But the thing about it is, is that parenting is really fucking hard. There's just no way to clean it up. There's no way to make it something all sweet, and pastel colored, with a fabulous bow. At times, it's just a giant sack of extremely smelly shit.
It's such a sack of shit at times, that it completely derails everything else in your life. It thwarts romance with your partner. It dooms your fiftieth attempt at quitting soda--never mind your weight loss goals. It drains your creative energy. It interferes with your social and political activism. It undermines your housekeeping chart. It endlessly fills your dirty laundry basket. And it leaves you permanently disoriented and exhausted.
When you consider the possibility of bringing a brand new human into the world, your biggest concerns are keeping them alive as they "incubate," and then keeping them alive again for that first year after they arrive. As it turns out, keeping them alive might actually be the easy part. By the time year two rolls around, the ballgame changes substantially.
I knew there would be hard moments--even hard days, weeks and months. I just don't think I ever considered that there would be hard times without a clearly defined time period.
Just about a year ago, we decided that we should start looking for the right preschool. We had no intentions of enrolling anywhere until this fall. A couple of school tours, a fair amount of mommy frustration, and an opening at our dream facility later, and our original plan was hijacked. Our terrible two-year-old would be starting her first year of preschool just a couple of months later. Mommy would be getting a little bit of a daily break.
We expected an adjustment phase. We expected tears. We expected tough moments. We didn't expect all of the behavior issues. We didn't expect to feel like we were losing a battle we had just begun. We didn't expect to feel like we were in trouble.
We wondered if we had started her in preschool too early. We wondered if we had started too late. We wondered if we had picked the wrong one. We wondered if we were taking everything too seriously. Then we wondered if we weren't being serious enough.
Month after month, I picked her up at the end of her days, and I signed the incident reports: throwing her work, screaming, running in class, not listening, spitting (i.e. blowing raspberries in the air). We talked to her teacher about strategies. I read books. I shared articles with her daddy.
We had brief periods of calm, that became longer periods of stormy uncertainty. When we occasionally found ourselves at her pediatrician's office for whatever new illness she had picked up at school, I would ask if anything that was happening was out of the ordinary, and I would be assured that she was pretty normal.
Most days are just a maddening combination of defiance and attention seeking. But in the weeks since turning three, our challenging little girl has managed to up the ante. Hitting adults at school and at home, and wild displays of lost self-control are frequent occurrences. Telling beloved family members to go away, and that she doesn't like them are a new means of self-expression.
One of the many reasons I had struggled with the idea of becoming a parent is because I was parented so poorly. And on a day to day basis, my life struggles revolve around a childhood from which I will always be recovering. I worried that my own baggage and handicaps would make me just as bad at parenting, even if in different ways.
I never pictured myself yelling and screaming at my child out of desperate frustration, at times feeling certain the person before me is unable to hear any of the words coming out of my mouth. It never occurred to me that someone I love so dearly could drive me to lose my collective shit so quickly.
I had thought that keeping her alive was going to be the tough part. I had no idea that, at times, just maintaining my own sanity was going to be even tougher.
Since the early days, I have often found myself feeling as though I have been swept away by a tide. One moment, I have my head above water. The next moment, a giant wave comes along to swallow me, and I am paddling furiously to avoid drowning.
I know that nobody really knows what they are doing, and that everyone just does as well as they can. And I know that even with these challenges that we are so incredibly fortunate.
She's healthy. I think she is generally happy. We have what seems to be a good partnership with her school, and are on the way to developing more partnerships to tackle this tough time as well. We have a good foundation, and good tools to build an amazing person. I'm trying to learn that when people say she is "strong-willed" that's not necessarily a bad thing. But as much as everyone tells you it's not easy, you never imagine all of the ways in which it can be so hard.
I know that it's all worth it. We wanted her, and love her more than anything. At times, it can be so easy to forget. When every task, conversation, or activity is a battle, you forget the happy times. You forget when they ask to snuggle. You forget when they dance to crazy karaoke at the farmers market. You forget when they make up songs about playing ball. You forget when they sing "dormez moo" (a.k.a. Frere Jacque) to calm you down when they've just made you crazy. You forget that when you're part of a new family, that everyone is growing and learning, and failing, and succeeding.
But if you're lucky, you all survive, and you all know that you love each other enough to fight all of the battles, and that those battles aren't really with each other, but for each other.
At least I hope so.
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