Summary of Carry On, Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life - Book Summary (2016)

Part III. MULTIPLYING

Chapter 32. Closer to Fine

Lately I’ve been exploring the disciplines that help me fill up and remain calm. Most of these techniques are proactive things I do before I am upset to remind myself that the world and I are all right. These things are good, and they help me maintain a peaceful heart to some extent. But I live with three small children, and I am convinced that they meet early in the morning to plan the most effective way to take me down. So the fact is that my peace is not going to be consistently maintained, no matter how much reading, writing, praying, or yoga I do. Because there are very strong-willed forces working against me.

Allow me to offer a specific example. The other night at dinner, Craig and I demanded that the kids clean their plates even though dinner was, admittedly, gross. One nanosecond before this suggestion was made, we were laughing, talking about Daddy’s day at work, planning our upcoming weekend, and generally feeling like a lovely, well-adjusted family. Then—ambushed by ourselves again—there was crying, screaming, heads banging on tables. Immediate anarchy. Instant chaos.

I know that there are mothers who can roll with these scenarios. When kids tantrum, their facial expressions don’t change. Their weary smiles suggest: “Oh, well, kids will be kids,” and they calmly do whatever needs to be done to diffuse the situation. This approach is not my first instinct. My first instinct is to freak out. My first instinct is to remember that yes, this chaos is proof that I have ruined my life and the lives of everyone in my home and that we are a disaster of a family and that no mother, in the entire history of mothers, has ever been forced to endure the drama, decibels, and general suffering of this moment. My instinct is to tear my clothes and throw myself on the floor and bawl and cry out worthless declarations like, “I can’t TAKE this anymore!” My first instinct is to allow my anxiety and angst to pour out like gasoline on a raging fire and indulge in a full-on mommy meltdown.

This, Craig suggests, is not helpful.

So after a few years of parenting, it became clear that I needed a strategy to help me regain my peace after I had already lost it. Because I am going to lose it—frequently.

Enter Joan Didion. Ms. Didion is a serious writer. Every word she chooses is precise and perfect. In an essay called “Self-Respect,” Ms. Didion offers the only strategy that has ever consistently helped me regain my mommy peace once I’ve lost it:

It was once suggested to me that as an antidote to crying, I put my head in a paper bag. As it happens, there is a sound physiological reason, something to do with oxygen, for doing exactly that, but the psychological effect alone is incalculable. It is difficult in the extreme to continue fancying oneself Cathy in Wuthering Heights with one’s head in a food fair bag. There is a similar case for all the small disciplines, unimportant in themselves; imagine maintaining any sort of swoon, commiserate or carnal, in a cold shower.

Yes, Ms. Didion, yes. It’s the little things. It’s the little disciplines that help us get through the day and regain peace. It’s not necessarily a different career or parenting philosophy or neighborhood or husband that we need. Sometimes it’s a deep breath, a glass of water, or a paper bag.

I now store paper bag hats on all three floors of my house. When my children start losing their minds, I put on my bag and breathe and hide. Tah-dah! Instant quiet time, oxygen, and a reminder that things are not necessarily as dramatic and horrible as my kids or jumpy head might suggest.

I draw smiley faces on my bags because I know that a large portion of my kids’ mommy memories will include these bags, and I’d like them to be smiley memories. Also, I love how the smiley face makes me look content, even though inside I am scowling and hyperventilating and ruing the day I was born. I think the thumbs-up gesture really completes the effect. One piece of advice: if you decide to employ this strategy in your home, don’t be tempted to cut out eye holes. I tried it once, and it ruins everything, because, well, eye holes mean you can still see the carnage, and the carnage can see your maniacal eyes.

No eye holes.

It’s helpful to adopt “small disciplines” to remind one’s self that life is much too important to be taken seriously.