Normal in Chaos - Mom Diaries of 2025

Normal in Chaos – Mom Diaries of 2025

In the morning, I roll over. Crisp air greets my nose. There’s a stuffy here—actually, a few.
Two bunny rabbits from old friends. A small bug-shaped one from Estela that fits into tiny hands. Two plush penguins. And a furry blanket I keep at the top of my pillow.
All there. Every night.

My youngest son gave me the penguins. I love hugging one of them at night.
My window is propped open to the left of my bed, bordering the street. A solid shade is cranked up to let night breezes in. On the cooler summer Pacific Northwest evenings, I savor the brisk air against my legs. One leg under the blankets, one leg out.

Lucy, our standard-sized goldendoodle, sleeps between the bed and a pile of books on the left. She used to curl up beside me but migrated to the floor in summer. Her hair is longish. She pats her tail against the floor when I say her name.

Surrounded.

Summer swallowed all six of us in grief, even as exuberant joys birthed recitals, graduations, races, Mariachi gigs, and school finished well.
It was punctuated by family disagreements over what constitutes a worthy “American,” the sudden—yet not sudden—death of my brother-in-law before he reached 45. Descansa en paz, Ricardo. And, a worn-thin relationship between one of our dogs and a neighbor.
The puppy said goodbye to this earth in our home and now rests behind the house, beside an apple tree we planted, gifted by a friend.

Light trails in through the window along with air, now. Lucy thumps her tail on the ground. It’s that time.
I grab my glasses from the nightstand and enter the bathroom. I start the water in the tub, pee, wondering about the coming weeks, drifting through files of our long summer.

The summer wasn’t my favorite. Estela recently said, “This wasn’t the worst summer, but it was the saddest.”
We didn’t say much more, but the list of what can take a person down kept mounting. I realize I forgot to mention an entire August consumed by emergency room visits, a surgery, and longer-than-expected recovery.

Flashes of toxic retribution theology snake through the categories—Am I being punished? Am I bad for my family? Are my sins inflicting pain on my kids? Woah. Just writing that hurts. Like stabs-in-the-heart pain. I press my right hand to my chest, maybe to reassure myself I’m not dying.

“It’s only anxiety,” I whisper.

But my moods dictate my writing, and so you get the most unguarded emotions here. I’m not overly focused on sadness, but the truth is that life sometimes feels like leaping from one trauma to the next. How can I navigate that—and bring my family safely through the wild rapids? I don’t want that for them. Dear God. I wanna swear, but in the mornings I am more patient.

Julie’s recital in June was wonder. Graduation, brilliant. May was marked by her personal bests in the 400 and qualifying for so many district events she couldn’t even compete in them all. And she’s just one of my kids.

Each child fills my thoughts—their goodness, the love I have for them, memories as their smiles crack when teasing me.

Steam rises from the tub. I pour in a generous share of lavender-scented Epsom salts. I splurge.
Hopping in, I place a towel behind my head and settle in for a good soak. The scratchy salts dissolve, surround my skin.

Moms do what makes sense.

Las Vegas.
The last time I was at the airport, headed to New Mexico with a dear friend, I couldn’t stop thinking of Las Vegas.
We’d planned a family stay there for a few nights in an Airbnb before running off to camp in the wilds of northern Arizona near the pink coral dunes. I’d spent hours researching Hipcamp reviews, zooming in on campsite photos, plotting an assisted ChatGPT itinerary we didn’t follow at all. Still—it all went into a family Google Doc. Not only that, we’d prepared our dog sitters with keys, treats, detailed instructions. This was primed and ready to go well.

Special.

I see their faces waiting to board the plane, slightly irritating one another, but we don’t give it much attention.
It’s an energy born of the frenetics of goodness we’d waited for all year.

Interrupted. The same neighbor with the same beef about the same dog. It became a race to change locks, numerous calls to the family watching our home, and every moment until we stepped into our home, a moment of anxiety for one of the six of us.

In a rush—everyone anxious, nerves frayed—we slept one last night under the stars before a 2 a.m. scramble for a flight change to take us home.

The phone had rung a week prior to our Las Vegas trip, and I was nervous to answer.

“Hello?” I said.

I knew who the caller was—my dear friend. But still, AI doesn’t give you much confidence.

“Hey, Danielle—I didn’t leave those voicemails. That wasn’t me.”

Maybe I knew that. Maybe I didn’t. But I did know, despite it being a Sunday, that I would confirm it wasn’t my friend changing her mind and telling me to do something that felt far too dangerous relationally and hard.

She went on to speak, but those are words I don’t remember. Derelict spies converged on my life to harass and maybe destroy something good. Or maybe it was an inside job all along, sabotage from toxic theology, again.

My reveries and spider-web memories catch me. I find the water rapidly cooling.
There are only minutes left if I’m to make it on time.
I drag myself from the tub after a vigorous scrub, tuning in to the silence—once filled by chatter, yelling, screeches, or giggles.

It is Tuesday.