I’m having an Eeyore day: Parenting with Depression

Photo by valentin hintikka on Unsplash

“Good morning, Eeyore,” said Pooh.

“Good morning, Pooh Bear,” said Eeyore gloomily. “If it is a good morning, which I doubt,” said he.

“Why, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can’t all, and some of us don’t. That’s all there is to it.”

“Can’t all what?” said Pooh, rubbing his nose.

“Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush.”

I wish my kids called me Eeyore. There’s something lovable and romantic about the stuffed donkey with the buttoned-on tail that always seems to go missing. I could imagine myself walking through a pleasant wood as a solitary raincloud tracks my every move, my damp ears drooping to the ground. “Oh, Eeyore,” they’d say, “let’s go to Pooh’s and have some hunny.”

Instead, my children call me “Crabby Ima” (that’s Hebrew for “Mom”). My younger child keeps insisting that I need a pin, or a hat, or a sticker with bright red pincers, a warning that today Ima isn’t exactly a Pooh Bear.