On my last visit to Asheville, my daughter-in-law, who was recently diagnosed with cancer and is in chemotherapy, was “resting” on the sofa in the living room while I did the supper dishes in the kitchen. By resting, I mean only three or four of her children had surrounded her rather than the full kit of six. At one point I heard her say, “Why is everyone eating my blanket?”
Her remark made me laugh, but it also reminded me once again what a damned hard job it is being a parent.
Her remark made me laugh, but it also reminded me once again what a damned hard job it is being a parent.
For the last four months I have spent all but five days in two different homes surrounded by my swarms of grandchildren. Until a week ago, my daughter’s home sported ten children eleven years old and younger, six natural to the parents and four in foster care under a private arrangement. She is expecting her seventh child in February. My youngest son and his wife are also expecting in February. Another son and his wife are now parents to a little boy and a baby girl.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed that “a child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.” My recent experiences with my younger grandchildren put me squarely in his camp.
If you have no children, you may find my thumbs up to Emerson mean-spirited, but you would be mistaken. I wax sentimental over babies and infants. I smile at new mothers and their sons and daughters. I love my grandchildren. Their tiny gestures of affection can bring me to the point of tears.
But children under the age of four are, as Emerson says, “lunatics.” If that word offends you, I’m sorry, but you either have one perfect child or you haven’t dealt at all with these diapered maniacs.
Most two-year-olds, for example, are terrorists staggering around with the gait and balance of a drunkard seeing what they can destroy while at the same time doing everything possible to commit suicide. They climb atop tables and chairs on their stubby uncertain legs, they race headlong at open stairwells, they stick whatever piece of plastic they find on the floor into their cherubic mouths, they wake like maniacs at two in the morning and then wail for two hours, they poop and pee without regard to the proprieties, they giggle one moment and sob the next. Their favorite word of is “Mine!” usually accompanied by a shriek. They understand the word “No” when they are speaking—they bellow “NO!” at the sibling trying to take away a butcher knife they have snatched from the counter—but they seem to comprehend it not when someone says no to them.
Three and four year-olds gain in language comprehension, sleep better, and usually come to understand the function of that porcelain pool in the bathroom in which they once enjoyed splashing their hands. But they too can be terrors in their own right. Some of them change clothes at the drop of a hat, going through six and seven outfits a day like some mad celebrity on a shopping spree. They blurt out inappropriate remarks in public, pointing as they do so at anyone they find out of the ordinary. They find their brother’s collection of sports cards and carry away to heaven only knows where his Michael Jordan card. Without batting an eye, they would strut around all day with breakfast jelly smeared on their cheeks, wearing a dress shirt, pajama bottoms, and bogs, like a walking advertisement for a Good Will store. They will docilely watch “Bob The Builder” or “Thomas the Tank Engine,” then minutes later take a wooden sword to the head of a sister reading a book.
And who has to deal with these pot-bellied wackos? Who has to civilize them?
The parents and those who help them.
Let me give just one small example of the cost of caring for toddlers. Two weeks ago, the young woman who helps my daughter-in-law had only the three youngest children in her charge: two-year-old twins and a nineteen-month-old boy. For a Christmas present, this young woman had received one of those wrist gauges that measure steps taken and heart rate. In five hours, her device recorded that she walked ten thousand steps, all of this in the space of living room and kitchen. “I just broke my record!” she exclaimed. Her tally didn’t include the steps taken by my son, who had taken the older three children to work with him, where, incidentally, they behaved like angels for three hours.
Being a parent or being with toddlers in any capacity is tough. The hours are long, the salary largely non-existent, the investment of worry, energy, and money immense. Besides being nurse, referee, teacher, and cop, the parents or their helpers change diapers, wash extra dishes and clothes, give up the idea of sleep, and wake zombie-like to do the same things all over again.
You who do these tasks are my heroes. You are the ones renewing the planet. You are the ones bringing new life into the world and striving to give those little ones the best in life. You are building the future for them and for the rest of us.
Many thanks to all of you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed that “a child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.” My recent experiences with my younger grandchildren put me squarely in his camp.
If you have no children, you may find my thumbs up to Emerson mean-spirited, but you would be mistaken. I wax sentimental over babies and infants. I smile at new mothers and their sons and daughters. I love my grandchildren. Their tiny gestures of affection can bring me to the point of tears.
But children under the age of four are, as Emerson says, “lunatics.” If that word offends you, I’m sorry, but you either have one perfect child or you haven’t dealt at all with these diapered maniacs.
Most two-year-olds, for example, are terrorists staggering around with the gait and balance of a drunkard seeing what they can destroy while at the same time doing everything possible to commit suicide. They climb atop tables and chairs on their stubby uncertain legs, they race headlong at open stairwells, they stick whatever piece of plastic they find on the floor into their cherubic mouths, they wake like maniacs at two in the morning and then wail for two hours, they poop and pee without regard to the proprieties, they giggle one moment and sob the next. Their favorite word of is “Mine!” usually accompanied by a shriek. They understand the word “No” when they are speaking—they bellow “NO!” at the sibling trying to take away a butcher knife they have snatched from the counter—but they seem to comprehend it not when someone says no to them.
Three and four year-olds gain in language comprehension, sleep better, and usually come to understand the function of that porcelain pool in the bathroom in which they once enjoyed splashing their hands. But they too can be terrors in their own right. Some of them change clothes at the drop of a hat, going through six and seven outfits a day like some mad celebrity on a shopping spree. They blurt out inappropriate remarks in public, pointing as they do so at anyone they find out of the ordinary. They find their brother’s collection of sports cards and carry away to heaven only knows where his Michael Jordan card. Without batting an eye, they would strut around all day with breakfast jelly smeared on their cheeks, wearing a dress shirt, pajama bottoms, and bogs, like a walking advertisement for a Good Will store. They will docilely watch “Bob The Builder” or “Thomas the Tank Engine,” then minutes later take a wooden sword to the head of a sister reading a book.
And who has to deal with these pot-bellied wackos? Who has to civilize them?
The parents and those who help them.
Let me give just one small example of the cost of caring for toddlers. Two weeks ago, the young woman who helps my daughter-in-law had only the three youngest children in her charge: two-year-old twins and a nineteen-month-old boy. For a Christmas present, this young woman had received one of those wrist gauges that measure steps taken and heart rate. In five hours, her device recorded that she walked ten thousand steps, all of this in the space of living room and kitchen. “I just broke my record!” she exclaimed. Her tally didn’t include the steps taken by my son, who had taken the older three children to work with him, where, incidentally, they behaved like angels for three hours.
Being a parent or being with toddlers in any capacity is tough. The hours are long, the salary largely non-existent, the investment of worry, energy, and money immense. Besides being nurse, referee, teacher, and cop, the parents or their helpers change diapers, wash extra dishes and clothes, give up the idea of sleep, and wake zombie-like to do the same things all over again.
You who do these tasks are my heroes. You are the ones renewing the planet. You are the ones bringing new life into the world and striving to give those little ones the best in life. You are building the future for them and for the rest of us.
Many thanks to all of you.
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