I answered “in a minute” so many times that the phrase stopped meaning anything

Dear Delyara, One child wanted help with homework. The other wanted a snack. My husband asked if I’d seen the council letter. The washing machine finished. The dog needed letting out. My phone buzzed with a school reminder. And I kept saying the same thing: “In a minute.” “In a minute.” “In a minute.” By eight o’clock, I realised I had become a woman made entirely of delayed responses. Not resting, not refusing, just endlessly postponing everyone by tiny amounts because I could not physically be all the places my life wanted me at once. That’s one of the most exhausting parts of family life for me — not the big duties, but the constant feeling of being fractionally late to multiple needs at the same time. Eventually everything got done. I just never felt caught up to any of it.