Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and want to run into their bedrooms, being so careful not to wake them up, just to check and make sure they are still breathing. To make sure this wasn’t the night that some awful thing took my babies away from me. Other times it isn’t even really fear – I just want to see them and hold them and spend more time just loving on them.

So much of the day sometimes is spent yelling, scolding, correcting, bickering, parenting. In tears. Not nearly enough time is spent just loving. Even when I type this, even when I know this, deeply, it doesn’t make me any better. It doesn’t stop me from getting upset over nothing and losing my temper and feeling like the world’s worst mother. Not enough time can be spent just loving them and reveling in that love.

When I’m not with them, I talk about them constantly and feel their absence 100 times magnified. I wonder if the other people around me can somehow tell that I am a mother just by looking at me. Do I wear the badges of motherhood when they are not present? A baby cries and instinctively I look for mine.

During those moments when I watch as another mother comforts her child, a small part of me feels strangely ashamed that my own children are not with me even though I know we all need time apart and they are fine. Even though when I am with them, sometimes I long for a break – a moment to just be me and not a mom, whatever that means. Maybe especially because I feel this way sometimes, when I get that wish, I feel guilty for embracing it.

I wonder if it will always be this way? If 1,000 miles away my father wakes up in the middle of the night and longs to see me – just to know that I am still breathing? If he still feels that awful mandatory parental guilt after 27 successful years on the job?

With more days off than on now, does he sometimes wish he had more time to spend wishing he had time apart – a moment to himself at the grocery store? There is something quite remarkable about having just a moment to yourself that I don’t think can compare to many, many moments.

That brief respite where you stop and catch your breath and you are you again is wonderful, especially knowing that it’s only temporary. I think being just a moment forces you to really pause and appreciate it. Savor it. And then dive back in again, vowing to do a better job today. To yell less and love more. Because not nearly enough time is spent just loving.