So… Rebekah graciously asked me to write a guest post for her October blog series, and I agreed and was very flattered! At first. Then I started reading her posts and the first couple of guest posts and realized I’m probably out of my league. So I did what anyone would do in that situation… I procrastinated.
Here’s my thing. I wasn’t completely sure what it is that I have to say exactly. I was blogging a while back when I first got married and moved from New Orleans to North Carolina. It went pretty well til I started my most difficult (and ultimately final, for the time being) year of teaching elementary school. Then I got bogged down in life and stopped.
I *very* briefly started another blog when I got pregnant with my son (www.bayvh.blogspot.com if you’re interested in seeing the few posts I managed to put up). But again, work and pregnancy and the daily 2-hour naps that those two things required got in the way of continuing. Then I had a newborn, and went back to work, and well… you get the picture.
So here I am, out of excuses. I guess the real roadblock I’ve had the past few weeks to writing this guest post is… what do I have to say that is remotely interesting? I am a working mom with a physician husband, a 2-year old, and a baby due in April. Though I am thoroughly overjoyed with my life as it stands at the moment, I’m not sure it’s terribly interesting to anyone else.
Case in point: One of my oldest and dearest friends is an actress. (Like, legitimately, not in air quotes.) In one of our many text conversations recently, we were talking about everything that she has going on (scenes on network TV shows, auditions for a freaking BROADWAY SHOW), and I found myself thinking sarcastically, “Well… my toddler slept til 7 am and ate his vegetables without my resorting to bribery today, so clearly our lives are equally exciting.” I’m not usually so self-deprecating but it’s just never seemed to me like mommyhood would be all that interesting a topic for the general non-baby-having population, and that seems to be all I’ve got lately.
Look. I work very hard to make sure that I am not one of those moms women (why should I refer to myself automatically as a mom? I think to myself as I reread this post. #feminism) who defines herself entirely by her children. I do things to take care of myself and follow my interests, and frankly working is c50very important to retaining my sense of self. Here’s the thing, though: it’s really hard not to define oneself by parenthood, when having children so starkly divides one’s life into before and after.
Before you start thinking how ominous and horrible that sounds, I don’t mean that you become a different person or you lose yourself in some way. What I mean, and what I’ve finally decided this post will be about (seven paragraphs in, unless Rebekah decides - wisely - to edit down the beginning) is that my life has undergone a fundamental shift since I’ve become a parent.
Now, there have been a number of major shifts in my life. Going from high school to college, and the freedom/responsibility that accompanied it, was a major game changer for me. So too was moving home to New Orleans and starting my adult working life. Getting married, of course, was a huge and life-altering shift, though it wasn’t so much the marriage part as the move to a new state, new name, new job, and husband entering medical residency that rocked the boat.
All of these huge changes pale in comparison to becoming a parent, however. And in my opinion, here’s why: as a parent, for the first time, your life is not really about you anymore. I mean that in both a large-scale, philosophical way - in that I have one (and now two) tiny beings whose needs must come before mine - but also in a quite literal, mundane way - in that I haven’t gone to the bathroom alone in my own house in over a year, and now that we are starting to think about potty training I not only have an audience but have to narrate my bodily functions. (I like to think that it gives me a glimpse into what it was like to be Marie Antoinette or someone. It helps.)
It’s strange to sit and reflect on how vastly different my life is now than it was before I had my son. Not better and not worse, let me be clear - I am neither complaining about parenting nor getting on my high horse about how it’s the only thing that gives life meaning. It’s just different. I was so worried when I was pregnant about losing touch with friends, losing my social outlets, feeling bored/trapped/lame because children limit what you’re able to do. And it’s true, my husband and I do lament the severe lack of adult dinners at nice restaurants in our lives now, something we did quite a bit of before. And there are definitely friends I don’t see as much as I would if I didn’t have children, but there are equally if not more friends that I see more of because they also have children. Happy hours have just turned into playdates and birthday parties (wine included, frequently).
But by and large, I don’t remotely miss my life before my son. (Do I miss adults-only airplane travel? Hell to the yes. Does going to the grocery alone now feel like a vacation? You betcha.) But for the most part, everything just feels right. Not easy, and not relaxing - if you’ve ever spent more than five minutes with a two-year-old I assume you understand - but right. I thought it would be so taxing to constantly put another’s needs before my own, but in truth I don’t even do it consciously. It’s just a reflex, like when your mom has to hit the brakes on the car and puts her arm out to be your seatbelt.
As I am struggling to come up with a way to end this post that isn’t incredibly sappy (something I despise), my son looks up from lining up his Sesame Street figurines on the coffee table and comes over to me. “Mommy work,” he says definitively (I have a fantastic boss who lets me work from home some, so it’s not unusual for me to be on my computer in his presence.)
“Kind of, sweetie. Mommy’s writing something.”
“I DO IT!” he says and tries to bang on my keyboard. (This is his current motto. It’s adorable until he wants to button his own sweater when we are in a hurry. He literally CAN’T do it but God forbid I dare to help him.)
“Do you want to type something?”
“Yeah!”
Now here I am thinking, this is so great! What a perfect vignette to close this post with - it illustrates my toddler-centric life perfectly! Plus, what if he wants to type something adorable and/or profound? Like I love Mommy or I happy or any of the other precious sentences that have just begun to come out of his mouth on a daily basis?!? This is absolute gold.
“OK, sweetie. You tell me a word and I’ll tell you how to type it.”
So. Since you’ve all learned who’s really in charge here, it seems only fitting that I close with the two-year old wisdom that my son would like to impart to all of you:
ELMO.
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