When you read blogs full of instagram photos that capture lovely little moments of life, it’s easy to think that everyone is just having a wonderful time.
Recently, after we’d been out for a long day, Graham protested as he often does that he didn’t want to go home. And this one time I indulged him. I turned off the road back to the house and stopped at a park. The weather was perfect. I sat on a shady bench. Tessa was calm and comfortable. Graham played happily on the playground. I took a minute and let myself enjoy it.
I sat there in that wonderful moment. And I thought about how I’m really not the greatest parent.
Normally, when I find myself sitting on a park bench, I’m wishing I could be somewhere else. I sit there knowing I’m supposed to be treasuring every minute, but I can’t always muster the maternal love to treasure this particular minute when Graham is burying his toy train under wood chips again like he does every time we go to the park.
But that time, that one time, I snapped a picture of Graham playing and felt at peace. It was a nice feeling. And I wonder if that’s what other people feel every time they take their kid to the park and take a picture of their child at play.
The truth is, most of the time when I snap an adorable picture, what’s happening around that picture isn’t particularly treasured. It’s the obligation of the parent to capture the moment, to be able to later show your child their own childhood and to be able to show yourself that you gave them this moment and you love them and you are a good parent.
Picture-taking can make your life seem better than it is. And maybe by snapping one, you can make your life a little brighter because, hey, at least it looks pretty in this little square that you posted on Facebook.
The truth is, this last August has not been a good month for me. I knew it was going to be hard and it didn’t disappoint.
There’s been a lot of un-bloggable stuff going on. I know it’s hard to believe that this champion oversharer actually has stuff she won’t blog about. But it’s true. Everyone has a line and lately there’s been a lot going on in extra-super-private land for me. I know that feels like an indulgent blogger tease, but it’s all I can really say to give you a little bit of context.
August was a month where I just had to put my head down and push through. I just had to survive it. (Truth be told, I have one more week in this same mode, so I’m not out of the woods yet.)
The result is that I haven’t been a great parent. I know the automatic response when someone says that is for everyone to jump in and say, What are you talking about? You’re a great parent! I’m not saying I’m not providing a suitable home for my kids or anything like that. But in today’s world where we expect parents to provide not just the basics, but a loving environment filled with learning, I have not been up to snuff.
I have been exhausted. I have relied far too much on episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine on the Roku. I encouraged Tessa to sit because I needed her to have that extra bit of independence for the sake of my own sanity.
There haven’t been that many exciting outings or even unexciting outings. It’s usually hard for me to muster the energy to get both kids out of the house, especially since we haven’t had a car most of the time.
There’s been plenty to complain about. You know the stuff. The blahs of parenting. The ups and downs. Still, this month, with the extra gloomy layer of badness around, it’s been hard to stay peppy and be a good mom.
The kids’ schedules (or lack thereof, in Graham’s case) have meant I get less time by myself to recharge. And when I do get that time, it isn’t time where I kick my feet up and relax or time where I get a few extra things done to prepare for the next day. It’s time where I just exist on the lowest level possible to give myself a little buffer before I go to bed.
I know I can’t be the only one that does this sometimes. I can’t turn off life, I can’t pause it, I can’t make it stop. But I also can’t really turn it all the way on. I have little things to help me feel something good. Lately it’s been things like a carton of Ben & Jerry’s in the freezer. I’m not incapable of being happy or anything like that. But that time by myself, it can’t really be a refuge and so instead it just becomes a bit of nothing. A bit of sensory deprivation, if you will, where nothing is too loud and no light is too bright and nothing can get my brain moving too much in any one direction.
I suspect the nothingness is my brain’s way of avoiding lots of feelings I could be having. I don’t want to end the day with a deluge of negativity, with an onslaught of emotion that will leave me spent. So instead I end it with nothing much at all. And every day a little more of that nothingness trickles into the next day and I wake up with a little more of it still left in my system.
Do you remember the law of inertia? A body in motion tends to stay in motion. It also applies to a body at rest. And that tells you a lot about how we find ourselves at home more and more days.
The kids won’t be scarred for life. They won’t look back on this time as The Month Mom Sucked. It’s more likely to do damage to my own psyche than to theirs.
And I’ve been able to push through thanks to the hope that things will be better when Graham starts school and I have time to get things done and Tessa will be independent and I can find a way to function well as a parent and as the person who keeps our household running.
I have no idea if that’s how things will really be. It’s completely possible that Graham being in school will not magically fix anything and that I’ll still be operating on basic-survival-mode for a while longer.
In times like this, the blog is a good thing. It’s good because it gives me something to do. It’s something I can work on almost every day. And it’s something that I don’t hate. It gives me a place to go where I can do something that isn’t just an automatic reflex. The blog doesn’t care if it’s been a few days since I’ve been able to squeeze in a shower or if I’m still in my pajamas. And it lets me be happy or sad or write about something else entirely if I just don’t feel like writing about me or the kids just then.
The honest truth is that this mom-of-little-kids thing doesn’t come naturally for me. It takes some real effort, not just to do it but to get myself to enjoy it. I know I’m not the only one who feels that way, but when it’s just you and the kids and plenty of long days, it can feel like it’ll last forever. This last month I’ve tried to take those moments where I see something beautiful in my kids and hold it in my head for a bit. Kind of like when you snap a cute pic, find the perfect filter, and then post it on Instagram.
Take it, freeze it, remember what’s beautiful.
The picture, it’s just a moment. Whether it’s a lovely moment, or just a second of pretty in the chaos. At least when I have that picture, I can feel something good, whether or not it was a perfect moment. It is, in its own way, a bit of nothingness.
That picture doesn’t come with any noise, it doesn’t come with anything that needs to be done, it makes no demands and has no requirements. It is just something beautiful, something beautiful that is mine. It is something more than that moment. It is its own refuge.
So that’s what you see when you see my pretty pictures. Not a perfect life. But perhaps a vision of one.
I was just shaking my head yes through this whole post. I got pregnant with my first child two months after my brother was killed in a car accident. It feels like ever since then, I’ve been in survival mode. It’s been one thing to deal with after another and I often find myself screaming at myself to ENJOY this, it will be GONE soon, and I know that but some days I just can’t muster up enough energy to care. I’m not good at playing with my kids and I find myself mentally checking out a lot.
It’s not a good feeling. Especially when you see the “perfect” moms (even though I know they’re not perfect). I think it’s why I read so, so much. Don’t get me wrong, I love to read and would love to read whether I’m depressed or ecstatically happy, but it’s an escape. I can think about someone else’s problems for a while, I can escape my entire world.
Ugh. Being a parent is really, really hard sometimes. But like you said, we push through. My mom frequently says that she worries she yelled at me and my brothers too much and that that is what we’d remember about our childhood. It’s not. I hang on to that.
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Thinking of you and wishing you lots of strength to get through it all.
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I can only imagine how hard it must be to have two very small children who are so dependent on you – I have my one ASD toddler & I often feel overwhelmed & that I’m not doing enough actively with my son, that I’m letting him watch too much TV & play repetitively with his cars or trains. I often feel like I’ve lost my ability to just play and be silly since my son’s diagnosis. My husband’s good with play & silly most of the time, but he certainly has his dark moods where he feels like he can’t deal as well. We kind of take turns around here, being the gloomy one, being the proactive one. I find that I really prefer when my son has parent-child therapy & appointments, b/c I can be focused & I can feel like I know how to play with him, how to interact. And he’s not watching another marathon of Kipper for that period of time. I need plans, I need an agenda & I really need to get us out of the house, b/c once we’re home & we have no agenda & no place to be & no therapist coming, I lose the ability to interact a lot of the time. I just want to sit on the couch or god forbid, do my laundry or run errands that can’t be done with my son b/c of his issues. I suppose with children who find it so easy to tune out their parents, it becomes all too easy for a parent to slip away as well. And there is this model of the perfect parent and worse, the perfect Special Needs parent to haunt us even further when we have our dark days when we can’t muster up the energy to be that perfect. A book that I’ve read a couple times for parents & teachers of Autistic children has an intro by Temple Grandin & she says how her parents had her interacting productively for almost every moment of every day – and I think, man, I suck. I admire her greatly – but man, if that’s what I have to do as a parent, I am a failure.
But your son appears to be doing amazingly & your daughter doesn’t look like she’s suffering. You’re suffering though & that totally sucks.
I hope that the school year helps you find some time to recharge. A few more visits to playgrounds & places where everyone can get some exercise & fun without you having to do any more than get there & make sure no one gets hurt would be good too. We live within about an hour of botanical gardens & my son loves to run around there & look at the fountains. It’s a good place for a stroller as well. If you have a place like that near you, where you can walk freely and there’s good stuff to look at, which is kid friendly too – go for it.
But I’ve rambled enough. Feel better.
This was such an honest and well written post. I hope you can look back on this month later as an unpleasant but brief intermission in your positive life. But we all definitely learn things during these schlumpy times…and hopefully appreciate the better times more.
This August has been awful for me too. I had a hard time coming back from vacation and having to do everything on my own again, and I missed having adults around. On top of that Beckett rarely takes a nap anymore, and he fights with me all day long (welcome to 3). Plus, I think the exhaustion of having so little uninterrupted sleep for the last 6 months really bowled me over in August. I have had no energy. In June it was a whole year of 100% mom and nothing else (and Beckett has had no preschool or daycare, just me), and I’m ready to get back into teaching. Just one class. That’s all I ask. I applied to probably 20 teaching positions in June, but no one will hire me (or even get back to me). It’s depressing. Sure I love my kid, and he can be super cute, but spending all day with a 3-year-old can be so mind-numbing. Being a mom to young children does not come all that naturally to me either–both to do it and to enjoy it, as you say. There have been many times this month where I’ve just thought, “I’m done. I can’t do this anymore.” And I don’t feel like I have anyone that I can really talk to about this stuff. I am surrounded by women who seem perfectly happy being moms (maybe they are and maybe they aren’t; I don’t know). Hopefully as September hits I’m coming out on the other side of the woods? Beckett starts preschool. I joined a gym (working out is nice and childcare is nicer). Felix seems to be sleeping better. I’m still upset about the teaching or lack thereof. I’m going to keep my expectations in check, but we, at the very least, will have stuff to do.
Sounds like your September is a big deal just like mine. And I’ve had therapists helping out for well over a year, I can’t imagine having Graham on my own for that time. And YES to the sleep deprivation. Over the long weekend, I’ve passed the kids off in the morning and slept in for 3 days straight. Before now I think I could count the number of times I slept in on one hand since Tessa was born. So nice, but man, it makes you realize just how bad it’s been.
So yay for September, I hope it does good things for all of us.
This is a beautifully written post. I know some of what you are feeling. I haven’t been the best parent either, at a time when my kids really need it with their dad being gone most of the week. But the stress of working full-time, solo parenting three kids, and getting a house ready to sell has not brought out the best in me. The really hard thing is, my eldest kids are old enough to remember this time in our lives. I hope they don’t remember the worst of it.
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Beautiful post. I admire that you can turn an experience that is so difficult into good writing (reading). Glad you have the blog.