Nicole Locke - Letting My Heart Grow Three Sizes

There’s so many things I can talk about today. How I’m a UK and a US citizen. How life is different in each country I call home. And, as I read the news, how I worry and am prideful of both countries. Maybe on a lighter note, I could talk about the etiquette of celebrating when one home country declared war against your other home country.

But in the scheme of all this, I really want to talk about my home, my household, and how I ruined July 4th and Christmas with one sentence.

Because though I should talk about my countries, this is how I originally started my post:

Yep. It’s July, and most of us are outside soaking in the sunshine. I’m visiting family and the kids later today will be splashing in the pool. Right now, I’m enjoying a cup of tea while writing this post because it’s early and the house is quiet.

Bliss.

And yet, I don’t want to be the voice of doom, but this year is half over. And I pointed that brutally out to the children right before we left. As I’m frantically trying to take care of future dental appts, and writing deadlines, and end of school events. As I’m still living in the house that cleaning products forgot, and where moving boxes are furniture.

Life’s a little busy, and the kids are strewing their stuff everywhere…on top of the stuff that was strewn last week, last month—last year. So I snapped, and in my firmest mom voice, I told them if they didn’t help around the house, there won’t be a Christmas tree.

This is how my brain works:  If I have to pick up my son’s dirty clothes off his floor, then my daughter’s Lego explosion in the living room, laundry, shopping, paperwork won’t get done. I won’t even mention dinner.

In other words, with my sentence, I invoked the reasoning behind the ‘trickle-down theory’. If it’s applicable to a country’s financial-crisis, why can’t it be applicable to a motherhood crisis?

After all, if I’m always behind, it makes sense that by Christmas it should only be worse. Sort of like Newman from Seinfeld with his speech ‘Because the mail never stops. It just keeps coming and coming. There’s never a let up, it’s relentless’, and the postman snaps.

Or the mother snaps and tells her kids there won’t be any Christmas right as they’re shouting in glee because they’re packing bathing costumes instead of cleaning their rooms.

They’re thinking swimming pools and sugar plums, and I’m The Grinch—in the Summertime—on Independence Day.  

Enough. My household can’t be any different than others. This madness has to be coming from me. It has to be because I’m not staying present; I’m not enjoying life now. And I know I’m not because I forgot it’s Independence Day until I wrote that sentence.

In my defence, this is our first Fourth of July in this country in 11 years, but that’s beside the point. I need to remember that the trickle-down theory didn’t work because random factors broke the economic chain from the rich to the poor. Poverty never ended.

So, I’ll let the joyfulness of this day break the chain of my madness, and I won’t be The Grinch on America’s birthday.

Instead I’ll make myself new as well, and let my heart grow three sizes as I join my kids in the pool. I’ll most definitely swirl sparklers in the night, eat hotdogs, and be proud. America’s made it this far, maybe I can, too.

And as for Britain? You’re my home, and always will be. And now that I have my priorities straight, I’ll go back to the start of this post and tell everyone that.

Nicole :-)

The Knight's Scarred Maiden releases in August! You can read the first chapter here: http://bit.ly/ExcerptHere.

Nicole Locke is the author of Harlequin Lovers and Legends series. For more information about her and her writing, check out her website and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.