Motherhood, formerly known as Your Life

I accidentally got into a Facebook discussion thread that turned all argumentative and political.

Wait, I got into a Facebook discussion thread that accidentally turned all argumentative and political.

At least, I thought it was accidental. I hate it when this happens. But the thing is, this thread looked stable--there was no Sarah Palin, no Glenn Beck, no outlandish stakes or claims--nothing nuclear incendiary about it.

But, no.

The thread was borne from a newspaper Dear Abby type clipping: childless woman is miffed that her child-having friends never have time and always claim to be exhausted blah blah blah.

So, discussion begins as follows:
Poster: Is having children REALLY that hard for us childless people to imagine?

Me: Yes. It is a thankless, hellish, never-ending task that sucks the life force directly from your veins.

Third Poster: Only because you allow it to. We make these choices, we could not be weighed down by guilt and exhaustion.

Me: (though I shouldn't have) Something about sitting up with sick children in the middle of the night and feeling completely exhausted and isolated. Thus, parenthood is isolating and exhausting and thankless.

Third Poster: Only because you choose to be. You could wake up husband, call family for help, assume child will be fine and go back to sleep. You choose to carry your cross.

Since Facebook threads are notorious for convincing nobody of anything, I thought I would continue my argument in my own personal forum. Because, let's be honest, at cinnamon I am never wrong, and I can delete dissenters.

I want to say that I intentionally use humor and alcohol to deflect any accusations of schlepping a cross around. I don't want to be the mom who says that her children are everything and that their little lives matter more than her own. These moms eventually wind up in the full fetal when the youngest child leaves home, and have to be nursed back from their Gollum-like precious mumblings to a quasi-human existence.

I fully realize that in the hypothetical I set up that a) most children will not die of fever b) the emergency room is always open c) that I could wake my husband. Though Third Poster should realize not every one has the advantage of nearby family. It's very geo-biased of her. She should also realize that husbands and wives throughout history have an agreement: (the first example was found written on a cave wall) when it comes to babies' needs and the sun is not up, moms are responsible.

Look, I have said before that I can not imagine working outside of the home and raising kids. It seems impossible to me. Why, then, is it so hard for non-breeders to imagine that they CAN'T imagine being a parent?

Let me try to describe a day to my non-breeding friends. Shall we begin at pregnancy? Imagine you swallowed a watermelon whole. It's sitting on your bladder and occasionally kicking you in the lungs. You are in a permanent state of PMDD for 9 months. Then, like that scene from Alien, something slimy, loud and inexplicably evil erupts from your midsection as you beg to be euthanized.

So, that is how parenthood starts.

Now, you've got that little sucker home. For the first half-year of its life, the torture is like a Vietnam Vet's horror story. The enemy deprives you of sleep, leeches fluids from your body, creates lists of manual labor as its laundry/trash/dish washing/housekeeping slave, and keeps you pasty and filthy so that you rarely leave the house.

The next four years, known as the "toddler/preschooler" years are only dimly recognizable as your pre-sucker life.

First, imagine yourself as a conjoined twin. Now, imagine your conjoined twin is a sadistic maniac. Now, take your sadistic maniac twin to Target. Are you with me? Your sadistic twin doesn't want to go and whines the whole way there. In fact, she may find something in the passenger seat and throw it at you. When you get there, SCT doesn't want to walk, but wants to ride in the cart. This is tricky. When you are three-quarters of the way to the back of the store, SCT has to pee. You take SCT all the way back to the front of the store to the bathrooms, which might have been cleaned during the Nixon era. You hold your breath and enter. Meanwhile, SCT is using her hands to touch everything she can reach while she sits on the toilet. She only washes her hands reluctantly when she's done.

You return to your errands. You need food for you, SCT and your husband. Of course, you haven't had conjugal relations w/ your husband since SCT came around and you're wondering since he doesn't ever get up when SCT is sick, why you're feeding him anyway. SCT touches everything down every aisle, occasionally knocking very fragile things off the shelves. You can't slap her, despite every impulse in your body, because, honestly, it's frowned upon to slap conjoined twins in public.

You're halfway through the frozen food section when SCT has decided she is done. Not a little done, not sorta done, but altogether DONE. She starts screaming and making a scene (as though conjoined twins walking through Target don't make a little bit of a scene to start with). You appease her by opening a box of Fruity-ohs from the basket. Persevere. You think to yourself that the household budget is a little tight these days, mostly because of SCT's insatiable needs, but that you could really use a cute shirt. And, hey, you deserve something even if it's going to be ill fitting because it has 2 armholes and you and SCT have four arms. But you deserve something. SCT disagrees. She pitches a fit for the ages, compelling you to check out.

During check-out, it appears that SCT has completely lost all control of her limbs, and is flailing them about wildly. The ENTIRE gum display erupts into the air, and every single little impulse item is something she covets beyond reason. You bribe with popcorn and ICEE.

The bill at Target for groceries and your $10 shirt rivals the GDP of a small country. Husband will be displeased.

You buy ICEE and popcorn and head to the relative safety of home. SCT runs out into the parking lot and nearly kills you both. Apologetically, you salute the driver, and throw everything into the back of your car.

On the way home, ICEE magically finds its way on to your prized new shirt. It was blue raspberry ICEE. Unloading groceries with SCT is about as easy as you'd imagine. Legs, arms flailing some more. Total lack of cooperation from her half of your body. She's dying of hunger or exhaustion or boredom or Spongebob is on. You sit down and wonder if this is how you expected your life to be. And you realize it's already 11:30. Only 11:30. And you're ready to die.

Granted, things are less irrational during the school years, but they are nonetheless busy. And SCT was only one child. Whatever innate need people have to produce second offspring must be a pretty powerful survival instinct. Right now, I am procrastinating on no fewer than 6 things by posting this entry. The boys will be waiting in carpool before I know it. I rationalize that this is my time, but no one will be appreciating the concept of my time if there is no milk for cereal tomorrow morning. Or food for lunch, or library fines, or or or everything else I'm supposed to do today.

Yes, parenthood is a choice. Not necessarily a well-informed one, because it is not possible to anticipate what motherhood is. You can petsit, babysit, niece-sit, go to ten thousand family reunions, but that doesn't capture it.

Unlike regular jobs, this job defines you. It's impossible not to: you are forever Johnny's Mom. You are thrilled with his successes and crushed by his failures. You want everything to be perfect for him, yet understand that hardship is essential. You cringe when new studies reveal that the sippy cup he wouldn't put down for 3 years was laden with BPA and is probably going to make him sterile or stupid, or kill him when he's 36. You hope against hope that he will learn the skills to be happy. Because happiness doesn't fall in your lap--like everything else, it is earned. Will he be able to identify a career that he loves, or be equipped to be professionally satisfied without one? Will he find a person to love who loves him in turn? Can you impart to him the lessons of your failures, or is he doomed to repeat them? Did he watch too much TV today?

Of course, you can parent without being dogged by these issues. Of course, you can raise a child without karate and French class and violin lessons or soccer. But each mother I know makes decisions, all different decisions, based on a truth she honestly believes to be the best for her child.

Sometimes, even when the SCT is sleeping, those decisions leave us up and alone in the dark.