You’ll miss these days once they’re gone.
It will get easier.
The days are long, but the years are short.
Has a stranger said any of these things to you as you struggled to get a “boneless” child into a car seat or as you tried to drag two children out of a store without a treat? It’s always a well-meaning stranger; usually an older woman who watches for a while with a wistful look in her eyes. Meanwhile, you’re using fruit snacks to bribe your screaming toddler not to throw the groceries out of the cart before they get on the conveyor belt.
When she said those things, did you want to roll your eyes, or scream at her or worse? Much worse?
Well, here’s the bad news; she’s right.
She definitely should have kept it to herself, but she’s right. How can that possibly be, you ask. How can these days of unending diapers and sleepless nights and chasing toddlers down the hall while you try to have a normal conversation with another adult be the best years of my life?
Here’s the good news; she’s not completely right, just a little bit.
You will miss these days once they’re gone. Not all the days. As I see parents and caregivers dropping off and picking up their precious children every day I am struck by how incredibly, magnificently, totally HARD it is. The work of being a parent to a young child, not to mention two or three is unending and brutal. You’re tired. You’re overwhelmed. You feel like a hot mess, set gingerly on top of a dumpster fire most days. I remember those feelings and no, I don’t miss them.
There are days I do miss though. Not usually days, but moments. The smell of your newborn baby’s head, watching your toddler dance. Their voices, their compact, sturdy little bodies and how they fit in your arms perfectly. The first time they rode on the carousel at the zoo. All it takes for me to completely break down in tears is to look through one photo album, hear one voice recording of my two year old shouting at daddy’s voice mail that he pooped in the potty. Don’t even bring up the videos. It isn’t that I want to go back, but I do. Not to every day, just those moments. I’m not saying you need to be happy and grateful and full of energy and boundless love for the small army you created every day, no matter how exhausting and frustrating. I’m just saying, collect your moments, whatever they are. Hold them tightly and don’t let them go.
Will it get easier?
I’ve heard people say small children, small problems, big children, big problems. Are either of these things true? Yes, they both are. I would be lying to you if I said it doesn’t get easier. I can go to the grocery store without children hanging off the cart and putting unwanted fruit leather in. I can be home alone. I can do almost anything I want to. I have hobbies. My children, 21, 18, and 16, are almost fully independent, capable humans that can almost take care of themselves completely.
Although the work of raising them isn’t intense daily, minute to minute work that it was, the intensity still shows up. Rather than be the housekeeper, cook, psychologist, chauffeur, teacher and butler, I have become what I call the “emotional support animal”. Some days are a lot harder than others as the emotional support animal for three almost grown-ups. The first child who got their heart broken nearly broke me. Watching your child struggle with their identity and who they are and how they show up in the world is beyond hard. Waiting in the wings for the call that a child is in crisis, whether big or small is the unending job I’ve taken on. There’s school and sports and friends and love and who am I and what do I want to do with my life and am I happy and what do I want to study in college and do I even want to go to college and I messed up and drove the car into a swamp by accident and I think I’m depressed and
Mom? Can you talk?
If it sounds like a lot, it is. If it doesn’t sound easier, that’s because it isn’t.
Most of the time it’s just not constant, though there are periods of time where I feel the mental and emotional exhaustion of being an emotional support animal. And it gets worse, you can’t always fix things. If your child falls down, you can kiss it and rub it better. If your child is having an existential crisis halfway around the world, you can be there and you can support, but you can’t make it go away.
Now you don’t want your children to grow up, right?
It’s going to be okay because the children you raised turn into people and those people are fun. We have inside jokes, sometimes we laugh until we cry. We have new traditions and routines and television shows we bond over and videos of pandas falling out of trees to share. And sometimes they say things they never could have said all those years ago. Things like, “I love you mom. Thank you mom. You’re the best. I don’t know what I would do without you.” And those are moments you’ll want to hold onto too.
And the last one, the days are long but the years are short. That one, I’m afraid to say, is 100% true. Hold onto your moments, the everyday moments and the special ones because all those toddler voice mails and first carousel rides and the face they make when they try to eat a lemon and the many many kisses goodnight and even the fart jokes and the existential crises are the moments that make a life well-lived and well-loved.
With love, Rebecca