Talking About Parenting

I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately.

When I'm panicking because I can't find my ten-year-olds on the playground after their swim class...
When I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to make it to two drop-off times, ten minutes apart, at two schools, a ten minute drive apart, five days a week, until next summer...
When I'm worrying about who is going to pick up my four-year-old from half-day preschool if I've got class two days a week...
When one of my kids suddenly comes down with something awful on a Sunday and we have to take her to urgent care...
When I put my four children to bed and I finally feel relaxed for the first time all day...

Parenting is hard. There are about as many "parenting styles" as there are children to parent in the world, I would guess. I would also guess that not a single one of them is easy. Raising children saps your energy and steals your time. If you're not careful, it can destroy your health and seemingly denature your home. But future/new parents don't want to hear these horror stories.

The weekend before last, I got to go to the local botanic gardens for the first time. I am head-over-heels for botany, in case you didn't know. But I've never been to the botanic gardens because there are a number of other places my kids would rather go. Finally inside the gardens, I spent my entire trip eating lunch at the cafe, and then standing outside a bathroom stall while one of my kids was sick. Then we went home... where I lounged in the bathtub so I could be next to her while she suffered.

Yesterday, I spent almost 9 hours doing homework... mine while my kids were at school, and helping them with theirs once they were home. I'm certainly learning to love math, but I still don't love homework. And, by nature of priorities, I didn't get any housework done and we ate delivery pizza for dinner while watching the second half of Wonder Woman because I was entirely spent by 6 o'clock.

Today, my four-year-old son is hanging out in Papa's office for a while because I have to be on campus and Papa has to be at work, but Cub is only at school until noon. He's eating Wendy's for lunch, because there was no time or planning to prepare him his usual sandwich and fruit.

So, to those who find this grim honesty about parenting distasteful: Maybe just don't have kids. If you can't stomach a story about an outing gone horribly wrong, an adult life given entirely over to the needs of a sometimes unreasonable and ungrateful child, the sadness, tiredness, depression, anxiety, anger, frustration, and loneliness that visit upon those who have chosen to raise the next generation...

If you can't bare to see the pain of it all without losing your will to procreate... maybe just don't. Because it seems to me that the beauty of parenting can only be seen through a thick lens of suffering. I give pieces of myself to my children every day. I lose sleep. I eat things I hate. I cry when I sing songs about unconditional love. I rarely go out with friends. I schedule my life such that it works for them. I pay loads of money for them to learn and experience life. I drop everything when someone is ill. I enter a weird state of fugue when a birthday is coming and give myself over into elaborate, all-day, sometimes multi-day, cake making and decorating. I love all of that, and I wouldn't want it to change.

I love them in a way I never knew existed before they were born. It is incredible, but it hurts.

Through Love all that is bitter will be sweet.
Through Love all this is copper will be gold.
Through Love all dregs will turn to purest wine.
Through Love all pain will turn to medicine.
Through Love the dead will all become alive.
Through Love the king will turn into a slave!

-- Jalaluddin Rumi