Life of Work, Work of Life

For years, I came home late many days a week, often just in time to eat, hug my kids, and go to bed. The babysitter who shepherded the kids all day kept our apartment orderly and made sure that the kids' clothes were bagged when they got too small or were out of season and left us piles of our freshly washed clothes every Monday.
 
Those days seem like a long time ago.  The kids are older now, less in need of constant babysitting, and I'm here most days, working from home or looking for the next thing I'll do. After a life of work, I am now surrounded by the work of life. The organizing of three small (well, not so small anymore) beings.  Laundry and cooking and disposing of dead fish and making sure the clothes are bagged (these days, long after they are outgrown).  It's not work--my bank account would know if it were--and yet, it is. Work that I have fought against, some days with more energy than I can afford to spend on such a fight, but work that has to be done.  And, on a day like today, work that lets me escape from what's missing and focus on what's not.  My family is healthy. I have friends with whom I actually have time to talk.  I have a husband who has been ridiculously patient with the working out of this new situation and children who know (well, at least sometimes) when to hand me their stuffed animals to make me feel better and when just to leave me alone to work it out.
 
I wish I could say that doing the work of life each day was resulting in a home worthy of Martha Stewart or at least as organized as our sitter always made it.  Not even close. But, unlike a life of work, the work of life goes on daily, so who knows, there may be hope for me yet.