The Parent Trap

One day our children will be grown up, and we will laugh at how many times Sofia got sick because of her hand-in-her-mouth addiction, or how Samina was already so strong at 4 months that putting her diaper on without her rolling over mid-changing was an absolute impossibility. How I never have the time to shower more regularly than every 3-4 days (true story). How Andrea had a physical therapy or massage therapy appointment every day of the week for various body parts because these past 3 years with Sofia and his lack of time for exercise suddenly turned him into an 80-something-year-old.

But, right now, we're not really laughing.

Our own parents, family friends with older children, the old granny who stops us on the street to stroke Samina's chubby feet, they all say it: time goes so fast, enjoy it!

There are so many unfair ironies in life that surround me daily, and this is perhaps one of the greatest. Like the old saying "Youth is wasted on the Young," I often think that "Parenting is wasted on the Parents." We're too tired to appreciate it - too stressed, too busy trying to keep life going, that we can't see the sunshine through the clouds. Or, if we can, it's because we're out of the house so much, busy with work and the outer world, that those 10 minutes we can capture putting them to sleep are sacred.

It's a constant toss up for us poor parents: if we have the time to spend with them, they often suck so much energy out of us, we just dream of time hurrying the heck up, getting them to sleep so we can have a second to ourselves. Or, the alternative, if we work so much that we never get to see them, all we want is more time, more memories, and we beg time to slow the heck down.

This constant toss-up is hard going because, minus those sweet seconds of the day when your kid smiles up at you and says "I love you, too, Mommy!", parenting often equals Guilt. Or, at least in this house it does. The amount of times I kick myself in the pants for too-harsh words spoken in exhaustion.... How my heart hurts when I realize I've thrown an opportunity at bonding away because I just couldn't stand another round of "Sofia plays doctor" or another read of "Clifford the Big Red Dog."

Sometimes I go to bed convinced that I am too selfish a person to be a good parent. To me, being a good mother has always meant putting yourself last...but, the more deep I get into this parenting game, the more I realize that I don't *want* to come last. Sometimes I don't want to leave the last piece of chicken for Sofia, I don't want to give up my seat on the couch so she can put her doll to sleep there. And then I want to smack myself, and I wonder "Are some parents just born with it? Or is this selflessness learned over decades?"

Am I too selfish? Can I really claim it's "unconditional" love if sometimes all I want to do is run away for a few days? Am I ever going to get to a point where this all comes easily to me? Where Andrea and I stop asking ourselves why it seems like *everyone* else is doing a better job than we are?

And, mainly, I feel sad at the realization that there is a very, very fine gap - only those with the keenest, most open heart can feel it - between the days when we can laugh about the past, and the days when we will long for the past. And I know. I *know* that I don't want to be sulking in guilt so hard that I miss that.