Not long ago, our 9-year-old neighbor put me on the spot. She was asking whether Dave was back from his business travel (she walks J to the bus stop on the mornings Dave is out of town, thereby saving me packing up the other bros to join us), and stumbled trying to refer to Dave:
“Is Mr. — is your– is Dave– is… What should I call him?”
I was stumped. In my haste to not confuse her with my own confusion, I told her to refer to Dave as “Mr. [Last Name],” but immediately regretted it. Sure enough, when I talked about it with Dave, he was almost offended that I would suggest our kid’s friend refer to him as though he was some stodgy, adult-adjacent parent.
But seriously: what’s the convention for this nowadays??
Mr. and Mrs. [Last Name] feels far too formal to me — my imposter syndrome flares up immediately with a reminder that I still choose chapstick over lipstick and therefore cannot possibly be an adult on par with my friends’ parents [Mr. and Mrs. Last Names] growing up yet.
Ms. Kel and Mr. Dave feels more comfortable, but are we confusing things when we create a casual way of speaking to adults and then expect these same kids to refer to their kindergarten teachers and Mr. or Mrs. [Last Names] as a sign of respect? After all, even if that same teacher is 8-10 years younger than me, and even if her position on the chapstick vs lipstick scale is unknown, we are big into respect for teachers around here.
Please weigh in with opinions. School is out this week and therefore my focus group of adults (the bus stop parents) is unavailable to survey.
This is a picture of my sons’ laundry basket. Partially full. Outside. Unattended. At 7:30am. Drenched in just-above-freezing rain.
What is it doing here?
Ladies & gentleman: the hidden cost of having a large family.
When people talk theoretically about having more kids, the “cost” is generally associated with financial demands of childcare/future education, or finite time resources divided among additional small humans.
To illustrate the point, a few examples of where so much of my time goes each day (as in, there is not a day where these things don’t come up):
- Time spent cutting food into small pieces for people who can otherwise not manage the mechanics of a knife.
- Time spent turning small articles of clothing rightside-in, and/or extracting small pairs of undies from inside-out pants in the laundry, and/or checking small tags on clothes to determine what size these indistinguishably generic pair of elastic-waisted jeans are.
- Time spent manually drying the small, plastic plates and cups that come out of the dishwasher and are — without fail — still damp.
But there’s a hidden cost of having a large family. This cost is the increase in variables that can upend the delicate system that is life with a young family.
Case in point: 11pm Tuesday found me standing in pajamas and slippers in my driveway, shaking out the chunks from my 2 year old’s bedding after he woke up vomiting. I managed to get 2 full loads washed during the wee hours while both O (4) & A (2) were up and down sick, but I’ll be honest: after the second load, I had to wonder what their daycare fed them that was so pink. You know you’re in a miserable spot when you look for the silver lining and think “at least it’s above freezing tonight.”
Fast forward to the morning. Dave, O, and A are still sleeping fitfully on the bathroom floor after having burned through every throw blanket and spare bedding set in our house. I get J up and ready for school, C up and ready for daycare, and go to load them in the car. In the process, I spot the hamper I evidently left outside, partially full with now saturated clothes. I bring it in, wash up the clothes in one of the many other loads run throughout the day, drive the boys to the bus/daycare, and continue on my workday in a sleep-deprived fog with my 2- and 4-year-olds sporadically scurrying across the background of my video calls.
All this to say: it’s a good thing they’re cute, because the more adorable little monsters you have, the higher the likelihood your day gets turned on its head hours before it even begins.
Every year for Valentine’s Day, I gift Dave a “Day of Dave” to redeem during the year. Dave tends to wait until the last moment to cash in, so yesterday we went out for Valentine’s Day 2021. The premise of Day of Dave is that we do anything Dave wants to do for an entire day. 10+ years ago, it involved elaborate breakfasts, leisurely progressive dinners, full-body massages, tech shopping, or binge watching the movies he otherwise could not convince me to view.
We had children, and the indulgent spirit of the day drastically declined changed. This year, for instance, Day of Dave meant he got to sleep in (at least, past 7), he almost got time to himself while I took 3 boys on a slow-paced jaunt to the store (unfortunately the 4th boy wouldn’t nap so “alone time” became “alone +1,” which is still a relative improvement, I guess?), & we all went to dinner at Dave’s favorite restaurant: Pizza House in Ann Arbor.
I snagged this picture as Dave was looking at the menu on his phone. Our eldest, picking his nose. Our second-born, off-camera under the table, excitedly popping up to show us all the “old food” he was finding. Our third, actively trying to climb into the booth of the people next to us, while loudly singing “Do You Know the Muffin Man” to them. And our youngest, tired from his projectile vomiting episode in the car as we parked to come in, causing us to have to postpone our reservation, strip him of his butternut-squash-soaked layers, zip into campus, and buy him new clothes to wear to dinner.
In our defense, we are all out of practice after 2 years of exceedingly few experiences dining out. Irrespective of that, however, it was a bit of a mess. By the time we got home, put the boys to bed, and cleaned up the disaster C left in the car, it was all we could do to pour ourselves a couple of drinks and watch the most mindless Netflix show we could find.
So why is it that I woke up today feeling a renewed and profound appreciation for our marriage? Is it because this man I married always makes me feel like I’m enough for him, even when I am so mentally tapped out that I can barely eke out an itinerary of fun on a day that’s specifically meant to be special for him? Is it because there’s something instinctually, fundamentally satisfying about celebrating our love for each other with the children we created together? Is it because the trenches of life with small children create new and surprising bonds between partners, whereby you thank your lucky stars that the handsome guy who was so witty and social in college is also an absolute champion at changing an infant out of vomit-soaked layers without letting the pooled liquid drip onto the upholstery?
It’s probably a combination of all of that, but regardless of the rose-tinted day after, let the record show: next year for Day of Dave, we will hire a sitter when we go to dinner.
Is there any amount of context that could make these make sense?
*****
J: if I ever get a hippo, I’m naming it Kel.
January 2022, 6 years old
*****
Me, shouting from the upstairs hallway, at 7am: is this an empty bag of hot dogs?? Boys, where did all the uncooked hot dogs go??
*****
Dave: is this how you always imagined motherhood would be?
Me: honestly, I grossly underestimated the amount Scatman would be involved.
3 of my favorites:
FAMOUS
Naomi Shihab Nye
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.
The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.
The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.
The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.
The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.
I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
FOR MY DAUGHTER ON A BAD DAY
Kate Baer
Life will rough you up. Throw you to the
shore like a wave crashing– sand in your
hair, blood in your teeth. When grief sits
with you, hand dipped with rage, let it
linger. Hold its pulse in your hands. There
is no remedy for a bad haircut or ruined
love like time. Even when death is coming,
even when the filth rises in the back of
your throat–
this is not the worst of it. And if it is?
Listen for the catbird calling. No matter
the wreckage, they still sing for you.
IF—
Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
ALTERNATIVE TITLE: MY RETURN TO WORK.
I’ve been back at work for 9 business days now. This includes:
- — 41 hours spent on video calls or in-person meetings — compared to my daily 18 minutes of adult interaction at the bus stop
- — 3 x meetings with video off while pumping after they were scheduled directly on top of my “DNS – Mother’s Room” holds
- — 2 x alarms set for 5:45 on the days Dave was traveling and I had to get boys up, dressed, fed, and in the car to drive to the bus at 7:30, to get to daycare drop-off before 8, to hit the road in time to be at a 9am meeting in the office — my first time there since we were sent home in March 2020
Fast forward to tonight. I went out to a fantastic dinner with a couple of girl friends and they were asking about the transition back. Here’s what I told them:
Let’s not bury the lede. I am so happy to be back. I am excited for the new role I accepted after interviewing during my leave. I am humbled by my new team’s culture of support and resilience in difficult times for our industry, and the clear commitment to our relationships with our clients. I am beyond energized to work with my new boss — a powerhouse aerospace engineer turned product designer turned business leader and all-around wonderful person. I am grateful to have genuinely interesting anecdotes and interpersonal updates to tell Dave as we prep dinner. I can almost physically see the mental growth happening as I’m challenged to soak up all the content being thrown at me and contextualize it in meaningful ways. All that said…
Clearly I need to re-build my mental stamina because:
- Two nights this week I went to bed shortly after 8 and fell asleep with the lights on and book-in-hand because my brain was evidently just waiting till it was safe to fully check-out.
- It’s hard to confidently take on the the day when you hear yourself say things like, “sorry; he’s cranky because he’s been up since 5” to the daycare teacher during a teary 8am drop-off, knowing full well that means you will be starting your work day having already been awake and “on” for 4 hours.
- The waiter handed me my bill tonight on a small tray, with a polished, brown stone serving as a paperweight. I thanked him and immediately tried to take a bite of the stone, assuming it must be some small chocolate dessert.
All this to say, I guess I’ll be prioritizing sleep and not much else in the coming weeks.
