Overload

When I dropped my daughter off for camp today after a particularly rushed and chaotic morning and before hurtling on to my work day, I saw my friend Sheila. She, too, is a single mom, and when I parked beside her, I could hear the conclusion of a very familiar mother-child debate about sunscreen. She saw me and made a pulling-one's-hair-out gesture and an expression of wide, frantic eyes.

We walked the kids to their camp groups, discovering along the way that Sheila had forgotten a water bottle, I had forgotten a permission slip, and we both had forgotten to prepare our kids for the camp's Crazy Hair Day today. It was a deja vu experience for me, as life lately has felt like an endless parade of details slipping by me, missing items, forgotten tasks.

On the way back to our cars, we talked about the challenge of trying to juggle parenting, work, and household responsibilities. She shared that she was losing and forgetting things recently to such an extent that she worried about having a neurological condition.

I told her how I, too, had been losing and forgetting things left and right lately-- documents, household things, keys. It was happening more the busier and more stressed I became. Then I would get exasperated and start berating myself, which only made everything worse.

But Sheila was still preoccupied with worry about her own recent absent-mindedness. "Last night there was something on TV about Alzheimer's," she whispered.

I felt a wave of fondness and compassion for Sheila, who owns her own business, works very hard, and still took time to bring her high-energy child on a mother-daughter roller skating trip recently. "I don't think you have Alzheimer's, Sheila. I just think you have a ton on your plate, and it gets a little overwhelming sometimes."

She thanked me for the reassurance and said she wished she could talk longer because it felt so good to connect with another single mom, but she needed to get going because she urgently needed to stop at the bank before work.

Heading to begin my own work day, I thought about how important it is to have people in our lives who understand our daily struggles, whatever they are. I also thought about the way Sheila's situation and feelings had elicited my sympathetic understanding, whereas I'd been meeting my own with self-condemnation. What difference might it make for me if I could treat myself with the same compassion I automatically afforded Sheila? To treat forgetfulness and losing things as a symptom of overload rather than a character flaw?

While I was considering this, my phone rang. It was Sheila. At first I worried because it sounded like she was crying, but I realized quickly that the sound was actually her laughter.

"I thought you'd be amused to know," she said, "that I just drove right past the bank."

Thank you, Sheila. Good to know I'm not alone.