With friends like these...

[ciroccoj]

OK, it's been (so far) a freaking horrible day, I won't go into details but I'm exhausted and frazzled and yet I know it could always be worse: I could have had a day like this while the kids were little. At nine and twelve, today they have been an absolute parent's dream of maturity and sensitivity and self-control and understanding, and made an otherwise thoroughly crappy day almost bearable. Days like this it feels like all the patience and understanding we gave them in their first few years is starting to pay off.

Which reminds me of something 13oct posted the other day that made me howl with laughter and say Amen about fifty times. It's a clueless "friend" asking Carolyn Hax of Tell Me About It for some info, and then Carolyn giving her what-for.


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Carolyn:

Best friend has child. Her: exhausted, busy, no time for self, no time for me, etc. Me (no kids): Wow. Sorry. What'd you do today? Her: Park, play group ...

Okay. I've done Internet searches, I've talked to parents. I don't get it. What do stay-at-home moms do all day? Please no lists of library, grocery store, dry cleaners ... I do all those things, too, and I don't do them EVERY DAY. I guess what I'm asking is: What is a typical day and why don't moms have time for a call or e-mail? I work and am away from home nine hours a day (plus a few late work events) and I manage to get it all done. I'm feeling like the kid is an excuse to relax and enjoy -- not a bad thing at all -- but if so, why won't my friend tell me the truth? Is this a peeing contest ("My life is so much harder than yours")? What's the deal? I've got friends with and without kids and all us child-free folks get the same story and have the same questions.

- Tacoma, Wash.

Relax and enjoy. You're funny.

Or you're lying about having friends with kids.

Or you're taking them at their word that they actually have kids, because you haven't personally been in the same room with them.

Internet searches?

I keep wavering between giving you a straight answer and giving my forehead some keyboard. To claim you want to understand, while in the same breath implying that the only logical conclusions are that your mom-friends are either lying or competing with you, is disingenuous indeed.

So, since it's validation you seem to want, the real answer is what you get. In list form. When you have young kids, your typical day is: constant attention, from getting them out of bed, fed, clean, dressed; to keeping them out of harm's way; to answering their coos, cries, questions; to having two arms and carrying one kid, one set of car keys, and supplies for even the quickest trips, including the latest-to-be-declared-essential piece of molded plastic gear; to keeping them from unshelving books at the library; to enforcing rest times; to staying one step ahead of them lest they get too hungry, tired or bored, any one of which produces the kind of checkout-line screaming that gets the checkout line shaking its head.

It's needing 45 minutes to do what takes others 15.

It's constant vigilance, constant touch, constant use of your voice, constant relegation of your needs to the second tier.

It's constant scrutiny and second-guessing from family and friends, well-meaning and otherwise. It's resisting constant temptation to seek short-term relief at everyone's long-term expense.

It's doing all this while concurrently teaching virtually everything -- language, manners, safety, resourcefulness, discipline, curiosity, creativity. Empathy. Everything.

It's also a choice, yes. And a joy. But if you spent all day, every day, with this brand of joy, and then, when you got your first 10 minutes to yourself, wanted to be alone with your thoughts instead of calling a good friend, a good friend wouldn't judge you, complain about you to mutual friends, or marvel how much more productively she uses her time. Either make a sincere effort to understand or keep your snit to yourself.
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(boldface mine, because damn, that part really spoke to me)

And yeah, Amen also to the "it's also a choice and a joy" part. I would have added that the mom in question should make another choice, in order to add to her joy: drop her clueless, self-absorbed bitch of a "best friend."

Link to the article



I can't even read her list without wincing and remembering doing all that and more. And the sheer exhaustion of being permanently ON, with no OFF-switch in sight. Physical and emotional bone-crushing weariness, for months on end, and no help in sight, because first we lived far away from any friends or family who might have helped and had no money for babysitters, and then when we lived close by, my mom got sick and stayed sick within less than a year after we arrived. How lovely it would have been to have had a "best friend" who assumed that the only reason I didn't call her was that I was using the kids as an excuse to "relax and enjoy."

I dunno, I gotta echo what Chris said after I read him the reply: "Wow, she's a lot more restrained than I would've been."

Comments

[lizzie-omalley.livejournal.com]

Sorry you had such a bad day. Boston is a beautiful city but she can be a bitch. I don't know if the local had anything to do with it all.

Anyhoo, hugs.

I have a glimmer of the sense of "on-ness" from teaching these last 6 months. I can go home and leave the other people's kids behind but when I am in the classroom it is a constant demand from the start to the end with no regulation about when and how the kids ask for whatever it is that pops into their head that they need to deal with just that second. And I have ninth graders. I can tell them no, not now and they, usually, "get it". Wee ones don't.

Still more hugs.

[owens-mom.livejournal.com]

I keep wavering between giving you a straight answer and giving my forehead some keyboard. -- LOL