How I Achieved Parental Nirvana
Alas, it was not eternal...
Two years ago, I achieved parental nirvana.
It started at 7:30 a.m. on a Monday. I asked my kids if they had their lunches and walkie talkies. Then I opened the front door and kissed them goodbye. I said, “Have a great day!” I watched them walk up the street and disappear around the corner.
Seven hours later, they burst through the front door. I took a break from work to administer hugs. (My then-kindergartener still hugged with abandon; my fourth grader accepted my hug, if somewhat grudgingly.) I asked about their respective days, then I pointed to the afternoon checklist on the fridge.
Afternoon snack, bath or shower, 30 minutes of reading time, 20 minutes of computer time, an hour of outdoor play. I told them I’d be back upstairs in two hours, and I descended the stairs to my basement office to finish my work day.
I’ve calculated that in my first decade of parenting, I spent approximately 2,000 hours of my life carting my children to and from their various places of care. That’s the equivalent of 83 days, or 143 days if you only count waking hours.
Just to really drive this point home: I’ve spent the equivalent of 14 hours a day, every day, for five consecutive months dropping off and picking up my children.
My partner has pitched in whenever he can; without his help, it would likely be the equivalent of six or seven months. But because of his school schedule, and then because of his work schedule, the lion’s share has fallen to me.
Sometimes, the dropping off and picking up was pleasant—particularly if I could walk. Most of the time, it was just another thing that had to be done, full of small stresses and nuisances. Other times, it was downright harrowing.
For nine months, I toted my daughter, then two years old, to daycare on the back of my bike before continuing on to work. I had totaled our car when my daughter was not yet one, falling asleep behind the wheel and nearly killing my entire family. I wasn’t anxious to get back behind the wheel any time soon.
Families don’t need cars! I thought smugly as I coasted down 76th Ave, the wind whipping against my face. They’re just not creative enough. And besides, have you seen my ass lately?
Going without a car when we lived in Washington, D.C. had been easy enough. My daughter attended a daycare across the street from our condo, we had a Zipcar on our block, and we often took advantage of the city’s excellent metro system.
But when we moved to Portland, Oregon, things got more complicated. Public transportation was much less accessible, and our closest Zipcar was six blocks away, which meant 12 blocks of lugging a car seat to and fro while clutching the hand of a toddler who was hell-bent on plotting her escape. I realized how incredibly lucky we had been in Washington, D.C. to have a daycare within walking distance, let alone across the street.
We arrived in Portland in July, and for the first few months, the bike rides were pleasant, if a little sweaty. By October, I was starting to re-think our plan. The only affordable daycare option that had an immediate opening entailed a six-mile detour, which meant biking over 10 miles each way to get to my office, most of them with the added weight of a very dense, sometimes fussy two-year-old.
I was prepared for the rain, but not for the dark or the cold. At 7 a.m. in October, Portland is still shrouded in darkness, and dusk was encroaching on us earlier and earlier each evening. And toward the end of October, the early morning was becoming, for lack of a better term, fucking freezing.
Have you ever tried putting gloves on a toddler at 6:45 a.m.? In retrospect, it was probably exactly this experience that led to the invention of mittens. But I didn’t have mittens, and I continued to struggle with those goddamn gloves. During that dark, wet, cold period of my life, I became a bit of a masochist. I embraced the spitting of rain across my face, the numbness in my fingers, the endless fussing with gloves and straps and bike locks and bags.
In a way, the gloves were my morning victory. No matter that I had a dark, often wet, 10-mile ride ahead of me, not to mention a full day’s work. Once I got those gloves on, I knew I could do anything.
That November, I once again embarked on the frantic and eternal quest for that elusive trifecta of childcare quality, convenience, and affordability. I was able to find a new daycare that was only two miles out of my way. That helped, but meanwhile it was only becoming darker and colder. Morning temperatures were regularly in the low 30s if not below, and by 4:30 p.m. night had smugly descended.
When my daughter fussed, I sang her Christmas carols. I particularly liked The 12 Days of Christmas because it could get us from 20th Ave to 57th. I had to sing loudly, which meant that passing pedestrians and other screw-the-weather cyclists also got to enjoy my out-of-tune renditions of Christmas classics.
When we finally broke down and bought a car, life was easier, but not that much easier. There was traffic to contend with and parking to find. We were on daycare #3 by then — almost perfect, except for the 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. hours. When coupled with a downtown commute, I couldn’t quite get in an eight-hour workday.
My coworkers were not sympathetic.
On my first day back at work after my second maternity leave, I side-swiped another car while attempting to change lanes. I’ve gotten in exactly two car accidents in my life, and both were while attempting to operate heavy machinery in the perennially sleep deprived state of early motherhood.
They say just one sleepless night can impair performance as much as a blood-alcohol level of 0.10 percent. That’s beyond the legal limit to drive.
I thought, “Why am I doing this?”
Why am I endangering other drivers, not to mention my own children? Why am I commuting downtown only to hook my breasts up to a machine while my baby, who is far more adept at milk extraction, is being bottle-fed by another woman? Why am I paying this woman half my monthly paycheck? Why is this woman, to whom I am entrusting my 12-week-old baby, earning only slightly more than minimum wage?
“Is this really how it works?” I kept asking myself. I thought I must be missing something. Maybe in the hours I spent sleuthing around the Internet to find childcare options, I was typing in the wrong keywords or missing some magical search result buried on page six.
Surely, there was a secret network of affordable neighborhood childcare centers that were open for enough hours to accommodate a parent working full-time? Surely, there was a secret network of companies that offered childcare subsidies, flexible work hours, and a minimum of six months of paid leave? Surely, someone was holding out on me, having a joke at my expense?
If this was really The Way Things Were, I thought, why weren’t more working parents up in arms? Why weren’t we storming the Capitol? Not with guns, but with babies and children? I had to chuckle just thinking about it. Some lawmakers, I imagined, would rather face an armed militia than a mob of crying babies who needed care.
My childfree sister asked me not too long ago, “Do you like being a parent?” It was a fair question. I do my share of griping.
I often try to remind myself that for many women throughout history, and in some parts of the world today, birthing and raising children wasn’t just hard — it was really, incredibly, impossibly hard. The babies just kept coming. Half of them died before adulthood. And every time you had a baby, there was a not too statistically remote chance you might die yourself.
To be clear, what pisses me off is not that modern parenting is hard. Parenting should be hard. Raising small humans is no small task.
What pisses me off is that modern parenting is needlessly hard. Many of the things that are hard don’t have to be this way.
Parents, I invite you to close your eyes and imagine with me. (Please don’t fall asleep.)
Can you imagine a world in which new parents are honored with time and space to make one of the most challenging transitions of our lives? A world in which childcare facilities are as ubiquitous as gas stations? A world in which work and school schedules are aligned? A world in which you can save for your family’s future instead of bleeding half your paycheck so you can work 40+-hour weeks? A world in which we honor the people to whom we entrust our children with financial security and societal respect?
Can you imagine a world in which you actually have the time and energy to do the real hard work of parenting? To have those crucial conversations with your children, to teach them vital life skills, to model values like empathy and curiosity, to hold them through their tears, to bear witness as they flourish and flail?
Our country has the resources to make this all happen. But our leaders don’t have the will.
Nine years, six daycares, one preschool, two after-care programs, and a few dozen summer camps after it first dawned on me that this was really The Way Things Were, I enjoyed the brief “luxury” of having two children at the same public school. A school to which I didn’t have to fork over half my monthly paycheck, a school that resided nine quiet blocks from our home.
And suddenly I had so much energy. Not just physical energy, but mental and emotional energy. Room to think. Space to breathe.
I think often about all the creative brain power our country could be harnessing — to make art, build bridges, fight for justice, solve climate change — that is instead invested in the logistics of piecing together childcare.
Alas, this summer has served as a brutal reminder of what my life was like not too long ago. My daughter is transitioning to middle school in the fall, and since she’s aged out of most of the summer camps she once did with her brother, I find myself once again contending with multiple pickups and drop-offs, misaligned schedules, chaotic mornings, and harried afternoons.
My daughter’s middle school is not within walking distance from our house and unless we can find a crew of kids for my son to glom onto, he may no longer be able to walk on his own to school. Once again, the logistical puzzles buzz in my ear, taunting and haunting me.
Some believe nirvana to be eternal, but alas, if there’s one thing we learn as parents it’s that everything is temporary. As soon as we think we’ve hit our stride, and particularly as soon as we start feeling a little smug, everything that was working stops working.
For two fleeting years, I had two children who could dress themselves and walk themselves to and from school. For one of these fleeting years, both of these children were still willing to hug me. We’ll see what the next season brings.