The unspoken side of parenthood
I love my kids. But man I’m looking forward to going back to work tomorrow.
Yes in all probability they’ll read this one day, but I think it’ll be ok.
I’ve just had 3 weeks ‘holiday’. I have a 3 and 1 year old. 3 weeks of laughs, smiles, bike riding, joyous bliss… As well as 3 weeks of nappies, tantrums, 40 degree heat, constant mess, chaos, my Apple Watch telling me I had 3 hours of sleep (again), and near divorce.
I had a single friend ask me if I wanted to go to the Gold Coast for New Year’s Eve and get “maggotted”. No. Whatever that means anyways. A hangover with 2 kids is a mistake you only make once.
When I brought this up with my ‘dads’ whatsapp group. I was relieved to hear many of them say the same. “Dude, don’t worry, we all feel the same, and work isn’t too far away”. Let me again say, I freakin’ love my kids, but I’d happily be ordered to complete my TPS reports to get some sanity.
We had my brother-in-law stay with us. “Uncle Cam” was a big hit, he was hands on and lots of fun. On day 3 he said “I don’t know how you do this every day”, on day 4 he said “this is the best contraception”. However… completely relatable and completely bizarrely, he said “it made me really want to be a dad” when he left. This shit makes no sense. How do we forget the shit times so easily and continue to procreate? It’s as if memories are erased ala Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
There are definitely parents that at the very least appear to have their shit together. The car is tidy and doesn’t have kids sitting in 4 week old cheese. The kids brush their teeth willingly twice a day, as opposed to, actually I’ll refrain. The mother and father give each other a kiss goodbye on the way to work in perfectly ironed, stain free shirts and their place look almost spotless whenever we visit. That’s not me. Not even close. That button was meant to be fixed ages ago, still broken, that mirror that was meant to be hung up 2 years ago… I’ll do it this weekend. On two recent work trips my pants have ripped from a combination of dad-bod and not fixing the thread before it was too late. This happened in front of a key client during a presentation (A tip. Call it out, they all saw it. I just said “Now… many of you have already noticed, but there’s a tear in my pants. I’ll be picking up new pants later today”)
Imagine if Facebook albums only showed the honest side of parenting? The tears, the 35 other photos it took to get the smiley photo. The survival. The moments you consider a one way flight to Tibet to get lost for 18 years before returning on a misty evening, in the distance (probably on a jetty, at night), to Hans Zimmer music and announce “Janine, it’s me, I’m your father”, and then embrace and state “I’ve been searching for you for so long, I never gave up hope”, and then state your back story about training with Raz Al-Ghul.
Facebook does so much damage by how false we are on it. Mothers compete, we get depressed, other lives look perfect, and we judge our party water as inferior to the cucumber water that we just saw in Jenny and Bob’s photos (btw, we haven’t seen Jenny or Bob in over 10 years, why do we care?). Please stop. Or abort completely, I’ve been off facebook for 2 years now and my life is better for it. Spoiler Alert: You’ll be just fine.
My boy had a meltdown tonight because I put his fork in the wrong omelette square. Yup. The wrong square. He then weed on the carpet and stated proudly “I wee on the floor and not the toilet”, then my girl pooed for the 6th time today. I have no idea how my wife does this all the time. I admire her so much.
Anyways. I feel better laughing about this and writing about it. I’ve also just started reading All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenting… By started I mean I’ve purchased it but not read. Like so many other books in the past year.
Again, I love my kids so much, and my happiness is correlated to theirs. I only ever want them to smile and laugh, I want to protect them from the world, I want them to experience the solid family home upbringing I couldn’t.
But.
Tomorrow — a day of clearing an inbox, attending meetings of varying degrees of importance, and getting to tick something off my list other than “Survive”, is something I’m really looking forward to. Almost as much as wrapping the day up, hugging my kids, reading stories, and then doing it all again.
For parents like me. That feel like you’re winging it, that feel like you’re not a natural, that look forward to the dentist more than a kids bday party… well done. We survived another year and didn’t flee to Tibet. Some of us are still even married. Happy New Year. Hashtag Blessed as it reads on your instagram.
