Growing up I was never a “kid person.” I’m very OCD, and I’m *still* disgusted by the mess that accompanies young people. The excessive drool, mucus, and urine are not my thing, and don’t get me started on the sticky hands. Just no.
As a young adult I assumed the decision to have children would depend entirely on the man I married. As I was dating I would think “yup, I’d totally have kids with this one,” or “nope, this one isn’t dad material.” These judgements had no bearing on the future of the relationship: I didn’t care either way.
My plan was to get my PhD and have an academic career. A husband was a must (I’m too extroverted to be alone), but children were a side-issue, or a non-issue. Until I married Robert.
This husband of mine is paternal gold. While he did not urgently want kids, he wanted them in theory. One day. In the far distant future. But the more I saw him interact with kids, the more I knew it would be a crime against humanity if he didn’t have them. A heinous crime.
Our infertility journey is a story for another day, but suffice it to say, it took forever and an act of congress for us to have kids (well not literally, but it sure felt like it). Due to a poorly timed international move, the great recession, and crippling endometriosis I was under-employed when I finally got pregnant. The day I went into labor, a job I had been stalking opened up, and with glee I planned to apply for it as soon as I recovered from delivery.
Life had other plans for me.
The moment I looked into my son’s eyes I knew I would not apply for that job. Ever. I was his, and he was mine. Deep inside I bore the scars of feeling abandoned and not good enough, and I vowed my children would never feel that way if I could help it.
Like Uranus, my life tipped over and orbited differently than everyone around me. Close friends looked at me with stunned amazement, bordering on horror at my decision to stay home with my kid. “I can’t believe what’s happened to you,” one commented. His actual words have faded, but what remains is “you used to be so interesting. What’s happened?” Perhaps that wasn’t his intent, yet that is what remains in my memory.
What happened indeed.
While I’ve always kept one foot in the academic/work zone, the door on that world has been closing slowly over the past five years. This fall the campus I teach at is closing and my third child arrives. Initially I investigated picking up classes at a community college, but then along came my buddy COVID-19. Seeking employment at a new institution felt futile, so I embraced my transformation into full-time motherhood. (Well, I also enrolled in a memoir-writing class, launched this blog, and redoubled my efforts to write my book, but it’s safe to say no one is considering any of this “employment.”)
Then last week my institution decided to add me as an online adjunct faculty so they can retain me for one of my administrative roles. Having fully accepted that I was DONE in the fall I surprised myself by internally jumping up and down.
This week, instead of spending all day every day homeschooling and entertaining my two children, I balanced parenting with reading a new textbook, undertaking a mentorship, and preparing to teach new material in a new online platform. I ducked out of bedtime on multiple occasions. It was bliss. My brain is active in a way it hasn’t been in a long while, and I managed to avoid checking the corona death-rate for a full 24 hours (which might also have had something to do with Johns Hopkins’ site having some issues, but let’s not split hairs).
This week I have had an identity shift. It’s no big deal, and yet it is a huge deal: another of life’s paradoxes.
For all parents, parenting is a part of our identity. We grapple with whether we do enough, or are enough, for our kids. The struggles look different, our decisions are different, but the love is there regardless.
This week I was reading a best-selling fiction series in which the main character abandoned her role as full-time mother to her children, aged six and three (similar to my kids), separated from her husband, and left her kids with her mother-in-law so she could pursue her writing career. I was deeply moved at the plight of a feminist in the 70s who desperately wanted to BE someone, but in order to do so had to leave behind her children, permanently altering her relationships with them. Part of me understood all too well what drove her. The other part, the much bigger part, grabbed my two-year-old and smothered her with kisses until she asked me to stop.
I am not abandoning my kids. I am merely adding work which will bring some intellectual spice back to my COVID-mangled brain. But some part of me feels guilty. This is the part that loves climbing into bed with my daughter and holding her for 20 minutes as she falls asleep. As much as I enjoy the work, when I’m 90 and rocking away in a nursing home, I am certain these moments holding my children will be my most precious memories.
No matter what decisions you make with your work/life balance, you’ve got my solidarity: this parenting gig is hard.
