The era of "doing for" my kids is winding down.

Putting down the dish cloth to just hang out can be a surprisingly confusing shift.

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For the last few weeks, I’ve been hobbling around on a mysteriously sore and swollen left foot. “Baby it a little,” the podiatrist recommended, the day before Thanksgiving, after an X-Ray showed no fracture or obvious trauma. “Rest, ice, elevation.”

That all sounded great, but that Thanksgiving meal - plus the breakfast I’d planned for Eric’s kids earlier in the day - wasn’t going to make itself. Throughout the day I got off my feet as much as I could, but by the time we finished dinner, I was done. So, for the first time in a very long time, I did….nothing…after the holiday meal.

Instead of shooing the kids out of the kitchen so I could putter in peace, I found myself lying on the sofa with them for hours, watching episodes of LOST. It was nice. It was…strange. When was the last time I just hung out all night with all my kids?

A blurry shot from my unusual post-holiday-meal perch on the sofa

Mine has been an industrious sort of motherhood. Years ago, as my brood grew in number and size and the work of keeping a household running increased, more and more often I found myself hidden away in the kitchen cleaning or in the laundry room folding shirts as the rest of the family hung out. Serving a big family is a big job and I had a Lot To Do in those after-school hours when I had five young kids under my roof.

Perhaps that’s how “doing for” became my primary parenting love language.