mindful mothering (as opposed to losing it entirely)

I'm up early this morning on my way to an anxiety-provoking medical appointment an hour's drive away, which involves being away from the family for the next two days. Perhaps more detail later, but it's nothing life-threatening. Still, my nerves have unfortunately coursed through the house, with one of my sons waking early too. I'm in the bathroom for the briefest of moments as he asks, "Is the food ready yet?"
"Does it look like I'm cooking?" I call back, in as sweet a tone I can muster, through gritted teeth.
The Husband is still in bed, half-asleep, and I think back to a couple days ago when I happened to pick up a copy of Wherever You Go, There You Are, by Jon Kabat-Zinn and realize he'd written a whole, if brief, section, on mindfulness and parenting. My bathroom epiphany was that as the mother of small children there has been and no doubt will be no other time in my life when I am at once so dependent and depended-on as now, when I am as fully taxed by other people's needs, added to my own. In the process I feel more alive in some ways than I ever have before and am also screwing up many more times than I'd like. One of my sons has an issue for instance that in recent years has made its way into the diagnostic manual and involves him being frequently extra-annoying. I can tell myself every which way but Sunday that he purposely tries to make me nuts because he thrives on the emotional electricity, and sometimes that alone keeps me calm and sometimes I do or say things I cringe about for days afterwards. The other day I actually said, "Sometimes I wish I had a normal kid."
"Nobody's normal, Mom," he said.
Guilt and a strange bright pride competed then within me. I had, in better times, told him just this. And to all appearances, he'd understood it. He was now using it to stand his ground. Against me. It was in the way of all of the most motherly extremes of moments, a good one.