Am I Allowed to Fail As A Mother?

As a mother,

As a person,

Am I allowed to fail?

Just once?

Only in one area?

Only on Tuesdays?

What are the rules?

Can someone please tell me?

I thought when we made it successfully through a school year last year, we were okay, despite the masks. This year, we made it 2 weeks into the school year before the High School shut down to quarantine all students.

Meanwhile, I’m back at work for the first time in 12 years and I’m getting emails from teachers complaining because my child isn’t logging on to the Zoom classes. He hasn’t had access to the internet except for school all week, but he doesn’t seem to care.

This week I have failed as a mother.

My child hasn’t gotten dressed and showered on time. Some days, I’m not sure he showered. His version of an essay is one sentence with zero punctuation this week. I’ve only looked at his work a couple times to check that he has done it. I work all day and have been working overtime to deal with our company’s response to COVID, and that is taxing. I’m single parenting because my husband’s away for a few months with this job undergoing training that is extremely stressful for him.

And so, I failed as a mother this week.

My kids have raided the fridge, wandered around in clothes that I’m not sure when they were last washed, with my son skipping school assignments he will have to make up later. Meanwhile, I’m getting upset texts from teachers and I might have bought all the Snickers bars from the vending machine at work.

This week, I failed as a mother.

But there’s always next week.

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