Parenting in these times

The joy, pain, and abject fear of being a parent right now.

[alt-text: a blurry view of a summer field at dusk]

CW: School shooting, loss and grief

I had this idea last week that I was going to write an essay about my “good shit” list. That list of all the good shit that keeps me going from day to day, from week to week, from month to month, from year to year. That running list that I keep in my head for when things go wrong—for when all the bad shit happens. It was going to be a happier essay, damn it, since I write essays that tend to be more angsty, more gut-wrenchingly, more sad, more painful, but still true and hopeful even. 

But I wanted to write a happier essay for once. An essay more purely happy, which captured my utter joy when my teen laughs unexpectedly at one of my jokes, my utter delight when the kids and I sing our hearts out to the “The Schuyler Sisters” from Hamilton (I’m Angelica), and my swoony love when I still get to cuddle them on the couch and card my fingers through their hair. An essay where I got to catalog all those small, happy moments—the good shit—that makes it easier for me to navigate all the bad shit that comes from being a person in the world, who also happens to suffer from anxiety and depression.

You’ll notice that all of the good shit I mention here relates to my kids. There’s other good shit on my list that doesn’t relate to my kids—singing along to my favorite songs on the radio at the top of my lungs, listening to the click clack of my keyboard as I work on yet another essay or yet another book, my partner’s dancing green eyes when he smiles and his tight hugs that keep me from falling apart, or the Florida sunshine on my face when I sit on my front porch sipping my coffee on a spring morning—of course, there is. But the moments with my kids are at the forefront of my mind. They top my list. 

This is not a surprise to me. I’m a mother and a writer. I'm a stay-at-home mom and a writer when the kids aren't home. Mothering is who I am and what I do. Writing is who I am and what I do too. Both identities are intractably bound together, never quite separate, never meshing seamlessly either. Both inhabiting my home and my mind. Both in competition, except when they’re not. Both feeding each other, except when they don’t. But I’m getting off course. (Or am I?)

What’s clear to me is that I am a mother. I’m a parent. Parenting is who I am and what I do, and it is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But, but, it is also the most joyful. It makes my life difficult in ways that I couldn’t have imagined. It makes me happy in ways that I couldn’t have imagined either. Parenting, as Jennifer Senior documents, is both “all joy and no fun.” Joy and pain. Pain and joy.

So, my experiences with my children make up a lot of the good shit in my life. Loving them, being with them, supporting them, and watching them grow and become their own people, are joyful experiences and painful ones, and often, they are a strange combination of the two. 

Often, this joy pain, this pain joy, strikes me suddenly as I try to hold onto a moment with them. I try to pause time and capture it—to keep it just as it is forever, a mosquito held in amber for eons and eons for someone to find later and marvel at. But moments are fleeting and are often gone before we even realize we are in them. I have captured too few; I have lost more. There’s less amber; there are more mosquito bites that stick around for a few days, red, itchy, and impossible to forget…until they fade away. I can remember the unexpected laughter, perhaps, but I can’t remember what it sounds like. 

Maybe, these moments weren’t meant for capturing at all. Maybe, they were meant for the moment and that burst of delight was supposed to just leave behind echoes. Maybe, the good shit has to be ephemeral or is ephemeral for it to have the impact that it does. That sort of seems like bullshit to me. I want it to last longer. I want it to last forever. But, I just don’t know. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I’ve been thinking a lot about how ephemeral goodness seems to be lately, especially after yet another school shooting. It's the 130th mass shooting of this year. And I can’t get this shooting out of my head. It’s haunting me. Other school shootings have haunted me too since Columbine, but this one haunts me more. For a little while, I couldn’t figure out why. Until I did.

The routine sameness of it is its own kind of hurt. Once again, we saw pictures of the smiling faces of the victims after their names were announced to the press. Once again, politicians, who will do nothing, offered thoughts and prayers. Once again, people called for change to our gun laws as they should. Once again, we were overrun with anger and grief. Once again, families lost loved ones, both children and adults, and now have to navigate a world without any of them in it. 

Once again, once again, once again, once again.

The facts of this school shooting lodged in my brain. But, one stood out to me. Three of the victims were all nine years old. They were all nine years old. I tried not to think about it, but I couldn’t help but think about it.

There’s a reason for this. It's one I didn't want to admit.

What you don’t likely know is that my youngest kid is nine years old, a third grader, with a Cheshire cat’s grin and quick wit. What you don’t know is that he’s at a brick and mortar school for the first time this school year since the pandemic began. Both of my kids are. It's their first year back in a school with monthly active shooter drills and a so-called safety plan. It’s their first year back in a school that isn’t also their home.

What you don’t know is that for a couple of days, I could acknowledge the fact that the victims were nine but not acknowledge the fact that they were the same age as my youngest. My brain blocked out the truth until I couldn’t avoid it any longer.

And then, it hit me like a swift punch to the gut that my youngest was the same age as them.

That those parents had been dealing with same, mundane things to what we do every day: fights over brushing one’s hair, reminders to brush your teeth, multiplication and division, the rush to get ready for school in the morning, packing lunches, studying for spelling tests, figuring out what to have for breakfast or dinner, getting ready for bed, good night hugs and kisses, and all the other small things that make up a day. That those parents likely had their own good shit lists, likely with a different, better name, that might have also included unexpected laughter or cuddling on the couch. That those parents also experienced the joy pain, the pain joy, of being parents. That I used to have more in common with those parents, and now, I don’t. Now, I don't. Their losses are incalculable but not unimaginable. 

They were all nine; one of my children is nine. 

I can imagine it, and the mere thought of it guts me. And if the thought of it wrecks me and leaves me a sobbing mess of a human on the floor, then the true experience of it must be infinitely worse. It must be. I can imagine. I don't want to, but I do. I can't seem to not to.

So, I grieve for these parents, these strangers who I won’t have a chance to know. I grieve for their children. I grieve for all that’s lost when we lose someone. 

I grieve, I grieve, I grieve. 

And I hold my youngest a little bit tighter in each hug. I whisper, “I love you,” to both kids more frequently and urgently. I try to memorize that mischievous grin and that unexpected laugh and fossilize them in my mind to return them to later. I try to capture all the moments I can and hold on, stuffing my brain full of those good moments while I can't stop myself from fearing the worst. I cling desperately to everything that makes up the good shit because there’s too much evidence of the bad shit right now.  

And that, I think, is what it is like to be a parent in these times, clinging to good shit while knowing how much bad is out there, holding onto your kids a little tighter, saying "I love you," a little more, and hoping that each time you send your kids out into the world that they'll come back.