Ah, the Internet. The place where you can read all sorts of advice. The place that makes you feel like you are doing everything WRONG. The huge space that enables everyone to compare themselves to everyone else, where you don't own anything, where other people can always judge you without knowing a damn thing about you.
The place where people talk about how to be mothers.
Every time I read something about this, I develop feelings. Feelings of surprise, confusion, isolation, and determination--but never envy nor guilt. I realize I am a different kind of parent than many parents, that my life has shaped itself differently, especially in the last three and a half years, whether I like it or not. And while I might feel somehow APART from other mothers and parents, I don't feel guilty, not about any of it.
That alone makes me weird. Women seem almost hard-wired into guilt, in a way that men are not. In all honesty, I don't have time for that.
I'm not sure I am the right kind of parent. I am impatient. I spend a lot of time alone. I never used baby talk ever for a moment in my life. I always figured that my babies were just tiny versions of adults. I've taught my kids blackjack and how to shake their booties. I swear in front of them. I take to bed when I have chemo, shut the door, swat them away. I spend time writing. My husband and I invariably exhibit too much PDA in our house. I don't do hair, or crafts. I'm not sure how women are supposed to behave. I don't like sharing my kitchen with anyone. I read the newspaper even when they are yelling for me. I'm not particularly nurturing, though I am an expert in the art of distracting others away from their fears and troubles. I have an obscure, nerdy job and my entire career has laid outside of the trajectory of where anyone thought I would go. I'm no room mother, no corporate bigshot, no drama queen. The closest thing I've ever read to describing a parent who reminds me of myself is in Tina Fey's Bossypants, wherein she describes her father after he discovered her slashed face in the alley. He threw her into the car to get to the hospital, put his hand on her and said: "Don't speak."
Holy shit...that's ME.
What does it mean to be a GOOD parent? How can you tell? When do you know you are failing? If you collapse on the couch after dinner or tell your kids and husband they are on their own for basically the entire month of March because, you know, THE BASKETBALL, are you going to parent purgatory?
See, I always figured that wasn't the case. Maybe my biggest failing as a parent is that I'm a storyteller, and I assume my kids will be storytellers too. So if my husband becomes a basketball widower every spring, rather than focus on the near term reality of me yelling at my son "get that curly head out of the way of my TV!" I focus on this: The fact that someday, my kids will be talking to each other or someone else, and they will tell a story about me lying on the couch and screaming at the television for an entire month and they will say something along the lines of "remember that? what a trip!" They will remember what the couch looked like, with its thousand blankets and rips in the upholstery. They will remember bringing me a La Croix. They will remember the games they played with each other and they will remember learning how to keep stats and they will remember their father feeding them spaghetti three times a week.
They will remember us, this little family unit.
My daughter will always remember the one time a year I volunteered at her school, to teach poetry, to get the kids to write poems. It will be around her birthday, and I will bring cupcakes and I will do this as long as it is allowed. I won't be the one serving snacks at functions or offering myself up for bus duty. I will be the one who will take that day off of work to talk to little kids about IMAGERY.
It doesn't matter if you stay at home, work outside of the home, if you are a single parent or married or if you are a man or a woman or a neighbor or grandparent or whoever you are raising that child or those children. It doesn't matter what you are good at or where you fail. It matters that you show up, but even that doesn't matter every single time. I have decided that the following is true, and it's the Internet, so therefore, who can question my authority?
The best thing you can be for your kids, the most important thing you have to offer, is this:
Be interesting. Be memorable. Be a person outside of them, so that they can see how it's done. There are a lot of different ways to do this. You have to love them--that is definitely a requirement. You have to feed and clothe them and help them find their way. You can be so many things, but remember this:
Someday you will be a story, and that's all you will be. Make it a good one.
