Momkey in the Middle

I had an anxiety attack at Emma's basketball game yesterday. I think I ate some dry chicken, and it got stuck in my throat way far down. I have a cold, and was dizzy and not feeling too well anyway, and by the time I got to the bball game, I was having this weird crampy feeling in my chest, and I thought, Oh great, I'm going to die here. You don't realize until you think you're going to die, how much you really DON'T want to die. I thought I was having a heart attack. I was sweaty from having gone on the treadmill, then rushed to the bball game, from hot humid weather and into the air conditioned gym, after weeks of boiling hot weather at our house, and school starting, and getting up too early and doing too much - so that when I plopped down on that bench at the gym, and felt my chest tightening up, the room started to swirl, the noises started to echo, and I thought this is the end. I didn't want to die in the gym. I don't like to miss any of the games, but I told Barry I didn't feel too well, and I had to go outside. I sat outside and when your life stops, slams on the brakes because you think you might die, this body that you're using so brutally every day to do a million things, you actually float there for a second, on pause, and all the million things you normally do cascade around you. As a mom, you are the fingers that are holding shut the tiny rubber nozzle at the bottom of the full-of-air balloon. These are important little fingers. They are steady. Luckily my friend Julia showed up to watch the game with her soccer playing kids, and she drove me home. Luckily, Julia is a mom and Julia has a million things, but Julia is someone who takes physical and mental motherhood seriously, and Julia railroaded me to bed. She took my pulse. She took me seriously. Barry had had to go back to work at a recording session, so she also picked up my kids and brought them home. I didn't go to bed, though, while she was gone. I unloaded the dishwasher and then washed up in the bathtub, and then got cup o' noodles ready for the kids. I couldn't die if I was at home doing things that needed doing, so I emptied the dishwasher because it felt normal and the dishes felt hot and I didn't want to die, I wanted to be able to unload the dishwasher, I was so grateful to be doing the dishwasher. By the time they got home, I got to feel more like myself, I got to figure out that my pulse was okay, and to figure out that I think it was the chicken I ate without chewing it well, and the cramping wasn't my heart, but the pipe underneath it, the one with the food jammed into it. Why did I not stop and chew it really well? Because it's happened before. I tried to remember to slow down a little bit because Moms' bodies have to rest too, especially with a cold. Moms should stop and love themselves. When everybody got home and all streamed into my room, it felt weird to have everyone looking at me, it made me realize that luckily nothing ever happens to me where anyone has to be all gathered around me. I luckily just get to be soundlessly in the middle of things, usually making food. It's a spot my gramma (Hollaway) silently loved, and I see it's a treasured, totally hidden joy. To be in the middle. I was born for it. I am a middle child. Anyway. By the middle of the night, after drinking water and someone had made me tea, and eating a piece of sourdough bread, the feeling was passing, I wasn't dying, I was only a mom, with a cold, and hunk of chicken in my throat. This morning I got to get up, braid two girls' hair, tell a 5 year old she couldn't wear cowboy boots to school, tell a 10 year old she couldn't wear skinny jeans to school until it was under 80 degrees. I got to pack a lunch for a 12 year old boy who just had Terminator metal levers stuck in his mouth at the orthodontist yesterday, so all he could eat was applesauce, yogurt, noodles, wet and mushy things. I got to feel peace after feeling fear, and slipping. To all those moms out there, in the middle. Remember how important you are. Rest, assured.