parenting

If you’re in any relationship only for what you get out of it, you’re in that relationship for the wrong reasons. Really, it’s not about the other person either; it’s about the relationship. Like actors in a play, you’re there together to tell one story. It’s not about you. So be kind, be generous, be compassionate, be forgiving, and above all, be supportive of the relationship itself — not just the other person in it.

I think “It can be difficult” probably qualifies for the understatement of the century. There is just nothing in a phrase so casual and noncommittal that conveys anything like the reality of this labor of love. I’m not saying that we need to be all doom and gloom about parenting all the time — there are plenty of joys in parenting, and plenty of space to talk about those joys — but I do think that when we’re trying to talk about the hard parts, we should, you know, actually talk about the hard parts.

Parenting is not easy. It’s really hard — even more so for single parents. I can only guess that parents are frustrated with being parents. I imagine it’s frustrating to watch people like me take a 2-hour nap whenever they want, when all you want is five minutes to go to the bathroom alone.

I vividly recall standing in front of the bathroom mirror looking at myself as I’d done countless times as a childless person. As myself. As the woman I’d always been until days before. It was like stumbling upon an identical twin I never knew I had — the same, so well-known, yet so alien and unfamiliar.

With every 2 AM wakeup cry and biohazard diaper blowout, I waited for that all-consuming love that everyone had promised me, but all I found was exhaustion, frustration, and confusion. All my girlfriends were posting on Facebook about how beautiful their newborns were, how their hearts were bursting with love, and how they had felt an instant connection. So what was wrong with me?

Long story short — she got two staples in her head. But the deeper story is a feeling that welled up in me that needed further investigation. I had this fleeting feeling that she was now damaged because she would have a scar. I remember feeling the same way the day I picked her up from daycare to find out she had a chipped tooth. “She’s not perfect anymore.” Holy crap, where are these thoughts coming from and where do they have the potential to go?

I had to walk my daughter in the torrential downpour to school six blocks away with a positive attitude, although the last thing I felt was positive. We have to walk because I don’t drive.

Recently, I’ve noticed that my children have inherited a sarcasm detector that would make mad scientist Professor Frink from The Simpsons quite impressed. They notice whenever I make a snarky comment, and sometimes will even make their own sarcastic jokes that’d have Ricky Gervais rolling in laughter. Sometimes they target us in their jokes, while other times they say them to each other. And as horrible as it may sound, raising sarcastic kids might not be such a bad thing, either.