Contradictions

I wake up every morning thinking, “Today, I will be more patient,” but it takes thirty seconds for me to say no three times, to hear the tone, the cadence, and sometimes, the voice of my parents coming out of somewhere deep in me that I thought no longer was there. It is barely 7 am and I have failed in my purpose. No enterprise makes you feel like a failure more than parenting.

When I was childless, I promised myself that I would make my own mistakes in this parenting journey. I have spent too many nights washing dishes and reflecting on how my parents hurt me without noticing that they were doing the best they could with what they had. I keep thinking about how I became a better son once I had become a parent; how I learned to call them out on their mistakes, and ask them to own them. Not literally, but in my head. How I can be responsible for myself -finally- as I am responsible for others. I know how my parents failed me and also how they gave me more than I deserved. I do the best I can every day, but I am sure I am also hurting my children in ways only time will hopefully tell me. I don’t get an annual performance review to course correct on this, but I do get brutal feedback, sometimes unasked, sometimes rightfully deserved.

Vacations have turned into more work. Vacation time means connection and exhaustion. Work feels like a haven from the arduous work of caring and parenting. As vacations end and we all come back to the routine of school nights, snacks, sports practices, and loads of laundry. I miss the go-fish endless games, and the excess of markers on the dining room floor. I don’t miss stepping on toys or being hit randomly by paper planes. But I find myself walking with a cup of coffee around this house in the morning hours of a random Tuesday, yearning for the presence of my children. I hate their stuff everywhere, I spend too much time cleaning it and I also despise the empty spaces of their temporal absence.

I want to work out more, get outside, and run but the work of caring is hard on my body. Wrists and thumbs pay the price, sore hip muscles, sore arms and tight shoulders. The strenuous work of rocking a baby, keeping them close to you, so close you can smell their newness and sense of possibility. The pain of closeness we have to pay as parents, if we choose to. And then, the migraines. They come and go, and the need to take time off to rest while knowing that there is no time to rest. How do I teach my children to care for themselves if they see me pushing through pain? If I pretend everything is okay when I can barely stand the light, the noise, their voices?  

Time goes very fast, as you see them hit themselves with different parts of the same piece of furniture, as the marks we make with black pen on the kitchen wall serve as a reminder of their imminent growth. Time goes very slowly when one yells without reason and the other one without warning, and the oatmeal is burning and your phone falls. Every other day, there are two minutes when all things fall apart, and hell breaks loose. You yell and you feel terrible afterward. You don’t yell at them, but you say too many things to your partner in two gestures and you know that what it is meant to be a doubles tennis team sometimes feels more like a chess game. Sometimes, you breathe, and let the chaos reign. All your life, you have been taught to keep swimming. As a parent, I am learning each day how to hold my breath for longer and longer underwater, I cannot just keep swimming.

I am so relieved when they are finally asleep, and I can devote myself to the pleasure of folding clothes in three. The kitchen is clean again, there are no cheerios that I can step on and drag around the house. The coffee is ready for the morning and there is silence. Silence. Then, I miss them. We miss them. We look at pictures of the day, the week, the month, last year. We miss them. The cute things they did, the words they are trying to say, the questions they ask, and the guts it takes to be honest:

Did your parents hit you? Do we believe in God? What happens when you die? Am I going to die? Are you going to die? Can I have more candy?

These are the hardest years, and these are the most precious ones. When they are young enough for me to solve their problems with time, attention, or care. I have never heard a parent say, “I spent too much time with my children”, it is always the opposite. But sometimes, presence is so hard. Sometimes as I try to be present, I realize how distracted I am, how tired I am, and how bored I can get. Can I say that? It is boring to be so present sometimes. It is hard to recognize how distracted I am.

The relief of dropping them off again at school for the new year comes with the sadness and the fears of letting them go back to the world, A harsh, difficult, wondrous, hopeful world. A reminder that they come through you but they are not for you to keep as Khalil Gibran says in The Prophet.

As I put my head on the pillow and think about the day, I make a mental account of all the things that went well and all the things that did not. Thinking how I want to be the perfect parent and knowing that perfection is an illusion, a harmful illusion. Wanting to be better without pain and knowing that is through mistakes and pain that I truly learn. My children teach me about life and myself and they show me without knowing that there are parts of me that they trigger but they are not theirs to carry, they are mine to deal with. Do they know how much we learn from them? I was told that parents know everything, but sometimes I wonder who is really teaching who about living.