by Megan Schwartz

You know how sometimes when you reach for a hanger, it gets stuck on all the other hangers next to it? A choice looms on these occasions that can steer the course of your entire day. Do you calmly reach up and coax the hanger loose?  Or do you do what I do—violently yank and twist until every single hanger in the mix comes crashing down in a scratchy pile right on top of your head.  

This sort of incident happens to me all the time, mostly leaving me reactive and resigned for the rest of the day. I’ve heard there are people out there that simply pick a loose hanger from the end, but I don’t believe it.   

As my bio says, I am a stay-at-home mom to two preschoolers, four-year-old Anna and two-year-old Silvia. My patient, enduring and occasionally annoyed (and annoying) husband is Kurt. After Silvia’s birth, we went through the ringer of PPD, a time that challenged and defined our marriage, but we (and the children) survived to tell the tale, so it’s worked out alright.

The fun part about me is I am not always disheveled and hopeless in my pile of hangers. Sometimes I am peppy and maybe even mildly irritating with waves of exuberance. Those days, I can clean the house in 20 minutes flat, play my two girls into the ground and have dinner on the table at 6 P.M. on the dot, complete with sparkling conversation (Kurt may feel differently about that part, but I usually don’t pause long enough to ask). This unpredictability makes me a highly sought after person to be around— and to avoid.

Still, all hope is not lost. A few moments ago I took the clean sheets upstairs and made up my bed as pretty as could be. Then I looked down and saw the enormous and completely not hidden mattress pad that I’d somehow stepped over at least three times but failed to see or, you know, put on the mattress before I made the bed. 

Once again, the choice loomed, how to respond, how to set the day? For this moment, I just laughed, folded the king size lump up as best I could and plopped it in the corner. Maybe tomorrow I’ll just rip the bed apart and remake it in tears, but I try not to think about that. For today, I’ll just take things moment to moment.

One hanger at a time.