Tired

I'm the youngest child in my family. When it came time for me to drive, my mother took me driving once, and that was it. My dad once let me sit on his lap and steer when I was too young to drive. The rest of my driving training came from a friend of my mother's, a 25 year old ex-police officer. "We've already done this three times. I'm old. I'm tired," my mother said. I laughed, and I understood.

I now understand on an entirely new level. I am old. I am tired.

When I got married young, had children immediately, and decided to be a stay at home parent, so many of the people I knew were distressed, to one degree or another. Quite a few tried to talk me out of it. One of the reasons they gave made no sense to me (OK, quite a few made no sense to me). "You'll be so miserable when your kids are grown and gone if you've spent your whole like defining yourself by being their mother!"

"What? I AM their mother. I will always BE their mother."

"Yes, but you need to have an identity outside of that."

"I do."

This is the point at which they'd usually start to sigh, and think that I was a little thick headed. "But you won't, if all you do is stay home and tend children!"

I usually cut them - and I'm using the plural noun because I had these conversations on more than one occasion, with different people - slack for being well intentioned, which I think they were. They wanted me to be happy. Many of them were also about my age, early 20s, and on fire with desire to conquer and change the world, and be recognized as important, and it made no sense to them that I stepped off of the merry-go-round. They thought I should be "making a difference," and I thought that I already was.

To my mind, the line of thought that my kids would be my "only identity" made no sense because I was already a good many things before I became a wife and mother. I was a photographer, writer, actor, theater technician, crafter, reader, traveler, member of a religion and of an extended family. I would continue to be those things while my kids were young, and after they had grown. I could not understand the worry that adding a new title would erase the old ones.

It also made no sense when someone explained this mindset by saying, "Well, most people define themselves by their employment." Why in the world would anyone do that? My dad retired when I was 6 months old. For my entire life, he was not employed, and certainly didn't define himself by employment status. My mother was brilliant, excellent at her job, and indispensable to her employer, and she didn't define herself by her employment. "I don't understand people who think that they are their jobs," she said. And besides, why in the world would I make my life choices based on how other people felt about their lives?

So, the worries of others notwithstanding, I chose to be a full time parent.

When our children were a bit older, we had children, family members, who needed a temporary place to stay without their parents, live with us on three long term occasions, and many weekends and school holidays. The social worker in charge of overseeing one of those placements said to us, when the kids moved out, "We need to get you licensed and get some other foster kids in here!" (The process was less involved for us, since the kids were relatives.) We have a 6 bedroom house; even with all of our kids in their own rooms, we had room.

We felt strongly about helping kids in need - at one time, we took classes to prepare us to adopt from foster care - but we turned her down. We just weren't sure we could handle going through the process with kids we hadn't known all their lives, and might never see again. I felt guilty about that - I know how big the need for foster families is - but I chose my own mental health. "Maybe when our youngest is grown, we'll take on some foster kids," we said. Sometimes we added, "But maybe by then we'll be old and tired."

I have now spent over 30 years, 3 decades, being primarily a stay at home mom. Sure, I still did things that mattered to me - hello, live theater - and I worked, on occasion - mostly for myself - but day in, day out, my primary job was Mom. Here's some of what I learned.

I would do it again. I do not regret it. I never felt that my effort was "wasted" or wished that I'd chosen the Impressive Career route.

I now understand, a little bit, why my friends panicked back in the day - why some panic now. I've watched parents who were full time caregivers be lost when there's no one to care for. Some jump into being caregivers for other people's children. Some founder. Some get depressed and say, "No one needs me any more."

Of course, some do what one lifelong friend does. She now spends almost as much time on vacation, usually cruise ships, as she spends at home. She points out that if I'd stopped at 2 kids, I could have been "free" years ago. She spends no time pining for the days of classroom parties and Easter egg hunts.

People are starting to ask me, "What will you do when (your youngest) is out of school?" They offer things - "Do you want to teach a couple of co-op classes?"

Um, respectfully, no - I am looking forward to not being at co-op. Mind you, I LOVE our homeschool co-op. It's been delightful for me and my kids. I've taught academics, art, speech and more, to older kids, to younger kids. My children loved it. But I want to sleep until noon on co-op day, if I feel like it, then spend the rest of the day in my silent family room with a book. I do not want to plan, explain, organize, grade, set up, clean up.

When I had children, I had a really easy time adjusting to the idea that all the time, money and attention went to my children, and not me. It did not make sense when people lamented what a HUGE shift that would be, and wondered if I was ready, or told me that they weren't ready. I think it would be much harder if I had spent years focused on myself, and then had to change gears. I became a parent so young that it's "always" been this way. For an entire year once, I owned only one dress, a $20, 100% polyester dress. I wore it to church every week, to weddings, to funerals, to a family christening, to parties. My daughters, on the other hand, had a closet full of dresses. That's the way things should be, I think.

And now, I am looking forward to keeping my own schedule, choosing my own activities, impulse buying a cute new top. I'm looking forward to having nowhere to go, and no obligations. I want to head out the door with a pb&j sandwich and my camera, and see what needs photographed. I want to sleep in, to nap, to stay up late or to rehearse for a show without worrying that I'll be miserable or neglecting somebody. I want to sit and read, undisturbed in silence. I want to look up nostalgic TV or documentaries on Netflix, without waiting until someone else's bedtime.

I not only did not lose who I was before kids, I've added some labels, like Rotarian and travel agent.

And if people define me as a waste of their conversational efforts, because I'm "just a mom" when "everybody else managed to be a good parent and have a career"? I will ignore them. I will not waste their time or mine trying to change minds.

And unfortunately, yes, I feel too old and tired to take on foster kids. Yes, I feel guilty about that. But having the exact same conversations for literally years is exhausting. I can't take it on again.

I never, ever imagined, for instance, that I would be dealing with children who got out of bed in the middle of the night or early hours of the morning to sneak downstairs and watch TV. Not forbidden shows, often Disney channel, just at 4 am. I not only never imagined that I'd have a child who expressed their displeasure at us by dropping their pants and peeing on the floor, I certainly never imagined that it would continue for years, until said child's age was measured in double digits. (I never imagined, either, spending those years explaining that urine was NOT "water," nor did it "disappear.")

I mean, I expected to have to explain things - I just did not expect to explain them every day for literally years, only to be ignored.

Sometimes, the English language itself made this difficult, like when we spent two years, years, fighting the battle of heating and cooling; trust me, it's not what you're thinking.

We didn't have air conditioning in our cars until the older kids were hitting puberty. One day, when my child was about 6, we were making a familiar 45 minute drive, and a voice from the back seat said, "Can you turn on the heater? It's hot back here."

I explained, "The heater blows hot air. It will make it hotter."

My annoyed offspring announced, "NO, the heater blows warm air, and I want to be warm, not hot!"

"The heater will make it hotter," I repeated. "To make it cooler, we'd need air conditioning, and we don't have it."

Outrage: "I don't want to be cool! I want to be warm! Can you please turn on the heater? It will make it warm."

We spent at least 30 of the 45 minute drive engaged in this discussion. I thought I had explained it to death, and that would be the end of it. No. the next day, and the next, and the next, the SAME conversation took place. "I want to be warm! The heater will make it warm!" I had the children - the other child had now picked up this line of thinking, and parrotted it - hold their hands in front of the heater vents, to feel what came out, at various settings. I explained heaters, furnaces, all manner of non-open flame heating, but to no avail.

Then, one day, a new request. "Can I at least have a blanket, to keep the heat off?"

I clarified this request - it was not a request for window covering, or otherwise building a shade. My hot child wanted to bundle up. "Wrapping up in a blanket is what you do when you're cold. Right now, it will make you hotter."

"It will not! It will keep the sun and the heat off me."

I reminded my children of all the times they'd bundled up when cold, but to no avail.

For days, this continued. Finally, I thought, I am not giving the kids the chance to learn from their choices. I'm a big believer in natural consequences and learning by doing. OK, I thought, let's give them their way, so they can see how it turns out.

I did worry, especially when I looked in the rear view mirror and saw their flushed, sweaty faces above the blankets they had pulled up to their necks and tucked in around them, that I was being an accessory to heatstroke.

After a drive that had us all miserable, I asked, "Do you see now why blankets are a bad idea when you're hot?"

The answer? "You gave us a blanket that was too thin. It lets the heat through. If you'd give us a thicker blanket, it would work."

"No! If I gave you a thicker blanket, your brain would start to cook! No more blankets! Unless it's COLD!"

We continued to have these ridiculous conversations on an almost daily basis. One day, I sat in astonishment in the front seat, and wondered what planet I was on, as my child yelled in outrage from the back of the car, "I can't believe it's this hot back here and you won't even give us a blanket!"

Then, finally, the weather cooled, and the arguing stopped. Ah, I thought, we've moved on. Nope.

We had an evaporative cooler instead of an air conditioner. It was a bit too big for our house, which made it fantastic during the summer. One day that winter, my child said, "It's cold in here. Can we turn on the cooler?" And it all started again.

"No. We run the cooler in the summer, when it's hot. Now it would make us colder."

"No. It would make us cool, and cool is better than cold."

And thus went the winter.

The next summer, when "it's hot, turn on the heater" started again, I said, "We have discussed this over and over. I never want to have this conversation again." But guess what conversation I had all summer that year, too, and what conversation I had all that winter?

I demonstrated mixing hot and cold water for their baths. I pointed out that the furnace was on all winter, and the cooler was on all summer. We discussed and discussed - and my children could not believe that I was so dim that I didn't "get it."

I am just too tired to spend two years having these kinds of conversations again. I. Am. Tired.

Of course, it's not just when the kids are small that you have conversations that you never thought you'd have. Sometimes my kids seemed incapable of simply saying, "OK;" like when I said to a teen with their driving permit, "You went through that corner pretty fast. Slow down through the corners."

The response was, "I don't think I need to."

"I think that you do. Slow down."

"I don't think so. I think I'm fine."

"I didn't ask what you thought. I asked you to slow down. Who's been driving since before you were born, and has a perfect driving record, and who's been driving for a grand total of about 5 hours?"

"I just don't think I need to slow down. I think I'm doing fine."

"Well, I am the driving instructor, the parent, and the owner of the car. You will slow down going through the corners."

"But I don't think I need to!"

I. Am. Tired.

Then there are the conversations that I knew I'd have, but I thought that there was an expiration date. Telling a teenager who's old enough to be holding a job to use toilet paper and to brush their teeth seems ridiculous, but I've spent far too much time doing so. How tough is personal hygiene, really? I mean, toilet paper? Seriously?

When I felt compelled to point out to a teen who worked in a food serving capacity, "Customers will not want you to serve them if you have body odor or bad breath. You don't want them to complain to you or your boss," I was unprepared for the response to be, "You are ruining my self esteem!" Really, Child? You know what will really do a number on your self esteem? Complaints from customers or reprimands from your boss! I sugar coated this message as much as I could - they will not.

When a high school senior repeatedly complained that they "don't have time" to hang up their wet towels instead of leaving them in a heap on the floor (directly under the towel bar!), I demonstrated, by counting "one one thousand, two one thousand," that it took literally two seconds for them to pick it up, fold it, and drop it over the towel bar. And yet, the insistence of, "I don't have time! Why can't you do it?" continued. Finally, after realizing that I'd been fighting this battle since the children were old enough to bathe alone, I said, "Fine. Next year, when you're off at college, and your roommate says, 'Didn't your mother teach you how to pick up after yourself?' you'll have to look them straight in the eye and say, 'Yes, she did, but I ignored her.'"

My child looked stunned. "Because they will say it, I guarantee it," I said. "You think your roommates are going to want to pick up after you? They'll be far less patient about it than I am!" This possibility had not occurred to my honor student.

I. Am. Tired.

Of course, it's not just the conversations with the kids; it's the conversations with the other parents. "Connect with other parents," the experts say. "You'll feel less alone." Nice try, experts. In actual fact, talking to other parents can be extremely alienating.

Take the hygiene issues: When my kids were young and I'd have these conversations, people would say, "Oh, just wait until s/he hits puberty. S/he'll become obsessed with cleanliness." HA! I mean, no offense, Advice Givers, but HA! And it's not just one child. I have a teen who spent an entire week at camp in the same swimsuit, never changing or bathing. (Child's take: "I was so clean! I went in the lake every day!") I've had to almost forcibly remove favorite but dirty clothes, not from my little kids but from adolescents who were sure that wearing dirty "cool" clothes was better than wearing clean "uncool" clothes. I had one child with, unfortunately, very naturally stinky feet who rebelled at the thought of washing their smelly sneakers. ("You want me to wash my shoes?")

And I've gotten (too much) advice on the subject, too. Some people tell me that, once they hit the teens, the child(ren) should to be left to their own devices, to be as smelly and dirty as they want, because the reaction from their peers will squash any ideas of doing it again. Some people tell me that I should do whatever it takes, including forcibly bathing and/or restraining the child, and preventing them from leaving the house unless they're sparkling clean and great smelling, because otherwise I'm an uncaring parent who will cause their child(ren) to be ostracized. Some people tell me that children would only behave this way if no one has taught them proper hygiene. And I want to scream.

You name the subject, and the advice pretty much mirrors this. I've spent too much time hearing, "All you have to do is..." when I have, and, "Have you explained...?" Until I'm blue in the face, thanks - and I'm articulate.

I. Am. Tired.

Even when discussions with other parents go well, it can be hard. I was once speaking to the mother of one of my then-17 year old's best friends. She said something about chores, and I said, "Yes, well, (my child) is convinced that all of the jobs in our house and yard belong to me, and the only reason I have anyone else do any of them is because I'm lazy and mean."

She looked shocked. "No, she doesn't."

"Yes, she really does."

"No! She's 17! She knows how a family works!"

"No. She really doesn't." Not for lack of our explaining it to her - she was just convinced that we were wrong.

The other mom was starting to give me a look that said she was wondering why I would say such outrageous things. So, I said, "Do me a favor - ask her. Ask her when I'm not around, so you know she's not directing the answer at me. And ask her when she's in a good mood, because when she's in a bad mood, she'll agree that I'm responsible for WWII."

Then we changed the subject, and I didn't think much more about it. I know that I have no control over the behaviors or opinions of others, so I don't tend to dwell on them.

A couple of weeks later, this mom pulled me aside. "Remember that conversation about chores? She actually does think that. I had no idea." Yeah - I know.

The kids are bright, capable, talented, articulate. I would give my life for any of them. And yet, all children are irrational.

I. Am. Tired.

So, here I am, not regretting having kids, or staying home with them, or taking on extras now and then. I do not feel lost or diminished or like I have "no identity" or purpose. I'm excited to be able to have "me time." And, I'm so tired that I just can't imagine taking it all on again. Not physically tired, but a deep, philosophical fatigue. I just can't handle the thought of having the same discussions again, over and over and over. Or having new, ridiculous, repetitive discussions. And this makes me, with my empty bedrooms, feel guilty.

One of my religion's books of scripture cautions that, "It is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength." I think that taking on more children might be running faster than I have strength. But I still feel guilty.

"I am old. I am tired."