March 31, 2005

the last word on Warner

Here is what I really wanted to say, what I was trying to say, about Judith Warner’s book:

I have a great life. I have a husband who works–hard–to pay the bills so that I can be ‘at home’ with our children, a situation we chose together and which neither of us regrets. I have healthy, smart, charming kids, a nice house that we are actually paying off, good health care, and enough money left over for private school and some day care and the occasional friviolous trip to Target or Pottery Barn.

BUT . . . I am always exhausted. I am thin (but not in a good, healthy way). I am often short with my children. I am overwhelmed by laundry, housework, bills, doctors appointments, playdates and grocery shopping. While my husband sleeps soundly at night I lay awake worrying that Henry isn’t holding his pencil the right way and that Charlie is wasting away in day out and really SHOULD be in the same very very expensive preschool as his brother. I worry about what will happen when I go back to work, and what exactly I think I’m going to DO when I go back to work. I spend my days changing diapers and buckling car seats and saying idiotic things like ‘Can you use some nice words?’ And I fall into bed at the end of every day dreading the alarm and the beginning of the next round of worry and stress.

My friend Leslie jokes about our lives. She calls, pretty much every day, at the same time, after lunch, when the boys–hers and mine–are all napping. ‘What are you doing?’ she asks when I answer the phone. ‘Loading the dishwasher,’ I nearly always say. Sometimes she will say, ‘What are you doing? No, let me guess–you are . . . having a pedicure! Reading a book! Curing cancer!’ All equally unlikely.

I’ve tried for a long time to really live the Zen of motherhood, to remind myself that mindfulness comes through repetition, and that the more repetitive and mindless the task, the greater the opportunity for true insight. But let’s face it, there is nothing mindful about the lives of small children. They are loud and wild and demanding, and they don’t understand the idea of ‘quiet time’ as anything but punishment. And so, instead of being mindful, I am stressed and cranky, and I turn on the TV to get away from my kids (which makes me feel guilty which makes me cranky) and I get up at 5:30 in the morning to have just a little bit of time alone (which makes me more tired and cranky and . . . you see how this goes).

And I feel bad–terrible, horrible–about complaining about any of this because I am so fortunate and I do have such a wonderful life. But this wonderful life is wearing me down and making me sad.

THAT is what I think Judith Warner is really trying to say.

Posted by Susan @ 6:19 am • Uncategorized