Damn, but this parenting gig is hard.
It's like scaling a loose sand dune sometimes. Just when you think you have a handle on it, the ground slips underneath you a bit.
It's hard not to take the report cards and progress reports as a grade on my parenting abilities. It's hard to know how serious to be with a six-year-old about his academic aspirations. When to listen to experts, and when to plant your feet and push back at them. There is no separating emotion from these sorts of discussions. Scientific objectivity is out of reach.
Which leaves me feeling quite unanchored.
You question if you're doing enough, or too much. Am I too involved in my own stuff? Or, flip side, am I too involved in my kid's stuff? When to back off and let him handle it, when to engage, when to argue, when to say, "Screw it, let's forget it and go play."
I comfort myself that if I'm spending time asking myself these sorts of questions, then I'm not a total screw-up.
And truly, I think that's the best you can ever say with this job at the end of the day. I didn't totally screw up today.
Single parents have my complete, awestruck respect. I don't know how I'd possibly manage if I was navigating this slope with naught but my own energy and brain power. And, in turn, my husband and I call on our larger village for advice and sanity-checks too. Much like my own little one, when I don't know how to fix it, my first instinct is still to shout for Mom and Dad.
Geez, it seemed like they totally had it together when I was little. Calm and cool and knew the answers to everything. Who would have thought it was possible that when I was still in pig tails and play clothes, they felt as as inept and ill-prepared as I do now. I still can't really accept it. I expect it's true though.
The other day at the dinner table, my kid was talking about great plans he had for when he was older (you know, like eight years old).
"Do you want to know a secret?" I asked him.
"What?"
"It feels the same."
"Really?"
"Yup, being six, or eight, or thirty-four, or (I expect) ninety-nine. In the middle, " I tapped my chest, "you always feel the same."
"Whoa."
He doesn't really get it of course. Not sure I do, but in rare ephiphanetic moments.
When he left the table, my husband said, "That's not entirely true. When I was eighteen, I probably thought I had it figured it out."
"Oh, me too," I said, taking a sip of wine. "But we were way wrong."
"Of course we were."
We laughed.