Down the Rabbit Hole

Recently, I was at a friend's house and saw a woman I had met at a park a few weeks prior. After our previous conversation, I went away feeling as though I had only spoken about myself. In our follow-up meeting, I apologized and proceeded to ask about her hobbies, favorite records, films, the like.She smiled sweetly and shrugged.
"Oh, I dunno," she said. "I can't really remember anything I used to do before I had a kid."
"What do you mean?"
"I guess I'm not really into much of anything anymore. It's all gone."
Gone.
She laughed as she said this. I was too stunned to respond. Our conversation ended.

I left my friend's house feeling incredibly sad, puzzled. I couldn't stop thinking about the conversation I had with this woman -- a vibrant person who used to be someone, but has now equaled her existence with one thing and one thing only: motherhood. It was as if the old girl had been swallowed by the earth, shrouded in darkness, gone. The more I think about this, the more I'm convinced that this is a phenomenon that ensnares a lot of mothers -- and dads too. While I couldn't dream of judging someone for letting parenthood transform their life, so too can I not imagine sacrificing myself so completely that I forget who I am -- the past and the present person existing together. Which begs the question: Do many of us make a definitive choice to become different people post-children? And does that choice involve leaving our old selves behind?

Now granted, I gave up some pretty awesome perks when I decided to quit my job to take care of my kid myself -- chiefly, loads of money, free time, and the ability to go into a store and emerge 30 seconds later with a purchase and my sanity intact. But I'm still me. I still love to listen to great records and discover new bands. I still like to dig holes and watch my plants grow and run down hills as fast as I can. I still love dogs, and great books, and talking about what's going on in the world. I can still do a cartwheel and a backbend. I take terrible photographs. I ride my bike through puddles and plait my hair in pigtails when I'm running late. I still go to shows with friends and take classes in crafts I'll never master. In doing these things, I feel as though I reconnect to the part of me that existed pre-child. Which is why the above-mentioned conversation hurts. I can't imagine giving up everything to the point that I forget who I was prior to parenthood. In many ways, I wouldn't know the "me" of the present without remembering the me of the past.

Robert Frost famously wrote about being upon a path that forks, and choosing to take the route less traveled. Of course, in the poem he's talking about choosing a life of adventure and the unknown versus the well-paved walk through complacency. The less-traveled path is more ideal, in Frost's mind, than the expected path. As a teenager, I thought a lot about this, and tried to make choices that led me down the less-trodden path. Given, some of these were very bad choices. I regret many of them. But I doubt I would be where, or who, I am today without having done them. I'm still pretty sure of who I was then, and now, and who I'm likely to be as time passes.

All these years later, I find there is another choice to be made. There are two paths to take in parenthood, it seems -- one that preserves the self and one that sacrifices the self for the child. Is it possible to bridge the gap between them? Or is it an all-or-nothing bet? While often my path leads to playgrounds or monster truck jams, I like to think I step on the path to the unknown sometimes -- the one that seems a bit overgrown and twisting away from play dates and nursery rhymes and diapers. The one who's ending isn't quite mapped out. That's the path I want to tread on from time-to-time. Without it, I too would feel lost, separate, my old self gone.

 
Recently, I went to a concert with an old friend. I was out until the early hours of the morning, but left feeling invigorated and much like my old self. In fact, save the car seat, I could have all but forgotten about my "day job." Sure I was exhausted the next day and looked a bit raccoon-ish from the leftover mascara and three hours of sleep I managed. But being able to indulge in what I love keeps me sane in an existence that, right now, can make one feel slightly in-sane. It connects the present to the past, the old and new me.

Cleanup On Aisle Six

It's been a cold, dark winter. Though I've made it through the past two years with nary a cough or sniffle, this winter proved different. For the first time in nearly a decade, I've been ill with everything from the norovirus to the common cold to the all-out flu. Our family's most recent bout with a terrible cold again brought me to our nearby drugstore, where I have spent a small fortune in the past two months. And though I filled up my hand basket with the usual remedies, this visit to Drugs R Us was different. This time, I encountered Satan.
Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration. Lucifer himself did not pop up in front of me with his standard pitchfork and cape of crimson. Instead, he appeared in a much more sinister fashion: as an older woman determined to give me parenting advice. Actually, make that an older woman hellbent on telling me I'm doing a poor job as a parent.
It is here that a bit of backstory is due. My kids likes cars. He likes trucks. And when they're placed on every aisle of a store, he's going to stop and play with them. I'm happy to indulge a bit. But today, with nap time nigh, I was trying to get the heck out of Drugs R Us in time to shuffle said child to the land of nod. And so, I made my kid leave the trucks and head to the cash register. As anyone with a two year old knows, this sort of maneuver usually results in a tantrum. Today, it certainly resulted in a tantrum. It was short-lived, it was loud, it was a tad embarrassing. It also was over in about 30 seconds. But like many tantrums, this one had a second, ugly head to rear. And as I paid for my cold meds, my precious angel decided to grab my ankles and whine to be picked up. This resulted in my meeting with the devil. Our exchange went something like this:

Satan: Back in my day, I would have gotten a whooping for acting like that in a store.
Me {Nicely}: Oh right. I don't believe in spanking like that. Thank you though.
S {Indignant}: What do you believe in? Look at the way he is acting. That child needs discipline. You should be disciplining him right now.
Me: He's normally very calm and well-behaved. He's obviously pretty tired and cranky, so -
S: The only thing that's obvious is that you don't discipline him at all.

Okay, lady. Wow. Maybe it was the cold, the cold remedies, or the exhaustion that comes with illness, but I had absolutely no retort for that. At least, not one I could say aloud. My brain was channeling Marsellus Wallace, but I simply turned around, picked up my bag-o-meds, and left. I think I even smiled at her. As I buckled my son into his car seat, I watched the woman smugly walk to her SUV. She glanced at me. I drove away, shaking with anger.

The unkind words of others, especially strangers, rarely bother me. I spent several years in print journalism, and have been called just about every ugly name that exists. What instead plagues me is the idea that strangers feel they have the opportunity -- nay, the right -- to vocalize their feelings about the parenting styles of others, with particular regard to discipline. I don't want to pretend to believe that people are without judgement. That's foolish. I'm guilty of it, though I wish I wasn't. But whereas judgement may be automatic, opening one's mouth to judge is not. I realize I don't know the entirety of everyone's situation. I realize life is harder for other people than it will ever (hopefully) be for me. Perhaps most importantly, I realize I need to keep my mouth shut when it comes to dealing with folks I don't know.

Which brings me back to el diablo. As angry as the drugstore devil's actions and words make me, I'm not upset at her disapproval of my style of parenting. In a weird way, I'm guessing she thought she was doing me a favor. Either that, or she was just in a really bitchy mood. In retrospect, I wish I had said more, not only to make myself feel better but also to put Lucifer's well-intentioned advice to bed for good, or at least the good of fellow parents out there. But I'm guessing that no matter my response, she'll just keep doling out the unsolicited advice. Her kind of fortitude is hard to kill, like a virus that doesn't have a cure. I'm not looking for a vaccine for these sorts of encounters, but a quick remedy would be nice.