I grit my teeth and snap out of my thoughts. “Yes, sweetie. I am listening. I was just trying to work out if I’d put salt in the dough,” I say. “But listen, it’s hard for me to concentrate on making the dough and listen to you. Can we talk over a cup of tea tonight after the seudah?”

She looks happy for a moment. Then she scowls. “No, I have plans. I’m supposed to meet Esti and Malki.”

“Shabbos afternoon?”

She looks at me scornfully. “Mommy, you always wake up from your nap five minutes before Shalosh Seudos and have to rush to get ready.”

She’s right. But maybe this week I’ll get up earlier, with enough time to prepare Shalosh Seudos leisurely while we chat. Or maybe I’ll see how much of it I can prepare on Erev Shabbos….

Yeah, right. I’ve been making Shabbos every week for 18 years, and I still grab dirty dishes from the sink and hide them in the bath right before the zeman. Even though I promise myself every week that I’d start Shabbos preparations on Thursday night so Friday afternoons wouldn’t be so frantic.

Like I promise myself every Sunday, that this week I won’t let the house fall apart…. And by Tuesday everyone is scrounging for clean school uniform shirts and the toy room is littered with colorful heaps of Magna-Tiles and Duplo blocks and menchies.

Sigh.

“I’m sorry, Dina. I really am,” I say woodenly. “But I have a lot to get done for Shabbos. Would you please start peeling the vegetables for the soup?”

It wasn’t always like this.

It was worse.

Before I was diagnosed with ADHD.

Back then, I started cooking for Shabbos two hours before zeman hadlakas neiros, because I spent most of Friday scrubbing the dried-out supper remains off a weeks’ worth of dishes before I could even begin peeling and chopping and sautéing.

In those early days of marriage and motherhood, I was completely overwhelmed by the responsibility of running my home. I’d look in despair at the other mothers at the park, with their Tupperware containers of cut-up peppers and carrots and cucumbers and cold water bottles and wonder why it hadn’t occurred to me to bring along snacks and drinks.

I wondered why it felt like such a huge effort to get my little ones out of the house in clean clothes, while it looked so easy for them.

Why did I feel I was working twice as hard as these women to get the basics done and achieving so much less than them? What was wrong with me?

“You need to clean the kitchen every night,” my mother told me. “Then it won’t build up and become overwhelming.”

“Clean up before starting the next activity. Pack away the toys the kids played with before getting them into the bath. Put their dirty clothes in the hamper and hang up their towels and put out the bath toys to dry before you put them into bed,” my sister advised.

It all made so much sense in theory. But I just couldn’t get those things done when the kids were awake; I was too distracted by their needs. I’d bring the towels back to the bathroom to hang them up to dry, but on the way a toddler would bump his head. I’d drop the towels and run to comfort the crying kid, then move on to the baby who was screaming to be nursed….

Once everybody was in bed, I’d collapse on the couch, eyeing the abandoned heap of towels on the floor, the spaghetti and meatballs my toddler had flung all over the kitchen table, too drained to start cleaning up. Where to even start? With the dishes? The counters? The kitchen table? The laundry? The living room? The bathroom? Maybe think about what I’m serving for supper tomorrow so I wouldn’t feel nauseous when I’d hear: “What’s for supper tonight?”

All I’d want to do was go to sleep. Which I couldn’t. There was usually a pile of unfolded laundry on my flowered bedspread. Which smelled of mildew, because I’d left it in the washing machine for too long before hanging it out in the backyard to dry.

And I’d need to shower, of course. But just getting up off the couch and getting myself organized to shower felt too difficult.

Sometimes I wondered if we really ever grow up at all. I was disorganized as a kid, and nothing much had changed, even though I was an adult. I was the kind of kid who had to call out, “Heads!” when I opened my locker because all my notepads and textbooks would come tumbling out. Even back then, I developed a wry sense of humor to poke fun at my messiness, to hide the shame I felt at being so lost and irresponsible. “My books are just excited to see me,” I’d mutter to the laughter of my friends as I’d bend down to pick up my books off the floor.

I remember how frustrated my mother used to get when we were kids and would step on the things lying on the floor. “Don’t walk on it, pick it up!” she’d reprimand.

“But I didn’t see it,” I’d protest. It was true then, and it still was true for me as an adult. I just didn’t see the inside-out pajama pants on the hallway floor and the plastic bag of baby cucumbers and the used coffee mugs scattered across the kitchen countertop. In an uncomfortable echo of my school years, the packages of pasta and pretzels would tumble out of my pantry when I opened it.

But I was trying so hard. I’d always tried so hard, both as a child, and now as an adult.

The first step, though, was realizing that there was a problem — and then being willing to explore how to fix it.

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 915)