Day 94 Free-Time Parenting?
In the paper this morning, I read about a 47-year old actress who’s cutting back on work because she needs “… a little more free time to be a mom” to the baby girl she and her husband have recently adopted to go with their four-year old son.
Now, she may be the Super-Mom of the Universe, I wouldn’t know. Maybe she just chose her words poorly. Maybe she’s read all the attachment parenting books, maybe she puts in more time than any other mom at her son’s preschool, who knows, maybe she’s wearing one of those tube-and-bag dealies so she can breastfeed her adopted daughter.
Having a second child at that age is a questionable decision, in my opinion, but hey, maybe her 47 years wear better than mine. (Pretty safe bet, she’s an actress after all.)
Here’s what I do know: it takes more than “a little more free time” to raise children. Parenting isn’t a hobby. It’s not a spare-time deal, a “fun” thing to do once you’ve checked off all your other life goals.
Nor is it necessary. You don’t have to do it. In fact, if you’re waffling on the idea of reproducing, take the hint and Just Say No. It’s okay. The world will manage without your genes being carried forward. And you’ll get to keep traveling, guilt-free and unencumbered.
But most of us still discover parenting by surprise, catapulted into the fast lane of the Grown-Up Highway before we thought much about it. (Surprise, not mistake. No baby is a mistake.) And we’ve found that parenting is the best, most rewarding and most important job of our lives. And bar none, the most difficult. There’s no room for selfishness once a baby enters the picture. Or there shouldn’t be, at least.
As Peter De Vries said, “Who of us is mature enough for offspring before the offspring themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.”
The key is parents who step up and embrace the new maturity a child demands of them, every day, all day long. Not just the free time.
Day 93 What’s That Smell??
Hot yoga is hell on the laundry schedule. Every class means one large towel, plus a hand towel, and one entire outfit – top, bottom, underwear, headband. Also I usually have a third towel for the car, so I don’t soak up the upholstery.
On the days my daughters join me it means an instant mountain of drench-n-stench in the laundry room. Of course, I toss it in the washer right away – when I can. But I’m not the only one who does laundry in the house (thank god) so sometimes the machines are in use. Then, the towels have to sit there, emanating their funk. Imagine those cartoon wavy lines of stink rising up into the air, creeping up the stairs, ghostlike, until they’ve infiltrated every room in the house.
Now, I’d like to point out that one of the lesser-known side effects of menopause is an increased sensitivity to odours. Which is fine when you suspect a gas leak. But it seems I’m always asking “What’s that smell?” or “Can’t you smell that?” until people just tell me to shut up. Which makes me doubt myself.
I should know better.
Back to laundry. Since the laundry room also houses the litter boxes (two of them; we’ve also got another set upstairs. Four cats, sigh.) it’s not a happy room for me. To make matters worse, the garbage cans into which the used litter is dumped is just around the corner, in the garage. It’s a trifecta of gag-orific odours congregating in about 25 square feet. The girls are very good about staying on top of the litter boxes, rather than face the wrath of my nose. But still.
So, yesterday I noticed that the mat in front of the stairs just outside the laundry room looked a little murky. I got down on my hands-and-knees, turned it over and picked up the unmistakeable slap of ammonia.
Cat piss. I knew it! I knew I’d been smelling something more than my own mouldering, sweaty yoga duds. The cat in question has a history of such transgressions, but she’s been good lately. Or so we thought. Or maybe it’s one of the others, letting her take the rap.
I got out a bucket of Mr. Clean and channeled my disgust into adiosing every iota of cat urine out of the tile. And the grout. And the wall. And that thing at the bottom of the door that keeps out drafts. And the baseboard.
But it’s like trying to unring a bell. Once cat urine gets in a wall, can you ever really get it out? Even if I succeed, I’ll have the olfactory memory forever. Is it real? Is it my imagination? Does it matter?
So I’m employing a product called Nature’s Miracle Urine Destroyer, Just for Cats. Nature’s Miracle is a staple in our house, and it really does work. But the cat urine variation was news to me.
I’ve soaked the affected area and you know what? It smells better already.
Day 91 Q: Who’s the Hero of Your Story?
A: Obviously, each of us is the Hero of our own story. When I say Hero, I mean Heroine, Protagonist, Main Character, Star of the Show, Point-of-View Character, Dude, The Big Guy, Harry Potter. The one who owns the story.
You, in your show. Me, in mine.
But some of us forget that sometimes. We get stuck in Best Supporting roles. (Not really, of course, because the camera of our lives is still focused squarely on us. It just seems that way in our own dumb little minds.) What happens, I think, is that it’s easy to slip into a passive role, to let events happen, rather than take action to direct those events.
Good stories have main characters we root for, because they are active, decisive. They act on their own behalf. (That’s why they call them “actors.”)
We can’t help but be the Hero of our own story. Whoever owns the show is the main character. Period. Real life heroes are also active; they live on their own behalf. (Yet we don’t call them “livers.” Hm.)
As you may have guessed, I’ve just returned from another day with Michael Hauge, talking about story structure, the inner and outer journeys traveled by characters over the course of a movie or novel. After the talk concluded, he challenged us as writers – and as evolving human beings – to ask ourselves the same question we must pose to our characters.
What is the next specific, significant step I can take
on my journey to my goal?
Then, fill in the blank:
“I’ll do whatever it takes to (insert the step identified above)
but just don’t ask me to ________.
This blank is the thing that stands in our way, it’s the thing keeping us from finding our True Selves, going from Identity to Essence, from immature to differentiated, child to adult, asleep to awake, pathetic orphan to best-ever wizard, etc. There are all sorts of psychological explanations for this process, but I think we all understand the concept. There’s the ordinary people we are in our ordinary lives; and then there’s that potential to be extraordinary that lies within each of us.
Hero material. We’ve all got it.
We just have to get out of our own way.