Every moment is not a moment

“Aaaaaargh! How has child-rearing got so… so complicated? It’s as if you have to keep them on some sort of permanent high of engagement and happiness.”

From Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy,

by Helen Fielding

Me, age 40

Over a breakfast of egg sandwiches and café-au-lait, my good friend Sarah and I catch up on things.

She’s talking about a woman she knows. “I can’t call her for mom support because she doesn’t feel real to me,” Sarah says. “She will literally stop a conversation with another adult to get down on the floor and play Legos with her children if they ask. She thinks every moment with them should be quality time. This is frustrating because I don’t believe that every moment needs to be a ‘moment.’”

I feel the same way. Maybe it’s because I was raised by parents who didn’t hover: once in awhile they played with my sisters and me, but usually they tossed us the garden hose (or Monopoly game or Play-Doh) and told us to go have fun.

Sarah continues, “My kids are signed up for after-school activities, but all they want to do is ride their bikes, play on the jungle gym, and run around outside. I let them do that the last few weekends, and they arrived at dinnertime hungry and dirty. It was great. To me, that is just as important as playing Legos with them.”

My twin daughters have never been into Legos, but Sarah’s point is spot-on. Years ago, I learned that trying to coordinate one moment after the next is not only impossible: it’s insane.

When my girls were one-and-a-half, for example, I took it upon myself to orchestrate a trip to a little local beach. Never mind that they were perfectly content splashing in the plastic baby pool in our backyard: I packed up our stuff, pried them away from the pool, and drove across town. All while congratulating myself on being such an awesome mom.

In the parking lot of the beach, I got out of the car and was at once dismayed to find that the air reeked of algae. But hell if we were going to turn around and go home! I had made us a picnic lunch and coated the girls in sunscreen! We were going to do this!

I threw the girls and our supplies into the double stroller. After only a couple steps, however, I realized that there was no paved pathway to the beach, only sand.

Have you ever attempted to push a double stroller – or any stroller, for that matter – through sand?

It was not a pleasant experience for me or my daughters.

Once we finally arrived at our destination, I took one look at the water and muttered a few choice words. The reason it stunk like algae was because algae absolutely blanketed the water like a fuzzy green comforter.

“Time to go, girls!” I hollered, trying in vain to turn the stroller around. I was sweating, my daughters were wailing, and I wondered why we hadn’t just stayed at our house, where their idea of adventure was as gratifying and uncomplicated as pulling all the tissues out of a Kleenex box and feeding Cheerios to our blind dog.

***

As I leave my breakfast with Sarah, where this whole conversation started, I think about another friend of mine. Like many moms, she has come to accept that it’s OK to not coordinate every last moment for her children.

“I always used to plan these huge birthday parties for my son, with classmates and presents, and he enjoyed none of it,” she says. “I think for a long time I needed to do these parties because that’s what you’re ‘supposed’ to do. But then I realized a few years ago that all he really wants for his birthday is a day with his favorite people – his family. And maybe some cake.”