RSSTHIS IS NOT WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR
March 18, 2008
My salvation as a wife and mother of young children depended on talking with other women. That was how I knew that everyone’s life, house, and marriage were the same as mine. We shared survival strategies.
We had a laugh about the day we came out of the bathroom to find every sock in the house in use as a Barbie sleeping bag. We shed tears for one another, when we remembered what getting up every single hour for 2 days does to your spirit. We could relive the trauma of childbirth and child-raising, healing ourselves with an audience that cared. We did what women do. We processed thoughts by conversation and learned to be mothers.
Too many pressures.
Will trade children for chocolate, husband for wine
The endless negotiations of having children began the moment they were conceived. The situations changed over the years but it was just an exchange of one g.d. thing for another g.d. thing. As I enter the teenage years with my 3 kids, I look back on their younger stages with an element of real fear that I should ever have to go through that again.
My best weight-loss strategy was to drink rum for supper for a year and a half. I mixed Coconut Rum with milk, feeling that must be semi-nutritious and I would calculate my alcohol intake by time. If one of them should break a limb, I’d still be able to drive them to the hospital. Obviously, my degree of mental health was precarious.
All day, every day, or so it seemed.
By 4PM each day, I’d been imprisoned for 12 hours with 3 vampires on a day pass and my last nerve had someone on it. I didn’t eat. I just drank. 4PM is still a time with many negative connotations for me. My husband still thinks I was weak. He also thinks everyone else’s marriage is in great shape because it looks that way on the outside. Ha, like he knows.
Now, of course, when I hear women tell me of life with young children, my reaction is to laugh, but inside I’m almost sobbing with sympathy. This email came to me from a good friend, about a day in her life. I laughed with tears streaming down my face. Let me tell you, she’s had a lot of these days.
Cast of characters
Allow me to introduce the players. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.
1. Clementine : not far beneath the surface of this flaxen-haired, sparkly-pink-loving little 8yr old girl lives a master of psychological warfare. Competitive and determined, this beautiful and intelligent child can disregard the feelings of others to whatever degree is necessary in order to impose her will. Nothing pleases her more than to irritate her younger and more sensitive brother to the point of hysteria, and make a fabulous drama of denial with her father, or whatever adult happens to be handy. The fun is just beginning for her parents.
2. Benjamin : this would be the younger and more sensitive brother. Serious, thoughtful, caring and without the sophisticated engagement skills of his sister, this 6 yr old child, with his breathtakingly beautiful smile, lives life inside his own head. His world is populated by animals, especially the ocean friends he is most fond of. Everyone speaks to everyone else. Trips to the hospital are routine in the winter since he suffers the respiratory ailments of childhood to a severe degree when he has a cold, which is every 2 weeks in a long Canadian winter.
3. Mitchell : the party-boy of the group, free of worry and looking for fun… like eating live fish, hanging from staircase railings, and spraying his 80 year old Grandpa with a hose. Blasting beyond Miss Clementine’s tormenting ways, and without the internal strife and concern of his older brother, Mitch is a 4yr old with no boring hang-ups about retribution, rules, turns, schedules, and caution. With his own healthy dose of disregard for the anxieties of others, he is one of the few who can irritate Clementine beyond her own control. The summer project is a family effort to keep him alive.
4. Bill : the husband who, like all husbands, gets it but doesn’t get it.
A Letter from the Trenches
Well, Benjamin’s fever has only lessened today. I have been in the house for 4 days with either sick kids, or storm conditions. Bill saw that yesterday, I was looking a bit suicidal so we all went skating at the local rink. Decided some retail therapy would help everyone so we hit ToysRUs.
Ben got a stuffed seal that would have made even the hardest of sealers teary. Mitch wanted all the Tonka garbage trucks, so a deal was struck at 1. Clementine was at a friend’s place so I got her Trouble board game as she loves games.
Got everyone home and tired, to play a nice family game of Trouble before supper. Mitch could not help but press the Trouble bubble dice REPEATEDLY which made Clem crazy. Ben insisted on having his seal push the bubble dice. Clem insisted that the rules allowed her to knock the other players’ pieces off the board but she was untouchable. (something about being the owner of the game and exemption from rules). Mitch was eventually able to take his turn if allowed to press the bubble dice continually within his turn.
All ended in tears and family game night was over. Bill poured wine for supper. He and I were having an issue because I commented on his driving when he drove backwards down the main street of town at 3pm, having seen a parking spot a block back. He told me I was moody and too opinionated. I told him he was endangering the lives of himself and ours.
I ended the evening by going out alone in the POURING rain to a men’s hockey game. Lots of young men hitting each other always makes me feel better.
Woke up this AM to the same, but Clementine now has a fever. We are iced into our home and can’t open the doors due to the storm last night. School is supposed to start tomorrow however they are calling for more heavy snow tonight and classes may be cancelled.
This may be my last email. I just don’t think I can take it anymore. Please know I love you all and whatever I decided to do will be painless.
————————————————
Mom and Baby.
2 Solutions
There is only 1 solution that I can see : in the future, the mother decides what everyone gets at ToysRUs, though don’t count on ever going there again, and furthermore, let it be known that everyone will get the same thing.
In the meantime, the husband returns to said store to purchase 8 more Trouble games and he better not say anything about it except “That’s a great plan, Dear”, in a solemn voice. The mother shall be in control of handing out of the spare games whenever she feels like it and you lose a game if you pester her.
Actually, there are two solutions. The rum recipe is simple : pour some quantity of Malibu Coconut rum in a glass. There is no point in measuring, that’s just more to dishes to wash. Throw in some quantity of ice, but don’t overdo it. Dump in milk. If you grabbed the pineapple or orange juice by accident, oh well. It even works with KoolAid or melted Popsicles. Stand slumped over stove and drink quietly. Pretend you can’t hear the screams.
Real life with young children
Substitute your own cast members. We’ve all lived this, right? You feel yourself unraveling and you have no idea how to pull it all back together. Your husband can’t imagine why you’re so unpleasant when he gets home. The children are clean and fed and happy to see him. Why does the wife look like hell-on-wheels and won’t speak to him? After all, he’s been at work all day too. Oh, right. Those of us who have done both know which is harder.
Raising young children is physically abusive to the person doing it. As a result of the indescribably deep emotional investment, there is a powerful measure of psychological abuse to cope with as well. There is no point in signing up for this exercise unless you cannot imagine life without them. Like marriage, it’s best not to know too much about it going in.
Happiness and hope
But there are rewards that can only be found from parenthood. The first is the reminder that profound contentment can be found in simple ways. Mitchell’s uncomplicated happiness when he helps his Papa work is complete. It doesn’t last long because children are the most aggressively growth-oriented creatures on the planet, but for a few minutes he can exclude every distraction and nothing else matters. He achieves a moving meditation.
In paying the price to learn what it means to give and sustain life, you must connect with Your Deeper Self. This is a tough link to find and easily broken. Giving so deeply of yourself is one way of uncovering truths about yourself as a human being.
The wonder and the glory.
Laughter and tears are the way we immerse ourselves in the glory of being parents.
Comments
3 Responses to “THIS IS NOT WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR”
Got something to say? I hope so.
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A Greener Tea
Web Maintenence by Rick Beckman
I do wonder if I should comment on life with teenagers. Luckily for me, as with most women mentioned in your article, I have had a dear friend with children just a smidge older than mine that I have been able to model parent. The other day she said something to me as I lamented that was so simple yet so profound I almost cried (well actually I did cry, just a little throat catching sob)….she looked me in the eye and said, “They will be ok you know. They are going to make it.” Her comment was made with her wise half smile and not meant to belittle what was bothering me at the moment (which for the life of me I can’t remember) but it was like a soft pat on the back and hair stroke.
I know there are things that will come and go and also horrors that if I am brave enough to speak of and share I will (you know what I am referring to Christine) but for the most part having friends that can help us realize everything wil be ok as far as our kids are concerned keep us sane.
Thank you to all those strong, wise women (inside each of us, she rests, until she is needed) there for the other.
Finally, a little honesty. The Macho Mommy Media Mafia has been pushing the idea that all any woman needs is kids, kids, kids and more kids to be happy. But no one says this, at least not in print. Oddly, the people they must sell magazines to ALL have these stories, and will tell them to anyone that listens.
I don’t understand publishing and how what is printed, and what is known can be so different. Either way, nice to see it in print.
@ Gina - I do know some of what you’ve been through. I know what my parents endured. But just as you say, I have watched women suffer the teenage years, and one day they’re grandmothers and their children have somehow morphed into happy responsible adults. I have to believe it will happen for us too.
@Patrick - Ain’t it time for a little truth, though? My children are my reason for living BUT I am the first to say that you can have a happy, fulfilled life without them. The very suggestion that it is somehow selfish to not have kids is both harmful and untrue.
Great observation about the publishing industry, and the difference between what is printed and what is known, but still we give them our money. Have you read any EA articles on the cosmetics industry?:roll: