Only One Way Off This Ride

I'm cleaning closets like a madwoman.

I haven't really sat down in the past few days. I have an obsessive need to get things in order - the pantry, the dog's cabinet, my daughter's drawers. The garage. Our office. The front coat closet. That drawer where all the bills get tossed.

I'm compulsively making lists in my head and running around crossing off and adding things to notepads scattered throughout the house. Even when I slide into bed, my brain whirls with to-do's. I'm a busy woman - because I can't quite handle being the girl who cries.

The flurried activity in our home is a blatant attempt to ignore the calendar on our newly scoured refrigerator. Monday is a day away, the day when I go back to work and our daughter goes to an at-home daycare. I hate Monday.

We did a dry run earlier this week with an "immersion" experience of a few morning hours. She smiled at her caregiver, eagerly responded to her son and daughter and came home as happy as she left. In the weird-home-without-my-child-window, I made my husband tackle his closet and drawers, his loud complaints a welcome distraction from the somersaults my heart was doing in my chest. We survived the dress rehearsal and I'm preparing for the real deal. The lists are all in order. I just don't know if the emotions will follow the plan.

My friend, Sarah once compared the end of pregnancy to a roller coaster: once you're in it, there's only one way off, no matter how much you don't want to face what's coming. The same feeling holds true here; the up-the-hill clicking of the car is loud and rumbling and the fall is just around the corner, whether I want to face it or not.

At least I'm going to face it with one hell of a clean house.