Sometimes it all gets to be a little too much. Especially at the end of the day, when everyone comes together at the table. Sensory input piles up during the day and enough had certainly passed me by, while I hadn’t quite landed from the barbecue, yesterday in the park, with more than 100 people. I was on my way to DEFCON 1.
I had started the morning well. To relax a bit before going to work, after taking my son to school, I went to a nice coffee bar. I regularly go there with other parents from school to enjoy a coffee together. Now I visited alone and continued reading A Millenium of Amsterdam by Fred Feddes. Two or three more visits and I’ll be done with that wonderful book.
Then I went to work, and it went well. So I asked the babysitter to go to the playground after school with my son, so that the peace would be preserved a little longer. When they came back, however, I made a mistake… I kept working, kept trying to stay in my ‘flow’, while more and more sensory input entered my brain. Someone from the UK had asked for tips about sleeping problems through a Linkedin group and I thought I’d translate the piece I wrote about it in Dutch recently. And I kept doing that, while the babysitter had questions for me. Then her sister came by (we are one big family by now), she had questions for her sister and chatted with my son and with me. Meanwhile, my son was playing a game on the laptop, with an annoying tune (games aren’t fun without sound…) and needed help with that every now and then. ‘Mom is still working, don’t talk to mom please’, did not enter his brain in any way (also something to do with sensory processing, or maybe being ‘selectively deaf’…). It was not possible to flee to my office at this time, as my mother-in-law is visiting from Curaçao and that is her place during her visits.
Right, the translation done, it was now time to prepare the food. There were leftovers from another barbecue and an order from the Thai. That meant I was heating up many different dishes, adding some more ingredients, setting the table, and feeding the cat. And no, I didn’t call for help, because I figured doing it alone would cost less energy than communicating about what needs to be done. The solution ‘ask for help!’ did not fit me. In the meantime, my partner came home from work, and my son and mother-in-law joined us at the table. Because she doesn’t visit very often, there is a lot of catching up to do.
After dinner I fled upstairs, to do some ‘damage control’ by getting myself in the shower, to wash away some of the tension from being overwhelmed by all the sensory input. When I was júst feeling a bit more relaxed, that practical joker of a son of mine thought that it would be fun to give me a jump-scare, yelling ‘Boo!’ around the corner. Successful mission as far as he’s concerned, I dropped the soap from shock. Next time I need to lock the door…
