I'm Fine Where I Am
Posted by Simcha Fisher in Family on Tuesday, July 06, 2010 6:00 AM
As someone who spent the last twelve Independence Days in a bathroom, desperately trying to catch a glimpse of the rockets’ red glare through the keyhole as I cuddled several terrified children, I enjoyed the heck out of our holiday weekend.
Get this: I watched the fireworks! Imagine that.
When we had only little ones in the house, we never did anything—and I honestly (and resentfully) thought that we never would again. I had barely finished college when we had our first child. It was easy to shed the seedy pleasures of teenage years: so much beer and cigarettes, and so many dreary, noisy “parties” that I secretly hated.
When I had my first baby, it was good bye and good riddance to all of that.
But as a young mother, I was still firmly attached to the rituals of childhood: trick-or-treating, sledding, swimming at the beach. Once we had children of our own, I figured we could start enjoying these lovely seasonal joys all over again, just by snapping an adorable Santa hat on baby, or dressing the toddlers in patriotic colors for the parade. But that is not how it turned out.
When your house is full of only little ones (and/or you’re always pregnant), you seem to miss out on everything. There you are, a Mother, supposedly the source of all those pleasures that are wholesome, domestic, simple and comforting ... but somehow, you don’t get to be there for any of it. Maybe you do some frantic baking late at night, but generally, you are there to prepare and to clean up, and that’s it.
If you’re at the beach, you have to sit in the shade with the baby, doling out sunblock and keeping the towels dry, while everyone else has a blast jumping off the rocks. If it’s sledding season, you’re huddled in the car with the engine running, awkwardly nursing a snowsuited baby, while everyone else is zipping down glittering hills in the exhilarating winter air. If it’s the Fourth of July, everyone else is ooohing and ahhing and misting up with patriotic pride, and you’re hiding in the bathroom of the boathouse, shushing and soothing and wondering how many more durn fireworks there could possibly be.
Your husband, who hates this kind of thing anyway, is the one who goes out with the older kids to join in all the fun, and you’re just at home, at home, always at home, mopping up spilled hot chocolate or washing another carload of sandy towels.
Well, I am here to tell you that, eventually, this turns around. It’s hard to believe when you are in the thick of it, but it’s true. You will once again go out during the day. You will even go out at night. You will do things, and you won’t have to wait until you’re old and gray, either.
Part of this is because your oldest kids will someday become old enough to be a genuine help with the younger ones. Not only will they do a lot of the legwork, but the younger kids will join in more, in imitation of their cool older siblings.
Also, I am lucky enough to have a husband who helps out more and more as our family grows. He doesn’t let me turn myself into an unhappy, homebound martyr (because, in retrospect, I can see that much of my distress in those early years was my own fault). He does so much more, these days, to share the work so that I can share the fun.
And one more thing: I don’t expect so much anymore. The first time I found myself at the beach without either a Braxton-Hicks or a needy newborn, it was a little disconcerting to realize that I could actually go swimming if I wanted to—and then to discover that I didn’t actually want to. I wanted to stand on the shore and beam at the little guys having fun.
It’s always been delightful to watch a mesmerized one-year-old discovering the mysterious communions of sand, water, and sunshine. But the difference between then, when it was all new to me, and now, when the baby in question is my eighth one-year-old, is that I no longer struggle with that resentful tug: “She’s so sweet ... but when do I get to have some fun?”
I’m watching her, and it’s fun. That’s all. My husband is next to me on the blanket, and he’s having fun watching her, too, and that’s even better.
“Do you want to go swim?” he asks.
“Oh, no thanks,” I say. “I’m fine where I am.”
—Simcha Fisher enjoys the good life with her husband and eight children at home in New Hampshire. She blogs at I Have to Sit Down.
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