the end of the week” sounded like a very doable deadline, and so I did it again: I promised. Effusively.

But the week had more for me: Timi came home with yet another bad report. This time, it was accompanied by a yellow card.

“Not listening to the teacher…had to be told three times…rolled his eyes…”

Lu was concerned (“Two in two days? He’s not like this. Our son is not rude!”)

I was horrified (“Right, it’s time for me to resign!”)

We had another talk with Timi. He explained. We scolded. He cried. We clarified. He cried some more. We consoled.

He seemed genuinely upset that this had happened, and when we probed, he told us that he was “bothered”. Further probing didn’t reveal anything sinister, but Lu was not convinced that there wasn’t “something afoot”. Keen for the bottom lines to be clear, we reminded him of his commitment to kindness, diligence and obedience, but we also reassured him of our commitment to protect him and emphasised the need for him to tell us if there was anything specific bothering him. There was nothing more to be said, so we left it there.

He wrote a lovely letter of apology to his teacher, and Lu wrote an accompanying one, which had a veiled but clear message: we will ensure that our son does the right thing and follows the rules, but we’re keeping our eyes open.

***

The days following that

SG very kindly offered to have Tomi and Temi over, which meant that from nine thirty AM until two fifteen PM, Lu and I were completely child-free.

I still had plenty of work to wade through, but at his request, we decided to go cycling together.

It was wonderful. It brought back memories of the days before the boys, and anticipation for the days, soon to come, when they will all be in school. It was only a forty-minute jaunt and by the end of it, I had precious little time left to meet yet another deadline, but I was very glad we did it.

(Before I move on, I would just like to say something on this topic: I don’t understand how a man who exists on cake, coffee and ice creams, and who rarely exercises can effortlessly cycle uphill in the highest gear, while I, who do workout videos and go out for walks regularly, am left huffing behind him—so much so that a kindly lady smiled and called out some helpful advice: “Just keep pedalling!” At one point, he rode behind me, watched me switch to the lowest gear to make it up another hill, and he laughed, calling me a “lazy little girl.” Hian! It is terribly unfair.)

***

The last few days

The work week ended on a good note.

All the boys came home with good reports. Miss Teacher said Timi was being kind, working hard and listening to her, and SG said Tomi and Temi were very good while at hers.

She was particularly surprised at how well Temi was doing. (“He’s coming on in leaps and bounds!”) I have to agree. For a child that spends most of his day either watching Paw Patrol or making his toys act out the episodes, his interaction and vocabulary have had a massive boost.

The other day, while I was brushing my teeth, I heard him saying, “Look, Mummy, that’s green, and look, Mummy, that’s orange.” It took me a while to realise he was talking about colours! I looked behind me and saw him sorting my tampons by wrapper hue. The child I had spent months pointing out blues and reds to, who had seemed to remain staunchly oblivious to their reality, was suddenly identifying secondary colours. I ran over to tell Lu and we grabbed him and did a quick point-and-say test. Blues, reds, purples, and yellows—he knew them all!

Things were definitely looking up: Timi was happier, Tomi was as jolly as usual, and Temi was engaging more. Perhaps all wasn’t lost after all; perhaps I didn’t need to resign. Perhaps, just maybe, instead of catastrophising, I was meant to just carry on trusting God.  

Which brings me to this: remember that deadline I had over promised to meet by the end of the week? Even that ended beautifully.

Did I meet the deadline? Absolutely not. I wasn’t even close. When it was clear on Friday morning that there was no way I could finish it by the end of the day, I put in my third extension request: “Monday, definitely Monday!”

But by the end of Friday, when I found that I hadn’t had time to work on it at all, it was clear that Monday wouldn’t be possible either. There was just so much else to do, and that particular job required many hours of focused attention: two things I did not have.

I sat there, close to tears, not knowing what to do. I didn’t want to go back and ask him to push it yet again, but I was exhausted and the thought of working late into the night and over the weekend filled me with heavy dread.

Before I had the presence of mind to pray about it, my line manager called to have our weekly catch up. It was a timely and reassuring call, and on her advice, I made the decision to call the project manager and tell him honestly what the situation was. His response was unbelievable. The guy was so laid back he was practically upside down: “Yeah, no it’s fine! Definitely don’t work overtime or over the weekend. We don’t want you doing that—you’ll be scared away! If you can get it done over the next couple of weeks, that’d be great. I’m on leave next week anyway so take your time. No worries at all.”

And thus ended my workday: with me floating away from my desk.

***

What is in your hand?

While I made dinner that same Friday evening, I heard something on this episode of 20 Questions with Pastor Mike (have you checked out Mike Winger’s YouTube channel? You must!)

He was answering a question from a woman with a chronic debilitating disease who wanted to know how she could still be faithful to God, her husband and her children with her incapacitations. His response caused me to pause (the video and my life). I needed to think hard about how I could take on the wisdom he was sharing.

Be faithful where you are and with what you have.

I do not have a chronic illness and I have plenty to be thankful for. However, as someone who has, just this week, looked longingly and enviously at the photos posted on social media by a mother with no full-time job, who can devote all of her energies to engaging her kids, and then has turned around to covet the freedom my child-free colleagues have to focus entirely on work, able to meet deadlines and juggle numerous tasks…

…as that person, the pointer to being faithful with what I have been given is a vital one.

It is not the output that matters so much as the faithfulness with which you do a thing.

I am paraphrasing but that was basically what he said. And he’s one hundred per cent right. If I keep focusing on comparing my output with others’, I will live under a heavy cloud of resentment and defeat. Instead, I can focus on my input, and on making sure that it is one of faithful service to my family and to my work. If I can do that, and if I can stop worrying about what my life looks like in comparison to others, I will have started to really live.

If you have followed me from the beginning, you’ll know I have been here many times. Here’s hoping that this one sticks.

***

Letting go

As if to say, “While we’re on this topic…” another long-standing hang up was brought to the fore this morning.

I shared an observation with Lu about my new workplace:

“Literally every single one of them is thin. They’re all sporty and fit. Over seventy researchers, and not one who isn’t really slim. I am probably the biggest person there.”

As he listened to me, Lu went from unimpressed to disappointed.

“You know, it’s really sad that that’s the thing you’ve chosen to obsess about.”

Then came a discussion about something I have dealt with for as long as I can remember, and he has had to grapple with from the start of our relationship: my body image issues. He knows the deal, wishes it were different, and often urges me to make it so.

This morning, it was no different. There was the “I think you are beautiful” speech, the “this body gave life to three boys” reminder, the “it’s all vanity, really” sermon and the “don’t be afraid to let go of this obsession” plea.

It was no different to anything he has said to me over and over (or ‘severally’* if you will) but this time, it was different. Perhaps it was because of the reminder I’d got the day before that pointed me back to the same old road to contentment, or perhaps it’s because I genuinely am tired of walking around in circles and heading nowhere. Whatever it was, as Lu spoke, he was no longer the skinny person who didn’t understand…

…who didn’t understand what happened in my head when, as I stood posing for a photo at Mama’s 60^th party, feeling comfortably concealed in my loose-fitting dress, someone called out to me, “Are you sure you’re not pregnant?”

…or didn’t understand how much I struggled when said photo came out and all I could see was a family of beautifully dressed people standing around the woman with the flabby arm

…or didn’t understand how hard it was for me to believe people who tell me I am being ridiculous.

But as he spoke, and touched the parts I most often hide away, he wasn’t that person anymore. He was someone who, as he says, has put in seven years, and does understand, someone who does have a right to speak on the matter. And someone who needs to be heard.

So, even though I have also been here before (severally!), I am making a firm decision to let go of my obsession with weight loss, and to get comfy with who I am, and what I look like now.

To celebrate that, I went for a run…

…during which, not once, not even when I ran past other humans, did I suck my not-pregnant tummy in.

***

Severally*

If you follow me on social media, you’ve already seen this, but bear with me.

Lu was composing an email and used the word ‘severally’ seemingly to mean ‘on several occasions’ (I found out later that’s not what he meant).

Thinking that I had read somewhere that, despite what it sounds like, the word doesn’t actually mean ‘several times’, I went searching for the correct definition.

I saw the first meaning and thought, “Aha!”

Then I saw the second one.

I think it’s brilliant. I have spent so much of my life shunning the Nigerian-English usage thinking it inferior to British English, and often, just plain wrong, but as I indicated in my last post, my mindset concerning my roots and my culture is being radically challenged. And seeing this, Nigerian English being indicated as a legitimate variety of English, well, it just filled me right up. As I keep saying, there is so much to say on this and I intend to say it all in coming posts, so if you aren’t already, get comfortable.

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

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