Mom Minutes

"Two friends separate, with one of them living in the plains and the other going to live in the mountains. They meet up again years later: the one who has stayed down has lived less, aged less, the mechanism of his cuckoo clock has oscillated fewer times. He has had less time to do things, his plants have grown less, his thoughts have had less time to unfold... Lower down, there is simply less time than at altitude." 

- Carlo Rovelli The Order of Time -

Time is a complicated concept. I'm currently reading The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli. In it, Dr. Rovelli explains the ways in which time is irregular. Time passes at different speeds for a person depending on their altitude and their speed. Time on other planets is different from time on Earth. Time is a problematic variable in physics because it is a variable with variables.

I know it's a pathetic comparison, but today it had me thinking about mom-time. There's less time closer to sea level than in the mountains... and it seems like there's less time after you have kids than there was before.

I dropped my girls off at school this morning and, while we were in car-line, I told them I'm only about four classes away from getting my biology degree! I told them because I'm really excited that I've made it this far. I've been in school for four years and I've had to limit myself and take it a little slower than some other students because I've got a lot of other responsibilities, but I'm almost there! However, the response I got was, "Daddy already has his degree."

Their dad, my ex-husband, just graduated last weekend. He has a bachelors in math. I'm happy for him, but I don't want to be compared to him. I don't want my kids to think of this as a race that daddy won. Especially since daddy was a single, childless dude for about 91.95% of the time he was pursuing that degree while I have not had anywhere near that luxury.

The kids have existed since well before he started working on this degree, sure... but he had them for about 29 hours every other weekend (unless he was too busy). He never had to schedule or attend eye exams or doctors visits or spend hours in urgent care when one of them was sick on a weekend. He didn't have to take four kids (or even just his three kids) shoe shopping or clothes shopping or school supply shopping or birthday shopping. He didn't have to plan their birthdays or make their cakes or cook their meals or make sure they take baths. He rarely even had to help them with their homework, and I would estimate that when that obligation fell to him, he forgot it somewhere near half of the time and it wound up being my job anyway.

He has called and told me he was too sick to take them or he was concerned that he was getting sick and didn't want to take them or he had so much homework to do... can we trade weekends. I have never done any of that to him. When I ask to trade weekends, it is always because of an activity the kids want to do or a vacation we're taking with them.

I might be a little bitter. I'm so close to getting my degree! He already has his. He didn't have to get a job because I allowed him to pay very reduced child support while he was in school. He didn't have the kids most of the time and I was flexible about his scheduled weekends when he said he wanted to skip or switch for a variety of reasons. And while his achievement of his goals is good for everyone, and yesterday I was happy for him and excited for my own future... that comment my daughter made in response to my excitement really shot it down.

As a mom, I saw my ex-husband's degree as a worthy goal for him and an important lesson for our children. I felt that they should see him working toward that and how it changes his life, hopefully for the better. I agreed to many compromises, wanting to see him succeed because I believe it is best for our kids. But with all of the responsibility we take on, and the compromises we make, there is less time for moms.

What took him four years might take me five and a half. For every four classes he was able to take, I have been been able to take about three. When I have a list of things I need to get done in a day, I have to plan for lost shoes, un-synchronized potty breaks, buckling and unbuckling of numerous seat belts, arguing over who has to sit next to little brother, and pouting an refusing to cooperate. Sometimes I spend 15 or 20 extra minutes trying to find something my five-year-old left in the store when he screams at me after I've already loaded the groceries in the car.

I just finished a semester. Here's what my general schedule looked like:

Hubby took all of the kids to school on Tuesdays because I couldn't. Cub gets out of school early on Fridays, so I couldn't do much with my bisected time. You see a lot of space for research/homework... let me explain. I have a research project I've been working on for two years with some great people. However, our schedules never seemed to sync, so I frequently spent that time working on research papers for classes, researching grad schools, talking to professors about my grades or grad school or our research, or trying to organize my life. I couldn't do a lot of my chemistry homework without help, so hubby and I worked on it after the kids went to bed about once a week.

Hubby doesn't get home until sometime between 5:30 and 6:00 pm. He got a new job with a different company in January, so he can't work from home as much as he used to and his hours are more difficult. He also doesn't answer his phone like used to at his old job. All in all, I'm more alone than I used to be, but not as alone as many moms out there (single moms amaze me!).

Weekends! Weekends are for grocery shopping, laundry, guilt-cleaning (you know what I'm talking about) and taking care of other catastrophes (e.g., emergency shoe run when a 5th grader's sneakers start leaking, and clothes shopping when their jeans suddenly don't fit, then on to the fabric store for that class project they have coming up...). Once in a while, if we've planned especially well and worked extra hard... we get to go hiking on the weekend!

It just feels like I'm constantly in motion and running from one obligation to another. Everything takes longer and there's more that needs to be done. It's like the fabric of space-time has some special kind of wrinkle just for moms. It's taking longer to get my degree and I'm still losing my mind in the process. But I only have four classes left to take! I'm almost there! In fact, I could finish it in a semester if three of those classes weren't sequential. I'm going to get there... and then keep going!

One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself. - Lucille Ball

Disclaimer: When I say "moms", I hope you know I mean parents of any gender who take on the majority of the child-raising responsibilities... not just women who have children. "Mom" is just easier to say.

Sources:
Rovelli, Carlo, et al. The Order of Time. Riverhead Books, 2018.

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

It Gets Different

I've made myself so busy with school, a research project, kids (and their homework and extra-curricular activities), and otherwise avoiding my blog... but I just couldn't let this story pass without mention.

The girls were all with their Daddy and Papa and I had some important parenting topics to discuss (namely, screen time restrictions and allowance/chores) so we decided to go out to eat. Papa really wanted southwest egg rolls, which is a pretty surprising craving. We haven't been to Chili's in... 

Anyway, we had a waiter-in-training whose name was David. He was unusually nice and attentive for a waiter, probably because he was new and hadn't figure out what a time-sink a four-year-old can be if you let him talk to you about your tattoos. It was pleasant, though. 

At one point, while Papa was trying to make sure the steak knives weren't going to end up in Cub's hands, David commiserated, saying he has a little dude of his own. He said he's seen a video game in which the objective is just to keep your kid out of peril, and it seems pretty true to reality. He asked, "does it get easier?"

Papa and I shared a knowing glance and I said, "It gets... different."

Fast forward...

We get home and pretty much immediately start cleaning the kitchen. I'm on spring break and we're leaving for a week-long vacation on Thursday, so we want to get the house relatively in order while we have the chance. We're already partly packed. Since the girls are sharing one big suitcase (but they don't share a room) their luggage is open in the middle of the common area of the house. 

Cub is playing with the dogs, just on the other side of the bar. I can see his face, but not the rest of his body from where I stand in the kitchen. Then, suddenly, I see him fall and he screams as he picks himself up... off of the open luggage. 

I get around the bar in time to see his devastated face, quickly reddening with upset flush and blood, just before he escapes to his room. 

He always goes to his room when he's hurt. 

In no hurry, I walk to his room. Let's not overreact. Let's not feed his panic. But when I get there, he's much bloodier than I expected, and this is an exceptional amount of fuss he's making. This little dude has cut himself, bit his lip, bloodied his nose and variously injured himself many times in his very adventurous and hyperactive life. I'm pretty desensitized and I've become quite good in a crisis. Still, this was more blood than I was expecting, and he never screams this much.

I calmly picked him up and his screaming paused long enough for him to say, "I want to look in the mirror." I took him to the bathroom... but seeing himself in the mirror definitely did not slow the screams. So, wailing like a fire engine, he was ferried to the couch in the common area... where he discovered that there was blood on my arm and the shoulder of my shirt. 

He said, "this is definitely not cool." To which I agreed. 

So, long story short... he got an ice pack and a wet rag and some cuddles. Once the bleeding stopped and we could see the wound, we realized that the wound itself looked more ragged and angry than we've seen before. Papa took him to the hospital to make sure he doesn't need stitches. 

Now, they're checked in and waiting to be seen, and Cub is telling everyone all about his lip, asking them about their various injuries and illnesses, and convincing other kids to chase him around the waiting room. Never a dull moment.

It really does just get... different.

This is Political

John says, "Man, I got to go out in my Halloween costume with no coat last weekend!"
Sally sarcastically cheers, "Thanks Global Warming!"

Today, my genetics class talked about sickle cell anemia. I asked my professor if he thought that the area affected by sickle cell anemia might expand in the same way we're seeing with the malarial belt, as the global climate changes. Individuals who are heterozygous for sickle cell anemia (meaning they have one copy of a normal red blood cell gene and one copy of a sickle cell gene) are at a reproductive advantage in areas also affected by malaria because the odd-shaped red blood cells are more easily damaged, which encourages the body to dispose of old cells more quickly, thus interrupting the life cycle of the malaria parasite.

We came to the conclusion that, in a world without modern medicine, that would probably be the case, eventually. If sickle cell anemia improves your chances of surviving malaria, it follows that selective pressure would push the two forward in the same places. But that wasn't the only value in our conversation.

I came face to face with my scientific privilege today. In a room scattered with college students, I threw up my hands and said, "okay, let's talk about global warming!" and I got an entertained smirk from my professor, but it was clear that no one in the room was a denier... at least not vocally. This is the crowd I'm used to. I ask questions about how disease, migration, habitats, and human activity are affected by climate change. All this time I figured we were all on the same page.

But this election has me turn on my head. I keep hearing about candidates who don't believe in climate change. How is that even possible?! It's HAPPENING! It is measurable! And it's not just that we got to go trick-or-treating without our coats on this year. You can see it in the Northward spread of malaria and the change in migration of the birds and the melting ice caps and the vanishing ski resorts and yearly restrictions on watering your lawn. If you want to do the math, all the charts will show you an unprecedented and horrifying climb. Even if you're still on the fence about it, you could at least err on the side of caution in case all those scientists actually know what they're talking about, because the predictions for the consequences are truly apocalyptic.

I can't vote for a person who thinks all of those highly educated, hard-working, award-winning scientists are just wasting their time by trying to warn us about our own undoing. But that's only one of the backwards things I'm hearing about.

I won't let a man tell my daughters that the things Donald said are, "just locker room talk." It disgusted me to see him say it at the debate. We watch those with our kids! No matter what he wants you to believe, a good man doesn't talk that way about women, even in private. He judges women on their appearance and bad mouths them for not having big enough breasts. Then he says no one has more respect for women than he does... Well, I DO!

It seems like everywhere I turn, I read an admonition against voting for this man, and not a single one of them lists all of the reasons I could come up with. I think it's because there are too many. But people are still voting for him... which scares me.

My fear is not that the orange man will become president. My fear is that this country is a hot damn mess if these are the people we have put forth as our options for POTUS. Plus, I'm realizing that, as close as this elections has been, I clearly don't understand a surprising number of people in my own country.

I have so much more to say. I've been stewing in this anxiety/depression/rage/disappointment bubble for far too long. This election cycle is painful and probably ruinous, especially to my outlook on my fellow Americans. But I voted. I just want this to be over.

Who Are These Modern Moms?

I got up this morning and did my morning routine... well, most of it. I showered, brushed my teeth, applied lotion, got dressed. I didn't do my hair or makeup because my Vascular Plant Taxonomy class was cancelled today. So, instead, I'm going to stay home and study for the mid-term exam we'll have next Thursday.

Normally, I'd have class in the morning, four days a week. Then, I'd be working on my research project on the fifth day. On my current agenda: I'm making a giant paper mache shark for M's birthday this weekend, for which I'm still waiting on wrapping paper I ordered, and I'm not even making her cake this year, because I don't have an entire day to devote to it. The holidays are quickly approaching and I still have to figure out who is house-sitting for the week of Thanksgiving, one of my kids doesn't have a Halloween costume yet and we haven't done our pumpkin shopping. When we went shooting a couple of weekends ago, I discovered that ear plugs are completely impractical for children's ears, so I did some hunting for better solutions on Amazon. But I'm not comfortable buying something like this without seeing it, so shopping for over-the-ear ear protection is on the schedule for this weekend. I need to get back up the green roof tomorrow to get working on percent coverage estimates, now that I've managed (just last night) to throw together a reasonably useful map of the quadrats we finally finished marking out (about a week ago).  I have Plant Tax homework to do, and I've got a Genetics exam on Monday...

Oh, yeah! And it's Fall Break?! My two public school kids have a week off in October for no apparent reason. This week. That means all four kids are just home... all... the... time.

Who are these moms who are drinking wine, shopping a all the weird grocery stores, and taking their kids to Toys R Us and having play dates? My house is a mess. I do all of my shopping at two stores: Costco and Target. Because if I can get it at Costco, I don't have to buy it again for a month, and Target has everything else all in one place, so I don't have to waste my time shopping around. My time is valuable because I don't have much of a discretionary time budget right now. In fact, even as I sit here typing this, I'm thinking about all of the other things I could/should be working on: the shark, the homework, the studying. There's always something.

Ultimately, I don't think I would be happy if I didn't challenge myself. It's difficult, and I complain, and I'm sure it's pretty annoying to be Papa, sometimes as a result. Still, in the end, I get the satisfaction of having overcome an obstacle... having accomplished something difficult. As my friend and research partner (a girl of equal or greater levels of motivation) recently said, "A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there."

School is Cool?

It has been almost a month since we decided to put M and S in public school. Shortly after they started their classes, I started mine: I am on campus five days a week this semester and I have field work to do. I knew it was going to be a difficult schedule and an uncomfortable transition, but assumed we just needed some time to adjust. Now, I'm not sure.

Laundry isn't getting done or folded. The playroom is rarely getting cleaned. Every time papa mentions some as yet unscheduled activity, I want to shoot it down because I immediately assume anything new is going to be the thing that makes my google calendar explode. On top of that stress, I'm having very mixed feelings about this public school business.

M is in first grade. She's doing fine. She's a little behind with her reading, but we knew that. I think sending her to school has renewed her motivation to pick up sight words and work through short books. Something about having her teacher backing us up, and sending home packets of stuff to work on has made her more serious. She's got someone new to impress, I guess.

Her teacher, a young man so tall and muscular that he would be intimidating if he weren't so darn friendly, is optimistic. He also uses a program called "class dojo" to keep in contact with parents, which I really appreciate. I have had to use the app to ask him for advice on getting the dry erase markers out of her clothes, and he is able to inform me if she is having a moody day.

S, on the other hand, is in fourth grade. She is struggling with more than just the academic part of public school. Her teacher says she's struggling with math and handwriting. The handwriting doesn't surprise me, but she's doing the math homework just fine, with almost no help... and choking on the quizzes in class. She made friends, but her friends are the target of playground bullying. She shares her classroom table with two boys who argue with each other constantly and have no interest in her, and a girl who doesn't speak much English. She doesn't want to go. She mopes every weekday morning, and her teacher describes her (on the phone with me) as "sad".

I have talked to S's teacher only once. I have never seen her. I knew about the playground bullying several days before I was able to tell her teacher... who apparently didn't know. I could have guessed that S was sad in class, but I didn't know until the end of last week, when she finally called.

S says she feels like her teacher cares about her. So, now that she knows about the playground situation, and I know about the all-day sadness, it's time to see if things improve. The teacher wants to try moving S to a different table and says the school takes bullying "very seriously". But I'm skeptical about bullying policies. I'm not sure that any amount of "seriously" is going to fix the problem. Still, we intend to give this a few more weeks to work itself out before we deploy the parachute... and we're not quite sure what that is going to be just yet.

A Tough Decision

Some of you might have caught wind of the rumor that some of my kids are about to start school. I'm sure that's confusing, or disappointing, or exciting, or something, for you to hear. Most of the people who know me these days seem to think of me as a homeschooling, full-time student mom with some kind of mystical unicorn abilities that keep me from exploding. Let me address that rumor: I will still be homeschooling, just fewer of my kids for now. Also, I'm pretty sure I do have some kind of mystical unicorn powers and if I exploded, there'd be glitter everywhere.

Today, I'm going to the local elementary school to finish the paperwork that will allow two of my daughters to attend school. This has been an incredibly difficult decision. I'm not sure if it's the right decision, so I won't bother trying to defend it. But let me explain it.

I've been pretty overwhelmed lately. C still has persistent potty problems, and my multi-tasking is not strong enough to give her enough attention while also trying to teach S math, and M reading, and chase a three-year-old who constantly wants me to play "ring the gack" with him (thanks, Dr. Seuss). In part it is my college education getting in the way. But, also, I'm hoping that a formal school environment will help encourage M to read and S to learn math because they are falling behind in those areas at home.

So, S and M are about to be off to public school. I cried about it. I've lost a lot of sleep. I've wanted to give up and just keep them home because of how frustrating the enrollment process has been... because, let's be honest, no one is excited to go through a long, difficult negotiation just to achieve something they're not even sure they want. It's nearly impossible to stay motivated.

Reminding myself why I started homeschooling seems to help.

When I was first faced with the decision of schooling, all of the girls were clearly struggling to cope with our shared past. We were getting settled in to a new life and I wasn't comfortable sending them straight off to school. They were fragile and, to varying degrees, broken. I lost my job and I was going through a nasty divorce, being verbally torn down as I tried to rebuild out daughters. But now they're vibrant, confident, and difficult... just as little ladies should be.

The other reason I kept them home was that C had potty problems. I didn't think it would be fair to send a girl who was still having frequent accidents to public school. Stigma aside, I needed her home so we could attend a variety of medical appointments and procedures, and so we could work together on the problem. And this is an on-going problem, which we seem to have to find new solutions for all the time. I think she needs more of my time and attention and less of her siblings' distractions.

I didn't follow this path because I thought I could do a better job, or because I thought it was my calling, or anything like that. I chose this life for what I still believe to be good reasons. And, for those same reasons, I think it's time to make a change.

We will certainly still supplement their education at home. And we're already looking at wait-listing them at better schools. I just think it's time to start letting go.