Clue # 3: The Enforced Sobriety

Clue # 3: The enforced sobriety

 

(To recap, I'm attempting to give clues about what it feels like to be a parent. If you feel lost, read post one and post two.)

The weekend I discovered I was pregnant with our first child we had plans to travel to Niagara Falls for an Allman Brothers Band concert. If you’ve ever listened to the Allman Brothers Band, than you know that it helps to be under the influence of something while listening to the Allman Brothers Band. (I’m sorry, but 33 minutes and 41 seconds is just too long to have to listen to a song without lyrics while not buzzed on something.)

Of course, now that I’d gone and peed on the stick and had that profound, “A whole other life! Growing inside me! I'm like Celene Dion! This has never happened to anyone else in the history of time!” moment, I wasn’t going to be buzzed on anything other than my own excitement about becoming a mother. 

Mountain Jam while sober, here I came. 

I hate to admit this, but I actually spent part of the concert wondering if the loud music was going to harm the fetus. I know. 

The morning after the concert, while my husband and our friends sprawled about hotel rooms in various states of hungover disarray, I awoke at 7 am (because I’d gone to bed at 10 pm), went to a restaurant alone for breakfast and then walked (or, more accurately, stomped) toward the falls, alone.

Being a good sport just isn’t in my nature. I was pissy. I was hormonal, or at least I was trying to use the fact that I was maybe hormonal, because you're allowed to be when you're pregnant, as an excuse for being in such a shite mood.  I was also grappling with the realization that I was going to have to be a good sport for nine months (which were actually ten and were going to feel like twelve). It had only been 24 hours, and I was already raging against the self sacrifice. And all I'd had to give up was a few drinks. But what, exactly, was I doing this for? My stomach was still flat. The baby felt like a ghost. 

Which is definitely a feeling you’ll have as a parent. A feeling of self-sacrifice, even when you don't know exactly what the reward, if any, is going to be. And also, a feeling of not only enforced sobriety, but enforced maturity, too. 

It was much less complicated in the olden days, when you had kids primarily so they could help you hoe the fields and milk the cows and carry on the family name and if they refused you threw them in a shed. (Hmm, maybe I've just read too much tortured early-Canadian literature and that was never what it was really like? Anyway.)  

The reality of modern day parenting is that you will have to give some things up, for a while, and you can't make your kid hoe a field in exchange for the gift of life. You'll have to give these things up for as long as it takes for your life to change enough that doing the things you used to love probably won't ever feel the same again, even when you have the time to do them. Mostly because you'll be doing them while thinking things like, "I wonder how junior is enjoying his trip to Port-au-Prince/Ciudad Juarez/Kandahar. I'm so happy he's changing the world, but an email/text/Skype would be fab." These sorts of thoughts can put a damper on relaxation, I'm guessing/

The truth is, I miss a lot of things. I miss sleeping in without feeling indebted to my husband when I finally crawl out of bed. I miss reading at leisure, all the time, any time. Even more, I miss being able to write something down the very second I think of it, or spend all day writing something I really want to be writing without feeling guilty and sad about what I'm missing out on while I'm writing it. Or guilty and sad because wanting to write this thing has made me grumpy and less present and that's not fair to anyone.

I miss the days when I could behave badly and not have to turn around and see two pairs of eyes taking it all in, thus causing me to relive and regret said bad behaviour for days, weeks, months, ever. And mostly, I miss not feeling as vulnerable to the whims of the world as I do now that two people I love a crazy lot go out into the world every day and I can't always be there to fix everything and keep them perfectly safe and perfectly happy.  

But there are rewards. It's true what they say. The things I love most about being a parent are possibly trite and maybe predictable, but here they are:

I like to watch them sleep. It's exquisite, truly. It's just like in that book by Robert Munsch that I can't even say the name of or I'll cry.

I like the way they smell, even when they smell sort of bad.

I like that not only are they my people, but that also, I'm their person.

I like how much they love me and I like it when they say it at the most random of moments. I like it when they say "thank you" to a stranger.

I like it when I realize that there's no one in the world they want to be with at a certain given moment than me.

I like it when they laugh their belly laughs. (I also like jumping out at them and scaring the crap out of them. Call me a sicko, but there is nothing. funnier.) 

The list of things I like was different when they were babies (I liked it when they would sleep on my chest, I liked to carry them close, I liked the way when I put my finger on their hand while they were sleeping, their little hand would automatically close on mine and hold it tight) and I know it's going to be different as they grow. I know there are going to be dislikes, too, but I'm not going to borrow trouble by imagining what those might be. 

Most of all, I like being a parent even though I have no clue how I'm going to feel from one day to the next and even though the peeing on a stick, nausea and enforced sobriety/maturity did very little to prepare me for what was in store. And I like my kids. I think that helps a lot.