It was the 100th day of school. Desi was supposed to bring in 100 objects, paper clips, Cheerios, whatever. It was on a little flyer that went home in his backpack at the beginning of the month. The date briefly registered as something to remember, but it never landed anywhere permanent. When I walked him in the door this morning, I saw several teachers wearing shirts with a big 100 on the front. Shit. When we got to his cubby, I told him, hey we were supposed to bring in 100 things for 100 day. But your dad and I forgot. Sorry about that. “Oh,” Desi said, taking in the information. I brightened. “But hey! Maybe some other kids’ parents forgot, too!” Desi wandered off to the breakfast table; I walked to work.
I have only felt “mom guilt” a few times in my life. Sometimes I wonder if that means I’m a sociopath; mostly I feel grateful to live free of it. When I hear my friends beat themselves up over minor parenting mistakes, it’s like listening to someone in a cult berate themselves for falling short of some Wonderful Leader’s ideal. Maybe I’ve just had time to get used to it - I’ve lived my whole life being scattered and distractible. Frankly, I’m grateful it hasn’t gotten worse since having kids. I feel certain that the ways in which I’m screwing up my kids are unknowable to me. Remember in grade school when they told us that most of us would have jobs as adults that haven’t even been invented yet? Our kids will be damaged by us in ways we haven’t even invented yet. It’s not going to be not having 100 Cheerios.
Jane took her first steps two weeks ago. It was after work, and she just stuck her hands out in front of her like a zombie and did her thing. I was in a low, ugly place about work, stuck with an impossible project, fantasizing about getting an illness that would not kill me but get me a few months of medical leave so that they’d have to give the project to someone else. Seeing her walk felt like a miracle, and the anxiety fell off of me like Saul getting struck down on the road to Damascus. The scales fell from my eyes. I wish I could bottle the potency of the moment because, fuck, she can only take her first steps once. But I need it in pill form as a beta blocker!! Maybe this is what meditation is meant to do. Access that stillness that allegedly lives inside me all of the time. (In a pinch, my weed pen helps.)
After I dropped Desi off without his 100 objects, Nick took Jane to the doctor. She’d been bounced from daycare the previous afternoon for a “daycare fever” which is anything hotter than 99.1 degrees. Their protocol is 24 hours at home following a documented fever. Sure, her breathing had been wheezy and loud, but don’t all daycare kids spend the winter breathing like elderly pugs? But then her coughing at night became alarming enough that Nick decided to take her to the pediatrician during her out-of-school suspension. By 10 am, she had a diagnosis of RSV and Nick was in the Walgreen’s drive-through getting albuterol capsules for our brand new nebulizer.
She was going to be out of school for a week. Desi was out for a few days last week. Monday is President’s Day, a holiday observed by both of my kids’ schools but, ah, of course, not Nick’s and my employer. I was going to take it off (Nick teaches three classes on Monday) but now I’m wondering if I should scramble to hire a sitter. Tuesday, I’m supposed to get some much-needed dental work but now I’m wondering if I should reschedule. Let my teeth rot a few more weeks just to perform the theater of having my face seen around the office for once in two weeks? Right before Desi got sick, I allowed the following thought to pierce my consciousness: man it seems like everyone and their kids are getting absolutely clotheslined by illness this winter but we’ve managed to avoid it!!! I got my wish to become so out of commission by illness (mine and others) that I am basically on indefinite leave from work. Getting what you wish for! It almost always is a disappointment.
Before kids, for a stretch in my twenties, I was a gym rat. I went to the gym after work and got home around 7, Nick would make dinner or we’d each fend for ourselves meal-wise, we’d watch one to five episodes of a show, and go to bed. By the time I got pregnant with Desi, I was lean and strong, though the societal brain worms I’m still exorcising had me believing I needed to lose 5 lbs. I worked out throughout my pregnancy, because I was young and annoying and had no other children to mind, didn’t even need to make the house non-treacherous each night before bed. Then I just never got back to the gym.
Not in any type of routine way! It’s not that you can’t—lots of people do!—I just never figured it out. I wasn’t going to punish myself by going before work—life is already so hard, don’t be sick. Going at lunchtime was logistically complex. Evenings were my only time with the kids, plus for long stretches of these interim years, I’ve been on a breastfeeding timer. After the kids are in bed? When I’m already in my soft pants? Again, don’t be sick.
I continued to exercise over the past few years, but it’s always been so patchwork. I couldn’t rely on it. It’d be unseasonably warm one Saturday and Nick would encourage me, hey real quick!, to go for a run. I’d be annoyed by something at work and storm out and go clang weights around. I’d feel a burst of unexplained energy at night and do a silly Youtube HIIT video. Grabbing scraps of time when the wind direction was just right.
When I was younger, my relationship with exercise was intense and disordered. I was trying to use it as a food eraser, a way to atone for my lawless appetite. Now I really needed it! I needed it to metabolize my anxiety, to help me sleep, to regulate my moods. And it was just beyond my reach.
There is a happy ending to this gym tale which is that I’ve been going to classes again. Three times a week, after work, and I still get home in time for dinner. What it took was telling Nick that I needed to do it, and bringing my gym clothes, and having a work day that ends at 4:30, and a gym right next to my office, and an office right next to my house. I feel completely great. Last month, and this could be a fluke, but my period managed to surprise me?? It almost never surprises me because I am usually tipped off by picking a fight with Nick about, like, dishes that results in me crying while yelling, often brandishing a sauce pan and stabbing the air with it to make my point. I mean, what a revelation!
The adjustment to Desi starting public pre-K was a shock. We were relieved not to be writing daycare checks for him for the first time in his life, but the new reality of frequent school closures and long breaks was jarring. Somehow I didn’t know to expect it, and that made me feel silly, and the whole thing was a little desperate. When he starts kindergarten in the fall, we’ll still be desperate to cover those days, but we won’t be in shock. “It goes really fast once they’re in school,” people say, and I get it now.
When Desi was first born, the math of how long it would be until he didn’t need constant hands-on supervision was devastating. It would be years, I estimated. YEARS. Now I’m like, wow Jane (13 months) is practically in grade school, things are going to be easy so soon. Years burn off like morning fog now. It’s a cliché for a reason; it truly goes so fast.
I had a check-up and was asking the doctor if I should have another kid. (Why am I like this.) He asked how many I had and I said two. He said, see, with only two, that’s just not that many years at home with you. I had only ever heard people talk about the years with their kids at home as something they were speeding through until they had their life back. I hadn’t heard it as something to be extended.
Desi came home on 100 day wearing a crown he had made at school. It said, “I’m 100 days smarter!” He had colored it with crayons in his riotous four-year-old way. He really is 100 days smarter: he writes his name, draws recognizable houses and animals and people, uses scissors with adult precision. Then, I felt a surge of genuine affection for myself and the stuff I’m figuring out still. I’m 100 days smarter, too, just by showing up.
yr mate,
Evie
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