Suburban (in)Sanity

Depleted

A few mom friends and I took our kids to the pool yesterday, and while the kids alternately whined, begged for sodas, and occasionally got into the pool (mind you, these are all school-aged kids, grades 1 & up, not toddlers who you might be able to argue are entitled to a little whining around naptime) we moms got talking.

Mostly we whined, too. Was it our naptime? I think so.

But the consensus, the thesis of our whining was the same, even though we each had different complaints, different issues.

We're feeling depleted.

While musing over this as a blog topic, I came across this great post by WritRams about how elusive relaxation is.

You see, for the non-Stay at Home Parent, summer sounds like such fun. Trips to the pool, a relaxed schedule, playdates, parks, summer camp.

It does, doesn't it? Why then at the end of the summer do we feel more exhausted than ever? I think WritRams said it best with this:

When you give birth to a child, there’s some physiological change that takes place and  puts every single nerve ending in your body at attention…forever.

FOREVER. I've tried to explain this constant buzz of my attention to my husband at times. How being with the kids, even now that they are older (6.5 and almost 9) and very capable and very nice people...it's a drain on my mental resources. A constant little bit of me paying attention - even when asleep! When they're in the swimming pool it's like 95% of my brain processing power is focused on where they both are (at all times,) leaving me 5% for speech and autonomic functions like breathing and regulating heartbeat.

During the school year, I can at least let my guard down during the school day. Though, of course, not completely down. I have to keep an ear tuned for the phone (you know, like when the school secretary calls to tell you your child fell down on the playground and hurt his elbow but he seems just fine. Which actually happened. And the cast went from wrist to armpit. Four days before the start of summer. Not this summer, though, thankfully. And really he's completely fine. I didn't have a panic attack then, but I am damn sure to answer the phone whenever the school calls...)

But in the summer that buzz of attention is constant, and, as it turns out, exhausting!

The thing I feel most frustrated by right now, and this was echoed in my friends' reflections, is that I feel so depleted that the things that I can usually do to handle the everyday stuff that is part of being a mom are harder to do. It takes an enormous amount of creativity to parent, in my opinion, and creativity is almost impossible when feeling this way.

My friends feel like they are failing their kids. We moms never pass up an opportunity to apply guilt to ourselves.

So when I say that I'm ready for school to start next week, it's not because I'm tired of being with my kids (I'm not) or that I want the school to deal with their problems (there aren't any problems other than very normal sibling stuff) or that I just can't handle it (puh-lease.) It's because I want to get some of my focus and energy back, have a break from the constant monitoring I do so that I can let my mind relax even just a little bit, because in that relaxation is the creativity I need to effectively parent.

The mom angst that is so hard to explain

My husband and I celebrated our wedding anniversary this weekend (14 years, thank you very much. I am relatively sure there are people who attended our wedding who now owe us significant sums of cash, seeing as how we beat the over/under estimates on our relationship's duration...)

We had our usual dinner at this wonderful fondue place in Chicago called Geja's. We've anniversaried there since the first anniversary and it's always yummy. Our very awesome friends watched the kids for us, which amounted to a 22-hour playdate since the friends' kids are the same ages as ours. We stayed downtown at The Sutton Place, which was a lovely hotel and welcomed our furry four-footed friend (we don't have a simple way to handle overnights with the dog just yet, so for now she comes with us. Kind of silly, but it's also cute because people just fawn over her, she's pretty and unusual - most people haven't ever seen a whippet.)

The evening was lovely, the food excellent as always, drunk guy at the next table provided train-wreck style entertainment most of the evening, but I have this funk that I've been trying (and failing) to explain to my husband the last couple days.

I'm torn. I have such mixed feelings. I love love love downtown Chicago, with a passion I usually reserve for chocolate products. We used to live downtown. 

 

I loved living in the city, but similar to the way a pet looks at you when "it's time" and you know it's time to let go, when it was time for us to let go and move out of the city I was ready. It was time. It had something to do with not wanting our children to ask what the drug dealers on the street were doing, not wanting to put up with the challenges of raising a family in the crowds and chaos of the city, but also being closer to family, being able to have room to stretch, grow, breathe, dig in the dirt, learn to ride bikes. Something more similar to what both my husband and I had growing up.

And truly, we live in an amazing house, on a big 'ol plot of land with trees and a swingset and a brick paver patio and a crazy amount of wildflowers. We're doing our part to reforest and reprairie this little patch of former farmland. I'm not complaining about what I have, but what I haven't. 

We used to live downtown. Take the el everywhere. Eat out at non-chain restaurants on a regular basis. Meet friends for drinks on the spur of the moment. Bike to the lakefront. Get to be known at the neighborhood bar.

I don't miss being the young, childless person. That person isn't compatible with who I am now, but, well, yeah, I kind of miss being that childless person. It's a weird ache. A pining that makes no sense, because I really am content with my role as mom, and recognize already that as the kids grow up I am free to pursue and extend myself in ways I might not have anticipated (case in point, I didn't even know I wanted to BE a writer until the youngest was three, but now I can't really imagine a lot of other futures for me that don't include writing.) 

I know that this is just a period of time in my life. A waystation, a passing moment. This period of time where the primary thought that occupies most of my day is related to two small people who still rely on me for most things.

At the moment, though, this is my life. Some days it's hard to remember it won't always be this way.

And I wonder about that young, childless person. That idiotic girl. She was fun, but driven. She designed these great learning systems. Other people wanted to talk to her because she knew that style of design and was good at it. She had expertise.

Sure, I have quite a lot of expertise in many areas now - lego de-connecting and board-game-instruction-interpreting not the least of my newfound skills. I do a lot of grown-upish things now, too (breastfeeding counseling, working with the PA at the kids' school, other volunteer work, and paid contract work, too.)

But after a night downtown seeing all kinds of people who seem so much more fabulous than me, who seem occupied with things beyond legos and board games...I wonder, is this all I'm known for? Is it enough?

Hi, my name is Karen...

And I blog around here. And you are...?

You see, for ages it was just my three sisters reading my blog. No, mom doesn't read it even though one of aforementioned sisters helpfully created mom a launch page that comes up every time she starts her browser that includes links to her email webmail site, the grandkids' online picture sites, and of course her daughters blogs (there are several but I'm the only one actively blogging these days.)

But then I started connecting things up to facebook, and elsewhere (I cross-post on BlogHer, for example.)

And it turns out more than my 3 sisters read the blog. But...be honest, am I failing you? Do I forget to ask enough juicy questions? [1] Am I not that interesting? [2]

I'm not interested in the "they love me, they really love me" crap, but rather - what's up? How are things going for you? Are there specific things you like from my very random collection of thoughts I call a blog? Want more book reviews (careful what you wish for...)? Less? More early-mommy thoughts? More about the silly things the kids say and do? (like today when they just wouldn't quite casting the death spell on the babysitter, who would giggle back and cast Imobilus on them.)

I fear being redundant w/my facebook friend feed, but are all of us connected over there? (I'm Karen T. Smith on fb, but not sure how findable I am. I have to admit a certain love of the anonymity being a Smith lends oneself online.) Should I cross-post more? Less? Stop asking you these annoying questions because you just LOVE being an online lurker and wish people would *stop looking at you right now*?

[1] I really hate the blogs that seem to intentionally write incendiary posts or ask inflammatory questions just to get people starting a firestorm in the comments. That's very much Not My Style and I will wield my Comment Instrument of Death[TM] to rain destruction upon any who choose to have a spaz in my comments. Just so you know.

[2] Er...why are you still reading?

The wayback machine

I'm considering a move to a Wordpress blog, so I've been tinkering with a blog import and checking things out over there (more on whether I will actually move this blog later, after I've had the chance to really test things out.)

Because of this, though, I've dug back through and been reading my own archives. Do you ever go back and read something you wrote 3 or 4 years ago and wonder where that you went? I mean, gosh, I'm OLD now. Yikes. And my kids, ancient! They dress themselves. And bathe! (truthfully, I help with hair washing still.) But they speak in full sentences and can be directed to do something and somewhat reliably do it. It's a little crazy to read about some of my early blog musings about chasing around the Human Mexican Jumping Bean, or the crazy set of treasures my then-3 year old would deliver to me at my desk. They're real PEOPLE now. With opinions, and emotions, and thoughts of their own and everything! And I'm...older. Better, surely, but most days right now I simply feel older.

But meanwhile, the gem that came up in my walk down the rabbit hole was from a December 2005 post, My Designer Jeans have Faded Knees. It featured this particular quote that is so appropriate as I contemplate aging, lo here on the eve (well, a month away) from my next older sister's 40th bday.

"I can't quite figure out how to move past the days of my youth without falling into fuddy duddy.

Sad to say I still haven't worked this one out.

Teleport This

I'm the at-home parent right now. I haven't always been (we haven't always had an at-home parent...) but it's true today, it's true now. If you've read my blog before perhaps you've sensed some of the disorientation and conflicted feelings that come with the territory? Perhaps you're in a similar boat? (or wish to be.)

It's odd, because I'm so at-peace with this decision (being at home) but yet I feel the pressure, the need to contribute economically. Some of it is external, but I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge that some of it is internal.

The logic goes something like this: After all, I am the primary money drain. As the at-home parent, I spend most of the money. Groceries, clothes and shoes for me and the kids, activities fees, eating out, school uniforms, vet bills.

Well, and I have rather expensive taste in technology. Eep.

Yet I see the dilemmas faced by my working friends every single day. The string of babysitters or day-care centers, some more competent than others, the panic related to an unexpected case of strep, the desire to avoid having everyone in the office know you're working from home yet again, the scared feeling in the pit of your stomach when you're late to pick up the kids...again, the pained conversations with spouse whose job is even less flexible than yours, or the intricate dance that divorced friends execute between custody, job, and childcare.

I don't pine for any of that. I'm grateful for the opportunity to be at home, even if it's a kind of begrudging choice based on scheduling impossibilities and a lack of opportunities and quite a lot of reluctance on my part.

Yet I feel like I should work, and I would like the validation on my contribution to the human race that a "regular" job would provide. Because as much as answering the eleventy billion questions my kids pose daily and driving from here to beyond and back every day for their activities is validating, it's not a particularly tangible validation.

Don't get me wrong. It's important to be here, to be witness to this childhood period for them. To be available to listen in, and contribute to conversations about the stories we're reading, listen to them talk about what interests them, being here to answer their questions. It's validating to feed them, to know that I'm helping them grow, to know that I'm teaching them important life skills by teaching them how to cook, giving them increased responsibilities at home, taking them to the bank to open savings accounts (another post for that topic!)

Even as the at-home parent, though, it's hard to let go of the concept of measurable job performance (which the consultant in me is laughing at, because of course this is something that most of my clients through the years have been miserable at defining, horrible at recognizing, and almost never rewarding based on actual measurable job performance metrics!) Productivity measures like to-do list items crossed off, accomplishments achieved, goals reached, tasks completed. It's hard to get full credit for your day when the main accomplishment was coming out alive with two small people in your charge.

But even now as I'm trying to live in the moment (something I've asked of myself this summer, because I have to have goals...) I still have my goals for the day, and a constant stream of disappointment as it continues to take me three times as long as even my most conservative gannt chart estimates to accomplish the simplest of tasks.

It would help if I had a teleporter, definitely.

Hand me the remote

Do you ever see your life on fast-forward?

Is it the changing of the seasons? The end of the school year? Something about this time of year has always gotten under my skin and made me feel...weird.

I remember feeling this way even in childhood, which I look back on now with a growing sense of looking through the wrong end of a telescope.

That metaphor works so well for me, because it's how I feel about my children's baby years. I remember certain episodes, and have video and photographs to prompt my memory, but most of it is a distant "hmm, is that how that worked?" or "how did we spend our time, exactly?" (truthfully, my husband and I talk about BK - Before Kids - in the same way. "Really, we would just grocery shop, putter in the garden, and then go out with friends on Saturdays? That's ALL?")

And now, the kids getting bigger, older, more capable...and seeing all the high school kids around town, I have this sense that it's just one more blink and those tall, fit, driving children will be mine. And then?

Honestly, why am I worried about this at all? I'm still needed for vitamin dispensing and tooth brushing reminding and carting to and fro and playdate arranging and lunch making (sometimes) and...

This phase will be over before I can finish thinking about it, just as the baby years are distant now, too.

And then?

Blogging is funny

So I've been blogging on and off for the Flash Fiction magazine I am a staff reader for (more off than on, but as inspiration strikes...) and I have submitted a few of my posts about the OLPC to OLPCNews.com and Wayan (the site owner) has been kind enough to post them there. But the funny thing is, I don't really think about how people come to my blog. Frankly the four readers I have are all related to me (or really good friends, thanks Shelly!) so I just didn't think about it. But then yesterday there were comments that were sortof out of left field that I wasn't expecting. I tried to figure out this blog software's tracking but that was an exercise in futility, so I just chalked it up to one of those things. And then I discovered that Wayan posted ANOTHER of my bits on OLPCNews and linked straight here blog to this post. Ah, the mystery guests (welcome!) all makes sense now. So then I had to do some googlesurfing to figure it out, and interestingly my blog is there, out for the whole world to see. I better shape up, eh?