I’ve discovered a new blog that I really like and I hope the author keeps writing. I know Rob because he was our amazing photographer for our wedding—I didn’t know he was also a gifted writer.
He posted something on Saturday that got me thinking back on what it was like for me raising children. Being a stay-at-home dad, he deals with a sense of isolation and a lack of understanding from those who choose differently. I get that because I stayed home with my own sons when that option was frowned on by a lot of society, especially other women. So even though the reason for why I felt like an oddity wasn’t due to my gender, in a way it was.
He also wrote about the idea of when things will get better, about looking forward to an easier time. His examples were all ones I got: when the baby walks, goes to pre-school and so on. I experienced it in a little bit different way, probably because I’m such an impatient woman.
All my life I looked ahead to the next milestone: when I turned 16 and got my license I loved dangling those car keys as I ran errands for my mother. Look at me, those keys said, I’m 16 and can drive! But I couldn’t vote yet, nor buy alcohol and so I didn’t really stay in that enjoyment of hitting a major teen milestone. Even as I dangled the keys, I was thinking ahead to the next one: being a junior, a senior, graduating, maybe college. Anything but where I was right then.
When I turned 21, I happened to also be eight months pregnant and staying with my folks (my ex and I were stationed in Germany but didn’t want our child born there). So sure, I went out and bought liquor (as I recall it was a giant bottle of some cheap Gallo red for my mother), but even though I got carded (Yay! I'm 21!) I was too busy looking ahead to the next milestone of having that baby.
And then I had the baby and suddenly my life was full of upcoming milestones: sleeping through the night (a very long time in coming, like over a year), the first tooth (way too early at three and a half months), rolling over (six months), standing (six months—he was in a hurry too I guess), walking (eight months) and so on.
In my mid-30s, my life changed dramatically and I was forced to stop doing, doing, doing and just start being. That process lasted about three years and at the end of it without trying, I had changed fundamentally. I was still a goal-oriented woman, absolutely. But I had learned to live fully in the moment. I was present, fully present, for the first time in my life.
My son Ben likes to give me a hard time because he says I tell a lot of stories from when he and his brother were young. He’s right, I do. And I think reading Rob’s blog helped me piece together why I do that. I’m not actually interested in living in the past, not at all. I have a very good present, the best I could ever imagine having—and yes that’s even with the job loss, the floods and how unfriendly I find Boston. But telling those stories is the only way I have to be present in my own past.
So Ben will have to endure the stories, even when I repeat them. He and Jordan were really neat kids and I like remembering that. I wish I had been present then when they were little, but I wasn’t. I was too busy looking ahead. I’m present now in the only way I can be.
3 comments:
I thought it was having small children that taught me to be present...but maybe it was getting to my thirties just then?
And I thought it was my own situation in my mid-30s that taught me but maybe the key is reaching the mid-30s?
This is great! I'm a sucker (or slave, one of the two) for milestones. They really tend to drag me down because I keep thinking ahead to the next one ... not so much because I think back, but because I think ahead to the "next big thing."
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