What Really Matters

I've been doing a lot of reading these days, and I recently finished, I'll See You Again. If you're not familiar with the book, it's a heartbreaking story: Jackie Hance, a stay-at-home mother of three girls, had to come to terms with the loss of all of her children when her sister-in-law (driving under the influence) drove the wrong way on a highway and crashed their car on the way back from a camping trip.

I bought the book ages ago, but, superstitiously, it took me a long time to pick it up, with the faces of those three adorable girls staring at me from the front cover. It is completely irrational, but it's hard to shake the deep-seated fear that misfortune is contagious. And I can't imagine a world like that, without my two lovely girls in it.

I'm not saying I've never thought about a life without kids. Sometimes, when I'm at the end of my rope, or I feel like my life is about little more than groceries and daycare pickups and bath time, I admit that I've wondered how different my life would be if my husband and I had decided not to have children. Would we travel more? Have more disposable income? More free time? I'm sure we would. Life in that parallel universe would have its benefits...it would probably even be more satisfying, much of the time.
 
But that argument only works in the most abstract and general sense. When I imagine a world without my kids, I feel a tightening in my chest, the first stirrings of panic. 

I worry about my girls constantly: that I'm raising them well, that they're getting what they need from me to grow up to be strong, smart, confident women. I would jump in front of a car to protect them, without hesitation. When they cry in the middle of the night, however silly the reaction may be, my heart still pounds.

But when I'm trying to get them to listen or they're melting down in public; when I'm tired and frustrated at the lack of time and space to myself; when it all just seems like work without reward, I forget. Forget what beautiful, loving children I have. The laughter, joy and meaning they've added to my life.

My days are full, and the minutiae of parenting small children isn't always pleasant. But I don't want it to take a tragedy to make me appreciate what I have. 

So when my kids are acting like monsters and I'm eying the exits, I'm going to try—really try—to take a moment, a breath, a heartbeat. To remember how lucky I am now, today, in this life. 

Because I have my girls.

Facing My Parental Shortcomings

This weekend, my husband and I went to a wedding out of town. We split the kids up, sending the three-year-old to stay at a friend's house while another friend of mine stayed over at our place with the 16-month-old.

We were dancing, drinking and generally having a good time, when we got a text from the family who was taking care of the three-year-old. She was sick and throwing up, and was asking for mommy.

It was late, we'd had a couple of drinks (okay, quite a few drinks), and we were quite far away. Our friends stressed that we shouldn't come home, that she would be fine and they would take care of it. So we finished out the evening, slept over at the hotel and drove home the next morning to find that, after a terrible night, our three-year-old had bounced back to her usual buoyant self.

Here's the shameful thing: part of me felt guilty for not being there for my little girl. But the bigger part of me was relieved that I didn't have to deal with it.

I hate those viruses—the mess, the constant bathing and cleaning, the worry that if one gets it, the other one will surely get it, too. I'm not good at that. And, I realize, there are lots of other tasks that mothers are supposed to excel at that I just don't do all that well.

Now that they're both at daycare and the eldest will go to school next year, I'm constantly worried that one of them will come home with head lice, which would totally freak me out and probably cause me to boil the entire house.

I'm no Betty Crocker. my idea of dinner during the work week is to throw something with some sort of vegetable in it on the kitchen table within half an hour.

I'm not as patient as I should be. I frequently find myself yelling or sighing over behaviour that, if I could look at it objectively, I would classify as just "kids being kids".

And I find it hard to appreciate the daily joys of family life when most days seem like more of the same: work, mealtime, bath time, bedtime, repeat.

I sometimes worry that I'm not doing my kids justice—that they're not getting the mother they really deserve. Because most of the time, they're great kids: cute and smart and interesting. But they can also be challenging and frustrating and exhausting.

I recently read an article in Today's Parent on "surprising parenting strategies that actually work", and it recommended that you make mistakes—lots of them—so that your kids don't feel they have to live up to some unachievable vision of perfection. No problem there...I make mistakes pretty much every day. 

I just hope that when my kids reflect on their childhood, they'll also remember the things I do get right—reading them stories, laughing and being silly with them, giving them plenty of love and cuddles—because that's what really matters. Even if I don't buy organic produce, and they sometimes go to school with their shoes on the wrong feet.

At least, that's what I'm telling myself.

The Dangers of Nostalgia

I was putting away the laundry this morning, and I came across my old nursing bras. I stopped nursing my second little girl a couple of months ago, so I really have no use for them anymore. After two babies, the seams are falling apart, the pads are falling out and not all of the fasteners work...they're so ugly, you'd wonder why I would keep them around at all.

The easy answer is, they're comfy, and I'm lazy, and I just didn't get around to it. But the real answer is, maybe I'm reluctant to let them go.

Don't get me wrong: when I think back to those early days, it's not all fond memories of a contented infant suckling at my breast while I stroke her hair with a Mother Teresa-type smile. In fact, with my first baby, nothing could have been further from the truth. In previous posts, I've talked openly about my struggles with nursing the first time around: how my milk didn't come in for ages, how the baby would scream every time I put her near my breast, how rejected and exhausted I felt. How I felt like a failure when I finally ditched the nursing and went to bottles. Even with my second, whom I ended up nursing for 14 months, it wasn't all cuddles and kisses: there were plenty of middle-of-the-night, I-can't-get-her-to-latch screaming fests, plenty of milk-soiled garments and, most of all, plenty of exhaustion from being the sole food source. And yet...

I've had enough experience now to know that I'm entering the "danger zone" of family planning. When your littlest starts walking and talking, you start getting nostalgic for those baby days—and no matter how much you KNOW it's not a good idea, some small part of you starts to wonder, "What if...?" However much I may have resented those newborn days of constant needs and demands, I still remember the simple peace of skin-on-skin, slow breaths, so close to my heart. Even my youngest doesn't want to cuddle that way anymore.

And as much as I complain about how exhausting and frustrating my children are on a daily basis, the simple truth is, they've enriched my life in ways I never would have imagined. So it's hard to say, conclusively, "That's it. No more kids."

But I know, in my heart, that our family is complete. We are the family we want to be, and I'm looking forward to the next stage, beyond diapers and soothers, as they grow up. So I threw those ratty old bras away.

Besides, I could always buy more.

The Red Gloves

"Did you buy new gloves?" my husband asked me, holding up a pair of red leather gloves that our 15-month-old, in her usual path of destruction, had strewn across the front hallway.

"No," I said quietly. "Those were my mother's. I bought them for her."

It was December, almost two years ago. My mother was clearly getting worse, confined to her bed for much of the day. Her birthday was December 19th—close enough to Christmas that it was always a struggle to find two distinct, yet appreciated, gifts. That year, however, she'd been quite specific about what she wanted. I turned up for her birthday with a bag of presents that seemed woefully inadequate for the situation: a book on harnessing your brain power, some cosmetics and the red gloves she'd asked for.

I presented everything to her in bed, with the weak winter sunlight shining through the window, and she thanked me. We talked briefly, awkwardly, avoiding the elephant in the room, and she complained that she didn't have the strength or energy anymore to do the things she wanted to do.

Taking a page from the cancer books that espouse optimism, I smiled at her and took a deep breath. "Well, you'd better work on getting your strength back," I encouraged. "Because...I'm pregnant. We're having another baby."

It was early in the pregnancy, but—seeing the writing on the wall—we'd decided to tell our immediate family the news. I don't remember her exact reaction, but I'm sure she smiled and congratulated me.

She never got to wear the red gloves I bought her, so quick was her decline. Other than a brief phone conversation on Christmas Day, when she complimented the cake I'd made and sent home to her with my father, that was the last lucid conversation we had.

And when, months later, my second daughter was born, she was no longer around to meet her.

I kept those red gloves, though—just as I've kept the scraps of Christmas wrapping with her handwriting and the sweaters that still hold that faint mix of tobacco and perfume. I hold tight to the physical objects that remind me of my mother, because I'm afraid of the other things that are slowly slipping away. Enough time has passed now that I can't recall the exact timber of her voice or the specific slant of her smile. I worry that, if more time passes, all of the ties that bind her to me will slowly disintegrate.

So the other day, when it was cold enough, I wore the red gloves as I left for work, kissing my beautiful family goodbye. I know my mother would have loved my girls. And the gloves.

Finding the Joy

It's Saturday morning, and we're at Costco. (I know...who goes to Costco on a Saturday? The answer: EVERYONE.) The baby and the three-year-old are both sitting in the cart, vying for space and attention. We have exactly an hour before we have to get the three-year-old to her gymnastics class, so we're rushing down the aisles to get the items we need. The baby is getting tired and cranky, whining to be picked up. The three-year-old, bored, is starting to misbehave and climb around on the cart. I dole out a steady stream of snacks to placate them. 

I look around at the wide aisles full of merchandise, rendered garish by unflattering fluorescent lights, and I'm surrounded by suburban discontent. I start to feel slightly desperate—I have a sudden urge to run for the exits.

When I signed up for this "having kids" project, I was prepared to change a lot of diapers, clean up various bodily fluids, struggle with sleep deprivation. I understood that being a mom meant putting my kids' needs before my own. What I didn't realize was how unrecognizable my life would become.

Gone are the days of partying until 2 a.m. and sleeping in until noon, or lazing around on a Sunday afternoon with a cup of tea and a good book. Gone are the spontaneous evenings—if someone at work has tickets to a show or a friend wants to go for drinks, I can't just say yes without carefully planning first.

The truth is, much of the time, the daily grind of working full-time and raising a young family isn't all that enjoyable. You run around all day—dropping off the kids, picking up the kids, squeezing a full day of work in between—and the time you do spend together as a family is that few hours in the evening when everyone is hungry, tired and grumpy. 

So why do it? Where's the reward?

It's in watching my baby copy me, as she toddles around the house with a purse on her arm, saying "bye bye" and blowing kisses. It's in playing hide and seek with my three-year-old (whose idea of hiding is to sit behind a chair in full view). It's in watching my girls tackling each other in their pajamas, giggling, clearly loving each other's company.

I need to recognize the joy when I see it—in those moments—so that when I'm tired and out of patience, they'll remind me of why I chose to become a parent. So that I'll once again feel that intense, binding love that will carry me through the most difficult days.

It's not much, I know. But it's a start.