Is parenting hard?

the torture and the magic

I had a fun piece in SFGATE over the weekend in which I got to talk about my late-in-life love of piano and other things I do to keep myself from doomscrolling: “Go on a quick jaunt through town or along a trail, unencumbered by silica glass, refined metals, plastics and polymers. You will, of course, notice different things, including the jitteriness of your own soul, but it will settle soon. You might actually see the face of a person you pass or the texture of the bark of a tree. You might enjoy the rich saturation of a spring flower without sharing it on Instagram, and that will feel strangely and wonderfully private.” Read the whole thing here.

As always, thanks so much to our wonderful community here for commenting, subscribing, and sharing these dispatches with your own beloved. You can feel it all radiating out through your big, resilient hearts. I don’t take it for granted.

Yesterday, my 9-year-old kid asked me: “Is it hard to be a parent?”

We were driving and we’d been enjoying an easy silence for awhile. I have no idea what led her to ask this, but it sent my thought trains down a few different tracks immediately.

Part of me felt like letting out a big delicious laugh. “You haven’t noticed? Yeah girl, it’s hella hard.”

Part of me felt like focusing on the wonderful aspects of parenting instead of answering her question uncensored. I don’t want her to feel confused about whether she is “to blame” for the hard stuff. I grew up with that kind of confusion sometimes and it was heavy. We so easily transmogrify adult complexity into kid logic and wear it uneasily for the rest of their lives.

Part of me felt like going down an existential rabbit hole. Is parenting hard? Is co-existing with people with different kinds of brains and tendencies and desires hard? Is being a person hard? Is living on this planet at this time in relationship to other humans hard? Is change hard? Is love hard?

Instead I just said, “It can be, but it’s also amazing. I think I’m a pretty good fit for parenting because I like to take care of people and make them feel safe, and I love getting to know people. And there’s really no experience of getting to know people that’s more interesting than getting to know your own kids over time. Why do you ask?”

“I was just wondering,” she said. “Sometimes it seems fun. And sometimes it seems hard.”

“That’s about right,” I said. “I think you’re seeing it accurately.”

My kid has inexplicably gotten really into the idea of being a teenage mother. She has invented two characters—Lily and Finn, a baby and her teen mom—and she likes to talk to me for long stretches about their schedule. “Finn has figured out that if she puts Lily in her car seat next to her pool, she can swim laps in the morning and get her exercise without needing a babysitter,” my kid tells me.

Finn is somehow a nurse and a waitress, who also goes to school full time, while her kid is at “a few hours” of daycare. She also lives in a mansion and eats a lot of açai bowls. I can tell that what appeals to my kid about this imaginary world she’s built is all the ways that Finn has strategized how to get through the day when other people underestimated her. Finn is her underdog. (And seems to have been born through a Roblox roleplaying game called Berry Avenue.)

I remember playing at overwhelm and exasperation as a kid. For me it was through Barbies, not online role playing. But all the same, it felt deliciously adult and important—look at me, keeping this very detailed appointment book! Look at me, running late for everything because I am so important and so busy! Look at me, being torn in a million directions! What significance!

These days, I am trying to learn to be less significant. I don’t want to be overwhelmed or busy or have a full appointment book or run late. I want to feel the summer sun on my skin and wonder what time it is. I want to pay attention to the moment when my dog, snuggled up against me, gives the big breath that signals she is totally and completely relaxed. I want to read Little Women out loud to my 12-year-old and take a bath with my 9-year-old while they’ll still let me. I want to get way too serious about a sandwich making competition with my brother-in-law and be genuinely light about my paid work, which miraculously involves good words and good people.

If I never had to look at another spreadsheet about pick-ups and drop-offs, that would be fantastic, but since that’s not possible at this point in my life, I guess I just hope not to mistake the spreadsheet for my life, or my competence, or most of all, my relationships with my kids.

I’ve been bothered by a nagging worry since my kid started telling me these “Lily and Finn” tales: Have I modeled something for her that makes the second and third shifts seem like a game women have to be inexhaustible and inventive to win? Did I inadvertently make it look virtuous to “do it all?”

Ugh. Probably so. I do get pretty jazzed when I feel like I am running on all cylinders…until I crash into some kind of peri-menopausal wall of resentment and dread and then I am zero fun to be around, much less pretend to be. Some nights 8pm rolls around and I feel like all the magic has gone out of me, like a snow globe with no snow. I crawl into my bed and pretend I can’t hear them yelling from the other room, “Mom? Moooooooooom? Moooooooooooooooom?”

They find me anyway. They always do. And they need to know where the retainer was left or what time the Scouts meeting is tomorrow, or they need to make an airtight case against the other sister whose behavior is always entirely unexplainable, or they just want to curl in bed beside me, and this, the last scenario, is the only one that will do. “You can be here as long as you don’t talk,” I bark at my beautiful child, and she says okay and opens up her graphic novel and sometimes laughs to herself but remembers not to tell me the joke because I don’t care and will no longer, at this hour, pretend to.

Is parenting hard? It can certainly be relentless. And sometimes it’s way more responsibility than I can actually shoulder. But it’s filthy rich with meaning. And never stops surprising me in a world that sometimes feel very boring and predictable. It’s heavy and messy and impossible, and delightful and sweet and sacred. It will destroy and remake you if you let it. It will break you and keep you motivated to become more whole.

The older my girls get, the more I am aiming for the ease beyond the difficulty, a parenting parallel to Oliver Wendell Holmes’ simplicity beyond the complexity. Parenting becomes, every day more and more, about witnessing who my daughters are becoming and not interfering with it. Sure, I have to keep them safe, but mostly I think that involves doing the administration (scheduling, reaching out, asking) needed to strengthen their connections with a wide range of people—aunties and teachers and friends and mentors. Sure, I have to keep nourishing the foundational sense of trust between us, but that’s an art, not a science, involving a lot of listening and letting go and, to be honest, non-verbal communication. Sure, I’m scared as hell many days about how fast they’re growing up, but it’s balanced by such a deep admiration I have for both of them. What wonders! What weirdos! What beauties!

In other words, my girl, it’s nothing you could ever imagine your way into, even though I get why you try. Every parent-child relationship is truly different, shaped by their chemistry, their psyches, their time. You and me are a pair unlike any other, but every child and parent—on some level—feels that way. That’s the magic. And the torture. And the magic.