“Raul’s mom brought fruit kabobs.” This revelation comes to me from the back seat. I immediately hate Raul’s mom. I imagine her creatively shaping mangoes and pineapples in her immaculate kitchen and I silently fume. This disguised condemnation has been issued by my 7 year old. From the mouth of babes, indeed.
I remember the 2 cracker sleeves hastily shoved into his backpack in the pre-dawn hours. Today had been his Valentine’s Day celebration at school. I had miraculously learned this information 48 hours before the required snacks were to be sent. I had skipped yet another lunch break in favor of a picking up cheese cubes and crackers for the party. Not bad. The next night however, as I prepared to pack said crackers I could not find them in the pantry. It did not take a search party to locate the missing wafers. This was good news as the search party was now stuffed with a half-eaten box of Ritz crackers and lounging bloated and covered with crumbs on my couch. I rescued the remaining sleeves, took a deep breath, and announced that bedtime had come early.
“I will follow you,” I had said. This is what a good wife does. I will give up my friends, my family, my church, my job, my education, my community. I will follow you. Simple words spoken in support of my husband and here I am. It is here in this new city that I am plunged into practical single parenthood, defending my lack of fruit kabobs.
This is my new reality. I am the mom who forgets to send snacks, who accidentally schedules meetings on top of choir performances, who misses PTA meetings, who promises that “we’ll do that tomorrow” but inevitably forgets or is thwarted by another, more pressing, request. I am the victim of my own expectations.
I should pause here to note that I do not have an uninvolved husband. In fact, when I look around I find that I have done pretty well for myself in this department. I have paired up with a man who is handsome, successful, sensitive and caring. At this moment in our lives however, his job consumes so much of his time that someone had to take on more parenting duties, and with no nanny in sight I have been recruited for the job. Unfortunately I also have a full-time job (notably not a career) and my maternal skills are non-existent between the hours of 9pm and 7am. This does not leave a wide window of opportunity for my children who are in school and childcare for almost 9 hours each day.
As I look back I can see the steps that I have taken that have led me here to this place. They are not bad decisions, and many I would make again even with the sacrifices involved, but I wish that I had the advantage of knowing how to direct my own life from an earlier age. I did not know for example that choosing a major in college should carry with it an idea of what you would like to do with said degree. I did not know that taking advantage of every internship opportunity and working small jobs in your desired field while in school could make all the difference in the world. I did not know that pursuing a Master’s directly after my Bachelor’s was even an option, or why there may be an advantage in doing so. Much of this lack of knowledge comes from being the first in my family to pursue a college degree, and with that perspective I am proud. I am proud of my family for supporting me emotionally as I completed my degree, even if some of the practicality eluded them, and I am proud of myself for achieving so much. But with this education, I have slowly been sold the idea that we can have it all and therein lies the problem.
Perhaps some can have it all but I find myself choosing on at least a weekly basis if my loyalty will lie with my husband or my career, my children or my job. It is mostly the small decisions that haunt me-there are a million of those damned Ritz cracker decisions. I always think I can pull this off. I can have it all if I can just work a little harder, stay up a little later, skip a few more lunches, go to more field trips, bake more cookies, cook a decent dinner, get in better shape, have more energy for love making, plan more family vacations, relax more, call my friends, remember the dry cleaning, take a class, read a book, take yoga, get a better job, write more, clean my house, finish my taxes, go on a date night, groom the dog, pay the bills, bring the kids to the park, enjoy myself. . .
Submitted by Carrie
See all the Parenthood Juggle guest posts here. Go here for this guest post invitation. Submissions should be sent to guestposts@dovesandserpents.org (please see our guest post guide).
I would have loved those crackers as a kid. Sweet, buttery, crumbly, name-brand goodness. The main appeal of fruit kebabs were probably the sticks. :)
But yes, I can relate.
Great post. I also feel like I didn’t spend enough time thinking and planning for a future career. Makes it hard to catch up. But my opinion is that no one can have it all. Not really. Though some people sure seem convincing…
I loved this very honest, raw post. Thank you for sharing.
I enjoyed your post! I feel like I know you. I can so relate! The fuming, the never-ending list of maybe-if-I-did-mores, and the scramble! I was a stay-at-home mom for a long time, but now I’m working full-time, and though I have my bachelor’s, I’m not making much of a salary. In fact, my college-student son made more last summer than I will make all year.