This post started coming together this evening while Asher was in the bath. What started as a fun and cute event, Ash splashing around, playing with his submarine and duckies, quickly turned into a hot, stinky mess as he farted under water. This made him giggle and squeal "Toot!", but seconds later the hot stink of 2-year-old fart was permeating the humid air of our tiny bathroom and both Ben and were looking at each other like, "How bad of parents are we if we scram and leave our toddler in a tub by himself?". We stayed. But it was a reminder that so much of a parents job is enduring... enduring the stinky, the sticky, the loud, the yucky, the frustrating, and the flat out exasperating.
I remember thinking/writing a lot about endurance when Asher was a newborn. I don't know that I would have used the term "shock" to describe his infancy back then, but that's what it was. I was out of my element, caught off guard, and unsure of what to do with a newborn. And by the time Asher was 3 months old, I was having a full blown identity crisis. I remember finding solace only during the ten minutes of the day when I got to shower- it was the only time that I didn't feel like a mom, or like a hospice worker, or like a wife, daughter, friend, sister...I just let myself totally wash away in the hot water and my mind went blank. No identity was better than grappling with 'what identity?'.
Motherhood changes everything. It did with Asher, and it has again with Sullivan. It is different this time, but certain things are the same, namely what it does to my sense of self. I don't know that everyone feels this way, Ben and I talked about it at dinner tonight and he thinks most do. I'm not sure about that, but it is how I feel. Motherhood strips down my sense of self and then puts it in a blender. It is such a mix of emotions that slingshot back and forth all day long. One moment I'm staring into the face of the most perfect tiny human, who has just started purposefully smiling, and I think to myself (as he looks at me with the biggest most wide-open-mouth grin I've ever seen), "I could do this all day every day for the rest of my life". In those moments, motherhood makes all the sense in the world and I feel proud, confident, and comfortable in my mom pants. I think of the C.S. Lewis quote: "Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work." And I believe that there is nothing more significant or valuable that I will ever do than raise my two boys. And I feel like a hero. A force of nature. A member of a centuries-old club of women who have nurtured littles and done their best to spit them out into the world as kindhearted and gentle people.
But other times, things are a little less charming. And between the smiles from Sullivan, watching Asher build space ships out of blocks, and taking coveted, cuddly co-naps with my children those less charming moments hit me like a freight train. Today, sitting in the only pair of 'bottoms' that fit (a pair of grey Old Navy gym shorts, that I have now worn every day for 7 days straight) and a t-shirt covered in dried baby spit up, excited for Ben to walk in the door so I can take that blessed shower, I looked at my 'to do' list that had two items crossed off: "get things ready for post office" and "make muffins for Asher's first day of school". The ten other small tasks that should have been so easy to accomplish stared at me, unfinished. Where had the day gone? I felt tired, sticky, stinky, and unsuccessful. If someone had asked me, "What did you do today?", would I have told them that I addressed four envelopes and made chocolate chip muffins? Would I have added, "I also fed a baby a bunch, folded three baskets of clean laundry, did two more loads of dirty laundry, kept my toddler from rappelling off the climbing wall on our playhouse (twice), made everyone nap, got one healthy snack in, and stomped a poisonous spider" - all tiny victories along with my two-item to do list win? Nevermind that I hadn't had the time or energy to change out of my pukey shirt or pull my hair into a proper ponytail. It is hard to hear what other people do during their days when you are in this place (from an identity standpoint). My ambitious husband is doing scientific work so important he can't tell me about it, I have friends in school whose brains are exploding with new information on a daily basis (in rooms full of other adults, wearing jeans, talking about big kid things), even the other women in my 'mom cohort' are now out doing things and having coffee dates; all the while, today I
almost got the mail and tomorrow I swear
I will swap out my gym shorts for some maternity leggings and we will actually leave the house to run an errand. I swear.
It is usually about this time a frantic sort of "grower's panic" (see older post about being a 'grower') sets in. Holding still is hard for me, even when it is to stay home and care for my young children. And while I was constantly grappling with the clash of "who am I and what should I be doing?" thoughts and feelings with Asher, it turns out I never arrived at an answer because I am re-experiencing it now with Sullivan. It is easy to post funny and happy pictures of my family on Facebook and this blog and have it look like I've got it all figured out. But I don't. And I probably won't. The good news is, I have it on good authority you don't have to do parenting perfectly, or anything perfectly for that matter. So I'll just keep taking it one day at a time. And one shower at a time. Thank god for showers.
**Editors Note: Writing this post officially took up the tiny fraction of "me time" that I have in a day where my children are both sleeping and exhaustion hasn't yet caused me to collapse in on myself like a dying star. I think I just missed my precious shower window. Dammit.
