Please Don’t Tell Me To Enjoy My Kid
And so, a few days ago I was thinking about writing while eating a root beer Dum Dum lollipop.
Thinking about writing is pretty much my natural state. Working on, y’know, actually writing more. Stick with me.
The Dum Dum was a nostalgic addition courtesy of a recent care package from my mother. It contains too many E numbers, and two handheld gamimg devices.
Isla, at four, is apparently behind her peers in the use of gadgets that are not her mother’s phone.
Cue Nana. Nana lives in the phone, and as such is allowed to throw pounds of sugar and Mario Bros at my kid.
Thanks, Ma.
Our sudden abundance of American candy brings about conversations like this:
Isla: Mumma, if I can taste the root beer, you can try my watermelon.
Me: Before you try this, I must give you a life lesson. This root beer deliciousness will change your life.
Isla: Try my watermelon. It won’t change your life.
Isla thinks the root beer ones taste ‘odd’.
Well.
More for me.
See, that was us bonding. Sharing the same sense of humor. Checking in with each other. Enjoying each other.
We do that a lot.
Blink and you’ll miss it.
Enjoy your children.
You can live after they leave home.
Please don’t tell me to enjoy my kid. Because I already do. Telling me to do something I already do, every day, so much, makes this anxious mother more anxious.
But please let parents complain about the tantrum in the restaurant (no ice-cream) , or at the circus (she’s not a trained tight-rope walker) or in the supermarket (the Lucky Charms are mine).
Let us talk about all that without reminding us that we will miss it. That we must remember all the things and write down all the things. But not until they’re 18.
Because until then we belong to them.
Now, listen. My best friend is four years old.
I love my kid. I love her so much that I want to have another one and then I can pretend I don’t have a favorite.
I love her so much that I miss her when she sleeps. Because I’m not sleeping. Too busy thinking of how I should be enjoying her.
How I’m not enough. How last week toast dipped in egg was entirely acceptable, this week it’s obviously NOT.
Am I enjoying her? I enjoyed her today, right? Does she know that I love her?
Did she enjoy me? That’s a better question to ask.
REMEMBER THAT.
Because yes, my kid deserves a mother who loves her. And likes her. She has one. That’s me.
But she also deserves a mother who is her own person. Someone who does her own thing. And then comes back refreshed, and recharged.
With a few more brain cells and lollipops to share.
Originally published at Gin & Lemonade.
