Sometimes I wonder who is going to need more therapy, me or the kids.
Being a Mom rocks, but it's hard. We all know that, right? It's fine, it's great, it's worth it. I know that, it's what keeps me going. It's what keeps me going to my own bed each night instead of running off into the woods, or to the airport. Raising kids and running a household is kind of like training killer whales. Usually we can get them to do what we want, but occasionally they just rebel by pinning you up against the side of the tank and slamming your body between themselves. OK, it's not really like that at all but I started that sentence "it's like" and then I couldn't think of a darn thing. Because it's 8:34 at night, after a four day weekend. Brain, fried.
Kids will get it someday. Someday it all will be so obvious to them - all of the reasons that we do what we do and say what we say. The love their parents have for them. The hurt they feel on their behalf. The frustration that we feel as parents who have charge over offspring and yet aren't doing everything perfectly right and efficiently all the time.
Unfortunately, by the time they get old enough to feel sorry for the pain and frustration that they put their parents through, their parents will have no recollections of it at all. Just ask my mother. I feel like apologizing to her all the time. "Mo, I am sorry for taking pens out of your desk whenever I wanted them. I am sorry for stealing from your secret stash of Dove chocolates, or leaving socks anywhere in the house other than my own clothes hamper." Scratch that. Don't ask her. She doesn't remember much about the gore of those days. The fact of the matter is, I have already forgotten a great deal too. I was just telling someone that other day how grateful I was for the stage I am at. I have loved the new parent stage, the parent of multiple toddlers stage, the early grade school stage...but did I really love it that much while I was going through it? I know that it was hard, I mean I remember that I thought it was hard. But I liked it. It that possible? And even though it's still difficult, for all sorts of different reasons, and even though I am scared to death of the entry to the middle school/adolescent years (mixed in, of course, with the re-emergence of the newborn phase, the multiple toddlers phase and early grade school again...) I am still liking it. Is that insane? Becoming a mother has made a lot of insane ideas, a lot less insane than they used to seem.
Take that last sentence for instance, if it made any kind of sense to you at all, grammatically or otherwise, you are a mother.
However, in my efforts to cope with the day to day rigors of raising children, including the ups and downs of successes and failures, good days and bad, I would like to present to you my proposal on "why I think parents should be robots", to help ease the discomforts associated with parenting.
With each child that is born we should have something in us replaced with a robot part.
First, the stomach, because you begin to forget to eat anyway. That, or you develop the necessary habit of eating all the leftovers on their plates because you hate the thought of wasting all that food, and it's already there without you having to do another step by making your own.
Second would be the brain because let's face it, you began that downward climb when that first one was born. You begin to forget the simplest of things like putting on deodorant, making yourself food and going to bed.
There could be lots of organs next, while the kids are still relatively young and you are forgiving of yourself (always providing excuses such as "well I don't have any memories until after I was three anyway.") Therefore, feel free at this point to replace things like your apendix, gall bladder and maybe even part of your liver, I hear you don't really have to have all of it anyway.
Last but not least, we are going to need to replace the heart, because sometimes kids just can't realize how much they affect you, being a human being and all. They are their own person. They want to think, and make choices and act. It hurts, sometimes a little and sometimes a lot because let's face it, deep down inside we feel like we own them. We created them, we grew them, we nurtured them in every way possible. And then what? They feel like they can just go and be their own person? Who do they think they are? But the heart doesn't just hurt because things aren't perfectly going your way, and your kids aren't turning out exactly like the perfect little pleasant people you intended. Sometimes the heart hurts because you are overcome with just how grateful you are for them. Sometimes they make you so happy you could melt. Sometimes, just sometimes, our hearts cannot comprehend how much we love them, and like them. And because of those two things, the pain and the exquisite joy that can both be experienced (sometimes in the very same day), the heart has gotta go.
Somewhere along that process we might also want to do away with those tear ducts because when they hurt you, because you are human and can be sensitive like that, or even when they make you so proud you could burst into pieces all over the room, the tears would probably do some serious rust damage.
So I take it all back.
I guess I don't want to be a robot after all.
Unless of course I could be recharged each night simply by being plugged into the wall. Because, that would be kind of cool.
Being a Mom rocks, but it's hard. We all know that, right? It's fine, it's great, it's worth it. I know that, it's what keeps me going. It's what keeps me going to my own bed each night instead of running off into the woods, or to the airport. Raising kids and running a household is kind of like training killer whales. Usually we can get them to do what we want, but occasionally they just rebel by pinning you up against the side of the tank and slamming your body between themselves. OK, it's not really like that at all but I started that sentence "it's like" and then I couldn't think of a darn thing. Because it's 8:34 at night, after a four day weekend. Brain, fried.
Kids will get it someday. Someday it all will be so obvious to them - all of the reasons that we do what we do and say what we say. The love their parents have for them. The hurt they feel on their behalf. The frustration that we feel as parents who have charge over offspring and yet aren't doing everything perfectly right and efficiently all the time.
Unfortunately, by the time they get old enough to feel sorry for the pain and frustration that they put their parents through, their parents will have no recollections of it at all. Just ask my mother. I feel like apologizing to her all the time. "Mo, I am sorry for taking pens out of your desk whenever I wanted them. I am sorry for stealing from your secret stash of Dove chocolates, or leaving socks anywhere in the house other than my own clothes hamper." Scratch that. Don't ask her. She doesn't remember much about the gore of those days. The fact of the matter is, I have already forgotten a great deal too. I was just telling someone that other day how grateful I was for the stage I am at. I have loved the new parent stage, the parent of multiple toddlers stage, the early grade school stage...but did I really love it that much while I was going through it? I know that it was hard, I mean I remember that I thought it was hard. But I liked it. It that possible? And even though it's still difficult, for all sorts of different reasons, and even though I am scared to death of the entry to the middle school/adolescent years (mixed in, of course, with the re-emergence of the newborn phase, the multiple toddlers phase and early grade school again...) I am still liking it. Is that insane? Becoming a mother has made a lot of insane ideas, a lot less insane than they used to seem.
Take that last sentence for instance, if it made any kind of sense to you at all, grammatically or otherwise, you are a mother.
However, in my efforts to cope with the day to day rigors of raising children, including the ups and downs of successes and failures, good days and bad, I would like to present to you my proposal on "why I think parents should be robots", to help ease the discomforts associated with parenting.
With each child that is born we should have something in us replaced with a robot part.
First, the stomach, because you begin to forget to eat anyway. That, or you develop the necessary habit of eating all the leftovers on their plates because you hate the thought of wasting all that food, and it's already there without you having to do another step by making your own.
Second would be the brain because let's face it, you began that downward climb when that first one was born. You begin to forget the simplest of things like putting on deodorant, making yourself food and going to bed.
There could be lots of organs next, while the kids are still relatively young and you are forgiving of yourself (always providing excuses such as "well I don't have any memories until after I was three anyway.") Therefore, feel free at this point to replace things like your apendix, gall bladder and maybe even part of your liver, I hear you don't really have to have all of it anyway.
Last but not least, we are going to need to replace the heart, because sometimes kids just can't realize how much they affect you, being a human being and all. They are their own person. They want to think, and make choices and act. It hurts, sometimes a little and sometimes a lot because let's face it, deep down inside we feel like we own them. We created them, we grew them, we nurtured them in every way possible. And then what? They feel like they can just go and be their own person? Who do they think they are? But the heart doesn't just hurt because things aren't perfectly going your way, and your kids aren't turning out exactly like the perfect little pleasant people you intended. Sometimes the heart hurts because you are overcome with just how grateful you are for them. Sometimes they make you so happy you could melt. Sometimes, just sometimes, our hearts cannot comprehend how much we love them, and like them. And because of those two things, the pain and the exquisite joy that can both be experienced (sometimes in the very same day), the heart has gotta go.
Somewhere along that process we might also want to do away with those tear ducts because when they hurt you, because you are human and can be sensitive like that, or even when they make you so proud you could burst into pieces all over the room, the tears would probably do some serious rust damage.
So I take it all back.
I guess I don't want to be a robot after all.
Unless of course I could be recharged each night simply by being plugged into the wall. Because, that would be kind of cool.
