Trying to Get a Drink of Water

A fat lip my beautiful daughter gave me with her skull recently

A good friend of mine recently posted about her summer on Instagram. Something along the lines of “This has been a self-care month for me!” 

I laughed bitterly and with deep envy at the idea of taking a month to focus on self-care. At the time I had been trying to get a glass of water for about three hours. We were traveling home from the beach with our toddlers, and every time I went into the kitchen / a bagel shop / a gas station my intention was to grab water, but it never happened. The girls were being insane, and their lives were in jeopardy multiple times as they climbed on tables in a restaurant or darted into traffic on a busy street. Despite my thirst, the water kept getting sidelined. 

I ended up so parched that I worried I’d get hospitalized for dehydration. When I thought about it, I realized I hadn’t had any water since that one ladylike sip I took between gin drinks at our anniversary dinner the night before. And prior to that? I think it had been well over 24 hours? 

Still in the car, I said to Jon, “I really need to stop and get some water.” But we both knew we weren’t going to stop. The girls had finally fallen asleep, and the constant motion of the car is imperative to the sanctity of their naps. “I think there is some ice left in that iced coffee you got this morning,” he offered. 

Getting myself a glass of water is a big struggle for me on a daily basis. I’ve also been trying to get to a yoga class for nine months—or get any kind of exercise, really (Not that yoga is always supposed to be exercise! Calm down!).

It’s not that I don’t think self-care is important. I think it’s crucial. I worry that I’ll die before my kids grow up. My stress level is astronomical, my exercise non-existent, my nutrition terrible. This morning I ate an entire bagel with schmear without chewing. I mean, forget about healthy breakfast, my goal is to start chewing my food. 

But having toddler twins is not really a “self-care” situation as much as survival of the fittest. Every day, I am woken up by two“snuggly” two-year-olds slamming their bowling-ball skulls into my softest most tender parts while laughing maniacally. “I all done sleeping, mama!” As the day ensues I endure multiple more hairline fractures to delicate facial bones, along with kicks to the kidney, toes run over by scooters, shins jammed into with metal toys, and then just your run-of-the-mill physical struggles with defiant two-year-olds who like to test my strength. (How are two-year-olds so strong?!?)

I spend a lot of time thinking about how if I cut out all the toast, pasta, pizza, tortillas, and other simple carbs I would probably lose weight and feel better. While I am thinking about this, I’m eating a piece of toast my daughter threw on the floor that I don’t want to go to waste. Last night at dinner I ate my own tacos but also theirs. They ate bananas for dinner. 

After decades spent languishing in the self-help world, working as a yoga teacher, for yoga teachers, and around yoga teachers — and all the peripheral self-care accouterments that culture brings with it — it has been wildly humbling to adopt a lifestyle that is simply not about me. 

Still, taking care of myself helps me take care of them. I know this. And I do want to live to see them graduate from trade school and become plumbers, or make us rich off Doublemint Gum ads. Which is why my ongoing mission is to carve out some self-care time… and drink some water every single day.