Warning: You may want to get comfortable before reading -- this is long and rambling. Also, please don't break out your MLA guidebook. There are more run-on sentences in here than I care to correct. Plus, if I put periods in how could I ask people to hold on while I just finish this one sentence?
John was out the other night and with the surprising occurrence of promptly-asleep kids (what? where? how'd that happen?), I got the chance to watch movies that would hold absolutely no interest for him (yes, that was plural. I love me some cinema). Cate Blanchett was stellar in Blue Jasmine and I sat there feeling very uncomfortable for an hour and a half while she nailed her performance. And then I decided I had had enough feeling awkward sitting in my own living room. By myself. I eventually felt awkward feeling awkward. So I remedied that by watching Enough Said. Julia Louis Dreyfus could make me cry with laughter at a toilet paper commercial. Seriously, I may have been the last remaining viewer of New Adventures of Old Christine before they cancelled it and I loved it until the very end. And Seinfeld's genius obviously goes without saying. She easily ranks in the top ten of my favorite funny people (which is, maybe not surprisingly, very heavily represented by woman... Chris Rock and Jimmy Fallon might be only men residing in there... anyhoo, enough of my strangeness... wait, who I am kidding, you're going to get a whole lot more of my strange and not-relevant commentary). And while she was funny and witty in this movie (naturally) she also delivered a very poignant performance. Watching it made me sit with the discordant feelings of honoring the sometimes-difficult present reality of where my children are in their growing-up journey (mostly, in this instance, of the internal begging that I do to "please go to sleep on time every night and not get out of bed 43 times for water, to pee, to let me know that there is a radio tower 10 miles away from your window") and looking ahead to those moments in the future when I walk down the hall and their bedrooms are empty. I do a mostly-good job living in the moment and carpe diem-ing things. But I wonder if I'm doing the myself a disservice by not wallowing in the future more often. I think letting myself wallow would allow me to reframe some of the challenging moments that I currently experience because I'll most certainly wish to have back some of that time back down the road. Does that make any sense? I both celebrate and am terrified of the day that they no longer live here. Of the day when they don't want me to check on them 30 seconds after turning out their light. Of the night when I go to sleep and they're not even home yet. Of not hearing their elephant feet pitter pattering down the hall (no, you're not quiet, kid. The neighborhood knows when you've sneaked out of your room) to read by the light of the nightlight in bathroom. I know, of course, that these "challenging" moments will phase out gradually and that I'll have the opportunity to adjust to each stage as it comes. But still, it's hard sometimes to reconcile what I, frankly, find difficult now with what I know I'll miss when it's gone. Why will I miss annoying pee breaks and responding to "irrational" fears 45 times in a row? I don't really know but I will. So, as much as I want the bed time routine to be just that -- routine, I also got one of those heart-swelling reminders the other night to savor these little people and their littleness all day and night long. The how of that remains tricky... nighttime is where I know I completely lack patience and understanding and pretty much get a D- in "parenting effectively", so this is an interesting work in progress for me. And while I don't believe in letting the future paralyze the present, I'm still left sitting here with conflicting emotions induced by soaking up the joy of today, acknowledging my limitations, and giving a tiny little bit real estate to the future. And there again, I guess, we come back to parenting lesson #1 -- it's hard, confounding work AND it's completely worth it. Ultimately, simply by recognizing that those bedrooms will be empty someday, it enhances the current. It makes those nights of being kicked in the head (and back and face and arms -- seriously, how do these tiny humans take up so.much.space?) or having a repeated visitor on the steps or hearing moooooooo-ooooooooom yelled for the 1,000th time a smidge more tolerable (sometimes). I may not like the WWF being reenacted while I'm trying to sleep, but I like what it represents -- that I am in the heyday of young kids. Just like those early sleep-deprived days of infancy have been reduced to a blink of an eye and I view them through nostalgic lenses, these difficult times too shall pass and but the joy of their littleness will be distilled and preserved. So bring on the future so that I can appropriately savor today.
John was out the other night and with the surprising occurrence of promptly-asleep kids (what? where? how'd that happen?), I got the chance to watch movies that would hold absolutely no interest for him (yes, that was plural. I love me some cinema). Cate Blanchett was stellar in Blue Jasmine and I sat there feeling very uncomfortable for an hour and a half while she nailed her performance. And then I decided I had had enough feeling awkward sitting in my own living room. By myself. I eventually felt awkward feeling awkward. So I remedied that by watching Enough Said. Julia Louis Dreyfus could make me cry with laughter at a toilet paper commercial. Seriously, I may have been the last remaining viewer of New Adventures of Old Christine before they cancelled it and I loved it until the very end. And Seinfeld's genius obviously goes without saying. She easily ranks in the top ten of my favorite funny people (which is, maybe not surprisingly, very heavily represented by woman... Chris Rock and Jimmy Fallon might be only men residing in there... anyhoo, enough of my strangeness... wait, who I am kidding, you're going to get a whole lot more of my strange and not-relevant commentary). And while she was funny and witty in this movie (naturally) she also delivered a very poignant performance. Watching it made me sit with the discordant feelings of honoring the sometimes-difficult present reality of where my children are in their growing-up journey (mostly, in this instance, of the internal begging that I do to "please go to sleep on time every night and not get out of bed 43 times for water, to pee, to let me know that there is a radio tower 10 miles away from your window") and looking ahead to those moments in the future when I walk down the hall and their bedrooms are empty. I do a mostly-good job living in the moment and carpe diem-ing things. But I wonder if I'm doing the myself a disservice by not wallowing in the future more often. I think letting myself wallow would allow me to reframe some of the challenging moments that I currently experience because I'll most certainly wish to have back some of that time back down the road. Does that make any sense? I both celebrate and am terrified of the day that they no longer live here. Of the day when they don't want me to check on them 30 seconds after turning out their light. Of the night when I go to sleep and they're not even home yet. Of not hearing their elephant feet pitter pattering down the hall (no, you're not quiet, kid. The neighborhood knows when you've sneaked out of your room) to read by the light of the nightlight in bathroom. I know, of course, that these "challenging" moments will phase out gradually and that I'll have the opportunity to adjust to each stage as it comes. But still, it's hard sometimes to reconcile what I, frankly, find difficult now with what I know I'll miss when it's gone. Why will I miss annoying pee breaks and responding to "irrational" fears 45 times in a row? I don't really know but I will. So, as much as I want the bed time routine to be just that -- routine, I also got one of those heart-swelling reminders the other night to savor these little people and their littleness all day and night long. The how of that remains tricky... nighttime is where I know I completely lack patience and understanding and pretty much get a D- in "parenting effectively", so this is an interesting work in progress for me. And while I don't believe in letting the future paralyze the present, I'm still left sitting here with conflicting emotions induced by soaking up the joy of today, acknowledging my limitations, and giving a tiny little bit real estate to the future. And there again, I guess, we come back to parenting lesson #1 -- it's hard, confounding work AND it's completely worth it. Ultimately, simply by recognizing that those bedrooms will be empty someday, it enhances the current. It makes those nights of being kicked in the head (and back and face and arms -- seriously, how do these tiny humans take up so.much.space?) or having a repeated visitor on the steps or hearing moooooooo-ooooooooom yelled for the 1,000th time a smidge more tolerable (sometimes). I may not like the WWF being reenacted while I'm trying to sleep, but I like what it represents -- that I am in the heyday of young kids. Just like those early sleep-deprived days of infancy have been reduced to a blink of an eye and I view them through nostalgic lenses, these difficult times too shall pass and but the joy of their littleness will be distilled and preserved. So bring on the future so that I can appropriately savor today.
1 comment:
Love this post. All so true and perfectly spoken.
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