Real life started before I was ready. I sort of knew it was happening, but I think I thought it was one of those things where the car next to you is rolling backwards a little and so it looks like you’re moving forward but you know you really aren’t? Except I was.
I think my generation might be more self-conscious than most, in a big general oh my god everyone-will-find-out sort of way. We grew up watching sitcoms and after-school specials where ordinary life was framed with heart-tugging guitar chords and poignant ironic consequences. We saw the birth of talk shows, reality shows, 24-hour sensationalist news. Therapy and dealing with personal issues stopped being a taboo topic. Movies, songs, books, everything had a way of reminding us that little things matter. Other generations had what? Saturday Night Fever? See, that there is a generation that wasn’t worried about their narrative.
Everything I do is part of my only-ever life.
Which you would think would make me run out and try to climb all the mountains and save all the children and become CEO of everything, but no. It’s not ambition. It’s a simple awareness that this is my actual life, and every day is part of the whole story. One day it might turn out to be important, it probably won’t, but it matters because it’s mine.
Does this make sense? I meet people who live life without ever thinking about this. They just do what needs to get done, no self-consciousness, no worry that they aren’t taking their story in the direction they want it to go. Those people seem very unburdened. Luckies.
Where I’m going with all of this is: think about your childhood. The word childhood is so much more than a handy way to mark time, especially in the era of childhood-worshiping Baby on Board stickers and Disneyland and diaper commercials that remind us that childhood is valuable and critical and magical, so don’t blow it by buying inferior pee-pants. Marketers are rat bastards for saying so, but they do have a point: childhood matters a bunch. Every person uses their impression of their own childhood to create the foundation of the story of themselves. It’s where you get the mythology of who you are and who you have to be and what you have to act like when things are exciting or disappointing or really, really hard to do.
So now I am a grown up. I think about my childhood in a thousand little ways every day, without even realizing. I’ll eat strawberries and remember hot summers and cold strawberries mushing into blobs of powdered sugar. I’ll hear cicadas and remember that sound echoing all up and down the street because the day was over, it was time to find my jelly shoes in the grass and ride my bike home before the sun went behind that one line of trees. I remember walking my baby brother and showing him flowers and teaching him the word pretty. I think about staying up late on a school night drawing a silohuette of a deer in the woods, sitting at a low table and working on it until my knees and legs were so stiff it hurt to stand up. I remember my fears, my stresses, my shyness.
And now I am a mother. It all goes around again, new batch of childhoods.
We mess up a lot. When Nicolaus and Graham are in their 20s they will tell their friends that oh my god my parents used to do this and this and that and the house was always messy and we had to make our own lunches and this one time my mom made a big deal about taking us to the new Lakeshore store and we went there and it hadn’t opened yet and then a homeless lady harrassed us in the parking lot and it was weird.
We are bad at potty training. We are bad at consistent schedules, bedtimes, and remembering to give allowances. We spend too much time in the car. We eat out too much. Maybe I spend too much time with them. And not enough. I’m disengaged, on the phone, working on drawings, packing orders. I’m too involved, too over protective, too fussy about what they eat. How can I seriously worry about high fructose corn syrup going into a kid who eats boogers?
Tonight the power went out during a big thunderstorm while Graham was in the bathroom. It took us a minute to feel our way across the house and by the time we got there with a flashlight (okay, an iPhone) he was so scared that he was sobbing and couldn’t stop. Will he remember it? Should we help him forget it? Or maybe life needs emotional experiences like that to help mark out the days?
I know I sound exactly like the naval-gazing, horrible child-obsessed mommybloggers that the New York Times says will ruin a generation. But how can I help it? Whether I pay attention to it or not, all of these days, toys, games, arguments, injuries, stories, baths, dinners, gardens, errands, outings, road trips, pets… it’s all their real, actual childhood and if I think about it too much I start hyperventilating and calling 911 to say hi, I have an emergency, my child is seven and has never played any team sport. And this is Georgia right so they wouldn’t consider it a frivolous 911 call. They would say “Just hold on, we are sending help RIGHT NOW. Please try to stay calm and try to keep your son as still as possible until the coaches arrive to show him which thing you bat with and which thing you use to catch.”
Of course whether we get it all right or all wrong doesn’t matter. It’s their story, and they are sketching the outline of it every day. We have no control over the way they remember it later on. Will they remember only the days when I was cranky and frazzled and couldn’t get them to class on time because I locked my keys in the car but didn’t know they were in the car so I spent an hour stomping around like dumbzilla RAWR I SUCK AT STUFF upturning furniture and emptying drawers and CAN’T FIND KEYS and retracing my stomping steps through the apartment over and over? Or will they remember finding a giant limb in the back yard and draping sheets over it to make a fort, and eating strawberries, and laughing at their hilarious parents’ hilarious jokes? Will they be glad that we homeschooled? Will they be grateful for our choices, or resentful? We can’t know.
So we hedge our bets and try to just do our best with the energy that we have on any given day. And we make sure we are honest: Some lucky people have perfect parents but you don’t. All you got is regular messy humans who think you are the coolest thing they’ve ever made.
So yeah. That’s part of why I keep this blog. It’s something the boys can read later to fill in the details and to support whatever conclusions they have come to about their childhood. Hi, now-grown kids! We did our best. Sorry and also, you’re welcome.
Cripes, that should have only been a third that long. Sorry. I did warn you that this might happen once I was back to drinking tea and pepsi.
Tiffany, I love this. I know you didn’t write it for me ::g:: but thank you.
Well said. I hadn’t really started to think about this yet since Pie is only 4 months old, but I’m going to go find a paper bag and hide under my desk for awhile now…
Yeah, isn’t it like 4 in the morning for you? I like this – it’s like an apology, but long and really funny. An aside: what if they do with the internet what they did with 8 Tracks and POOF one day it just will have been updated to cassette and your kids are only like 10 and 6? I worry about this sometimes. Do you print out your blog posts and put them in a book or something?
Ummm. If it makes you feel any better, I feel that way all the time. About both my “important life” (Gah) and how my kids will think about their childhoods.
>How can I seriously worry about high fructose corn syrup going into a kid who eats boogers?
Yeah but … we’ve evolved for hecka long with that booger eating. HFCS, I dunno…
I am very sad about some of my inadequacies as a parent. And thrilled about the good parts.
When I had my first child I asked the mom of the best (most interesting, most engaged) young adults I knew what the secret of being a good parent is. She said, “You do the best you can every day, then move on without guilt.” Best secret ever. You’re doing a great job, Tiffany.
Hahaha Sue, that is very true!
Heather, glad I’m not the only one. :-)
Sally, internet must always exist! I’ll die without it! There is a way to turn entire blogs into PDF. I think there’s also a service that will print and bind your blog for ya… mine would be a hefty volume though.
By the way you guys, doesn’t matter much but I just edited the whole post a bit — normally I don’t but this one was pretty rough. Long day, late night. I forgot I’d even posted it until I woke up and found new comments.
I just wanted to tell you that this might be one of my favorite posts on your blog ever. And that’s saying something considering how much I like your blog and how long I’ve been reading it. You wrote a lot of stuff I need to stop and remember – especially about living life now. I tend to get so caught up in the next week, next month, next year stuff. And the apology/you’re welcome to the kiddos is perfect. For what it’s worth I think you’re doing an incredible job with those boys and you know exactly what they need (or are faking it really well). :)
Aw, Nina that means a lot — you know me so well. I forget that people from real life read this stuff.
We are coming to Texas sooooon!! :-)
I have 6 kids, 24, 22 21 and 9, 8 and 6. The grown up kids are FABULOUS, let me tell you…those 3 kids went through hell, their dad left when they were babies, raised by a single mum for 10 years, one had epilepsy, 2 were abducted from right outside my house by a recently released pedophile…even with those nightmares they turned out good, I am not a supermum, I am ordinary and stumbled my wat through their childhoods, doing what I could as best as I could and they are the most glorious, well adjusted, happy, hilarious adults. All you have to do is love them, be consistant and at times so tough it really DOES hurt you more than them. Being a mother of adults is SO splendid.
This is the first time I’ve been to your blog, via a link in my twitter feed, but I have to comment to tell you this post has me in tears. Good ones. I’ve had a very difficult week, parenting-wise, and I needed something just exactly like this. I have felt like the worst mom ever multiple times this week, and it’s a relief even to know that other people feel like they are faking all this stuff too, other people who are good parents and love their kids and screw up sometimes. Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you.
Aside from the absolute necessity that children know without a doubt that they are loved and they are fairly sure that a reasonably competent person or two will act in their best interest from time to time the rest is just details.
[...] blog entry today talking about how our parenting decisions may or may not affect our children. You need to read it…NOW. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Of course whether we get it all right or all wrong doesn’t matter. [...]
I am childfree, but heartily believe that living your life in a conscious and self-concious way makes you more generous, more loving, more living than not. And those luckies? They also don’t have a radio station in their heads, and won’t know what to do if their one thing doesn’t work out and they get bored all the time. Or they even forget to get bored.
Not knowing if you’re doing it well enough is a sure sign that you’re doing great.
You’re doing it all right. And yes, your kids will hate you at times, even if you’re perfect, maybe because you’re perfect. And they’ll still love strawberries with powdered sugar on them because who doesn’t?
With much warmth from this side of the globe (Chile).
E
Miss Zoot brought me here and I am glad she did – I love this post. It is how I ALWAYS feel. For instance, I can see their little faces looking at me with horror when I get mad and yet I cannot stop and in the back of my mind I am thinking ‘OMG, they are SO going to tell their therapist about this moment one day… SHUT THE EFF UP!’
Wow. A+ post.
“And now I am a mother. It all goes around again, new batch of childhoods.”
Yes, but it’s interesting to think about it in the big grand scheme of TIME and see it as the beginning of their story but also, just as importantly (?), the continuation of yours. Your mention of the “child-obsessed” has me pondering the value we place on our own experience during these middle-ish years and how much we defer to the almightiness of the childhood experience (of our children).
I know this is almost a cliche women’s lib thing, the idea of a woman tossing her worth out the window to slave away at home. That’s not really what I mean. I mean allowing ourselves to digest and own all of our experiences as ours rather than constantly rating the level of service we’re providing our kids, on a more internal, introverted level.
I am kid free, but damn lady this post made me misty.
You and your family are eight kinds of awesome, and yes, Graham may one day recount to his therapist that he is afraid of toilets because of that one time…but the rest will stay too. Just like with mine, and your parents, there is the good mixed right in with some of the crazy and it’s all good. It really is.
Ok, I just got through crying my eyes out, (in a good way). You are such an awesome writer. Those memories were so real that they took me right back to those times. I feel better knowing that there are some things that we did okay on. You know, parents are never sure. I love you and your boys so much! :) And never stop writing!
really well put, Tiffany.
and shane has never played a team sport either.
Thank you. I’m a soon-to-be first-time mother (who…apparently loves hyphens) and have been dealing with my own issues about the way my own life is going. To be fair, it’s really ok. It’s just not…CEO of everything, and lately that’s been bothering me, exacerbated by the knowledge that I’ll soon be raising another human and oh NOES! What if their life doesn’t turn out to be the dream world of magic I’m pressured into creating for them?
And then I read this, and I took a deep breath, and remembered that my childhood was amazing. Not because my parents were perfect, but because they did (and still do) love me. And at the end of the day, that’s what matters.
Zoot sent me here and I am glad that she did. Your post is beautifully written.
I remember my childhood as being simple, fun, messy and exciting yet my mum often reflects that see felt like we were over-committed and she was out of her depth, much like I feel these days. I hope that one day my kids will be able to look back and say that they had fun growing up, that they had fantastic adventures despite the injuries and emotional agony that may accompany it.
Oh and I read a re-tweet earlier with one of the best quotes I have read in a long time,
How can I seriously worry about high fructose corn syrup going into a kid who eats boogers?
Awesome
I love to read your posts like this, especially since I think I am the only crazy one who has all these thoughts in my head. (not saying you are crazy though!)
I just found your blog today and read all the way through the birth of your first child. I am 11 weeks pregnant with our first child and really appreciated your honesty.
Again, I will say it: Makes me feel less crazy to know what other people go through! Thanks!
I wanted to say that it’s good to know that someone else also talked about this as I had trouble finding the same info elsewhere. This was the first place that told me the answer.And Witten its in good detail Thanks. so much
hey blogmeister! Tolle Heimseite hast du hier! Hat nicht jedermann!