one
It’s hard to live a normal life when you’re trying to save your country from wholesale descent into fascism even as normal life keeps happening. Work tasks continue to be assigned to me, dishes continue to get dirty, and children continue to express their needs at a much louder volume than is necessary. OK, child. Honestly, she’s loud enough to be at least three separate people at this point.
So far I have dealt with the jarring disparity between what’s in the news and what’s on my daily to-do list mainly via:
- Starting my work timer. Stopping it because I’m not actually working.
- Opening fridge, staring mournfully inside, closing it again.
- Gchats of despair.
- Pouring sugar into my mouth as if to fill the void in my soul.
- Repeating this series of stuttering actions all day until I feel myself unraveling like a frayed rope.
W E I R D I know, but it turns out this lifestyle is not sustainable?
I am really struggling with the fact that it’s virtually impossible to be an employee, a parent, a partner, a friend, a student, a responsible adult, an informed and involved citizen, and a person with hobbies and interests. I can only really manage two things on that list at any given time. This means most days I default to employee and parent, because one pays me money and the other, as mentioned above, is very loud. You know the old saying, “the loud things and the greenbacks get the grease.” Well! Do they ever, lately.
I started the year off so well. I was marching, I was writing postcards, I was calling my senators every week, which is huge for me considering my fear of talking on the phone. The first time I called, I sounded like I was about to burst into tears the entire time, because I was! But I kept doing it because it was important, and it gave me a thread of hope to cling to.
And then I found, quite unintentionally, that there’s a very fine line between “doing stuff” and “worrying about doing stuff,” because I was finding myself mucking around in the latter end more and more frequently. I’d open up Twitter and scroll through endless links to horrified thinkpieces, and then I’d open up my political groups and scroll through endless calls to action, and then I’d end up just, like, cycling through various grief stages all afternoon, completely unable to focus. And the only way I could get myself to manage the Life Basics of employee and parent anymore was to close and cap the information hydrant.
It’s been more than two weeks since I looked at news, checked my political action groups, or called a senator. I don’t feel good about this at all. People say, well, you have to put your own oxygen mask on first, sweetie. But it’s a privilege to have access to a damn mask in the first place.
Most of us are struggling with this post-election, I think: ye olde balance question. Your own mental health matters, but you also can’t keep peacing out on stuff just because it bums you out. I think the only answer here is to do stuff until it drives you nuts, rest, rinse, and repeat.
Imma be Sisyphusing my way through this process for however long it takes, won’t you join me?
two
This month my kid started daycare, which we are referring to as school for her because we’re insufferable twats.
Up until recently Vera’s main care setup had been a nanny share, which was great. It was in the neighborhood; she got to hang out with 1 or 2 other kids at their houses; they shared a fair bit of germs but it wasn’t the town-burying avalanche of constant illness that you get from a larger classroom situation. Then last October one of the other families got a spot in a “school” they’d been waitlisted at forever and the nanny share band broke up, leaving the beau and I going shit, did we need to be on waitlists for stuff too? We started calling around and wow, turns out we did! Two years into parenting and we still could super use someone to regularly walk us through an instructional checklist!
So we were dumb but we were also kind of lucky, because it only took about four months to get in somewhere. “Only!” We’re still hoping our first choice will eventually call us up later this summer, fall, or decade, but for now this other place WILL DO. Especially since it doesn’t involve me constantly scrambling to find babysitters and then re-scrambling to find backup babysitters when the first ones flake out, which is basically what I have been doing since the end of Ye Olde Nanny Share Times. You probably can’t see the the intense look on my face through that sentence, so just pretend I’m standing a little too closely and gripping your arm a little too tightly as you read it. *makes sign of the cross, spits over shoulder*
As soon as we had a start date on the books, we began talking school up to prepare Vera in advance. We told her there would be a lot of new kids there, and toys too. “Yeah!” she’d agree, as if she already knew all about it. The more we talked about it the more excited she got, and I was hopeful this meant that she would take the new environs more or less in stride.
The morning of the first day arrived, and when I told her it was time to get ready for school it was like telling a golden retriever we were going on a walk, only with slightly less drool. She bounded around the house talking about how she was going to bring her toy bus and car with her. When I told her the other kids might want to play with them too, she set them right back down again. Smart move, kid. I used my toe to scoot them over near the door. “We’ll leave them right here, so you can play with them as soon as you get home again,” I said. She kept up her stream of agreeable chatter while I put her shoes and coat on, got her buckled into the car, and drove over to the daycare center. As I parked on the street I was swelling with pride. She was already doing so well with this!
So of course everything shifted abruptly as soon as we got to the door. I watched as the first and then the second wave of anxiety passed over her face, and by the time we actually got inside she was crying, arms stretched above her head, wordlessly begging to be picked up. I carried her over to the toys and put on an abnormally excited show about them. “Look, bud!” I gasped. “They have a bus you can play with!” She wasn’t having it. “No mama leave!” she sobbed, face pressed into my jacket. A crowd of curious toddlers began to gather in a semi-circle around us. A teacher came up and tried to show her a doll, which only served to ramp her hysteria up another few notches. “I wan’ go home! I wan’ go home!” she screamed. “No mama leave!”
80s freeze frame, narrator voiceover: well, what would you do in this situation? Me, I handled it by bursting into tears, too! As silently as possible, so she wouldn’t know! “It’s okay, bud, I know you’re sad right now but you’ll have fun today,” I murmured weakly, trying I guess to convince both of us even as hot tears kept dripping off my chin onto the top of my daughter’s head. It seemed insane to leave her here, where she didn’t know anyone and the toddler room teacher appeared to have all the personality of a cafeteria lunch lady. How did I miss cafeteria lunch lady before?? She was kind of terrifying! I briefly, fleetingly, considered taking her home, even though I knew that would be a big setback for her, and perhaps an even bigger setback for me. I mean I love my kid but I don’t want to have to watch her all day? Also, like, work.
Flashback for a second to the day I dropped Vera off at the nanny share for the first time. I remember walking away as she was crying and reaching for me, and I remember getting into my car and sitting there for a moment and feeling… exactly nothing. I felt separated from my kid’s emotions; floating above them; protected from them by ten layers of bubble wrap. Instead of being upset about leaving my baby alone with a virtual stranger, as was the normal, standard Mom ReactionTM, I drove home and I just really fucking enjoyed being alone. And that had fed my preferred narrative about myself: I was a robot mom. You know. Not like those other moms.
Now it was the first day of daycare, and I had been expecting more of the same nonreaction from myself. But one thing that I should know by 2+ years into this gig, outside of put your child on waitlists way earlier, is that parenthood is always out to get you. Parenthood is three raccoons wearing a trench coat, stealing your wallet. Parenthood is a looped audio track of pre-parent you assuredly saying “I’d never do that” over an extended cut montage of you doing exactly that. Parenthood holds a skeleton key which keeps unlocking new levels of basic-ness inside you. Once you think you’ve reached your most basic, the floor opens up and suddenly you’re plummeting downward again.
The humbling just never stops.
Another teacher came over and wrapped an arm around my side. “She’s going to be fine,” she said. “I know,” I said. “They always have a hard time at first but before you know it, she won’t want to go home,” she said. “I know,” I said. And I knew. Like, truly I did. But in the moment I just couldn’t stop the waterworks.
Vera noticed a table full of crayons, and for a few moments her refrain of sorrow switched from “No mama leave!” to “Mama draw, mama draw, mama draw!” I knelt beside her and took a crayon and mindlessly drew a fat yellow sun with rays emanating crookedly from it. Then I drew a bus and wrote I love you! next to it and I folded it up and stuffed it in her jacket pocket, which was ridiculous because she can’t even read yet. And then I stood up and said, “I’ll pick you up later, I have to go to work now,” and walked away as she scream-cried for me from someone else’s arms, just like the first day of the nanny share. Except this time when I got in the car I started crying again and then I cried even harder when I got home and saw that dumb toy bus and car sitting by the door. She was too little to be in such a big world!
I’m not a robot mom. I’m your average, standard, everyday mom.
Since that first day, things have gotten better while also sometimes getting worse. She still hates the process of going to daycare, but the amount of crying on any given morning now ranges anywhere from funereal weeping to light whining. She’s already been sick a bunch, including one feverish multi-day episode that totally zombied her out and caused code-red levels of clinginess and hysterics. Additionally, we have this tiresome routine going every weekday morning where I brightly suggest fun things she can do at school that day and she shoots them all down, even things I know she likes. “No want it! No outside! No go down slide! No toys! No storytime! No go night-night! No diaper change!” Okay, I can feel you on the last two, but DUDE, YOU AREN’T FOOLING ME. Also, what can you possibly have against storytime?
On the other hand, it turns out that cafeteria lunch lady of a teacher from the first day was just filling in for Vera’s real teacher, who was on vacation at the time, and Vera loves this other woman dearly. She is the only thing we can agree on every morning when we’re talking about school. The teacher told us Vera’s also juuust begun opening up and socializing a bit more, and I’ve been trying to use this info as positive ammunition during our daily battles. Last night I tried to get her to tell me about the other kids in her class, and she got as far as naming her teacher, a kid named Thomas, and Snack. Snack? I asked. Snack, she confirmed. Well, he sounds delicious.
The daycare staff periodically texts me photos which for all intents and purposes appear to be grainy surveillance camera shots of a criminal suspect, and I cannot get enough of these. I am so thirsty for information on her day that I sometimes make the beau repeat everything that the teacher said at pickup. Yesterday he told me that when he got there she was eating a S’mores Pop Tart, and I spent the entire night turning that factoid over in my head and internally lolling. Of course it was S’mores! What other flavor could it have been??
So are we fine yet? Well, I am. After I spent that first day bawling, I quickly switched over to looking forward to getting her screaming face out of mine every morning. I still feel guilty at times, and at the lowest points I still wonder whether we’ve broken her forever by sending her to daycare. But it also leaves me bursting to witness how strong she is, how stubborn she is, how resourceful she is even when she absolutely doesn’t want to be. I didn’t expect that.
Progress isn’t linear. Nothing is linear. It’s all scribbles, but you know what, I’m starting to get behind those.
three
No one asked for a music recommendation but here is a major player in the soundtrack to my February:
Billy Changer | She’s Good to Go
I hope you’re all well.
