You Can (And Will) Take It With You
What I learned from 2,000 miles on the road with my family.
Did you know that when a marker-cap, enclosed in a Subaru Outback traveling at 75 miles per hour, is separated from its marker, it has a 95.5% chance of falling or magically disappearing from said vehicle altogether? Did you know that when a human woman, even one who is absolutely considered by some measures to be a millennial, twists her body at a 180-degree-angle to retrieve the marker cap, she is 75% likely to pull a muscle in her back that can only be treated by swearing under the breath? Did you know that a child, in possession of only eight markers, can somehow repeat this process up to 300 times per hour? Well, I didn’t either, until I decided it was a good idea for my family to take a road trip.
Ten days. Two states. Four sleeping locales. One courageous child pooping-into-a-plastic bag on the side of a busy highway. Did we have fun? Absolutely. Did we each, at various moments and then sometimes all at once, completely fall apart? You betcha. Many of my finest moments involved one or more of the following: feeling sorry for myself that I was not on an adult vacation, resenting my children, feeling guilty for not appreciating my children, yelling at my children, feeling ashamed for how much I was blaming them for perfectly reasonable behavior, lying awake at 3am in an Airbnb bed that seemed to be made from laying an emergency blanket over a concrete slab, and considering how my xyz was surely going to make my children grow up to be whatever whatever. I have to tell you - it got a little dark there for a minute. But once I got over myself, apologized to my kids for being a petulant ass, and forgave us all for being alive and breathing, it all felt a lot lighter.
I’ve been studying how to be a good parent since before I was a parent. Opinions abound, but very little seems to consider that both children and parents are human, that parents were raised by other parents who were also human, and that I can both want desperately for my children to grow up to be healthy, happy adults, and also consider that if I leave while they’re young they will perhaps forget about me and not be that traumatized.
I think, perhaps, the answer is that I already am a good parent. I believe, with great confidence, that if you too are a parent, you are also a good one. Western parents spend more time with their children than they ever have before. We give thought and care to raising children who think about gender, race, and ability in more nuanced ways than what we were taught. We are teaching them to both be sex positive and set boundaries with their own bodies. Unlike previous generations, we are explaining to our kids that Bill Clinton is actually a big ol’ dirt bag. This last year, the vast majority of us did not act on our impulses to murder or abandon our children, though it was clear that everyone was writing about us but no one was coming for us. We are overwhelmed with a culture of unreasonable expectations for parents and almost zero actual support, and then we are told that all we have to do to make that whole situation totally fine is parent like the French or the Maya or let our kids range-free or find our own village.
When I say I’m a great parent, I am not just talking about my Oscar moments, like the three-plus hours I logged entertaining two cranky children doing a monologue as personified bag of freeze-dried-bananas reminiscing about a romantic encounter she once had with a Medjool date. I’m talking about how I am raising children in this reality, and we experience the range of human emotions together, and I mostly don’t abuse and neglect them in the process and even often teach them things and show them unconditional love and model genuine apologies.
There is no clean, neutral baseline human existence that our or our children’s experiences can be weighed against. Life is messy. As messy as an entire bag of Trader Joe’s Cheddar Rocket Crackers that someone insisted they could open themselves but instead exploded, everywhere, and was slowly trampled into the fibers of 1,000 items that no one really needed to bring on a trip anyway. MESS-Y. At home. On “vacation.” In your friend you haven’t seen in two years’ backyard in Los Angeles. At the Tuscon Botanical Gardens. Whatever you read, however you try, it’s all part of the deal. The good, the bad, and the bananas.
Other Stuffs:
-I loved this article by Keith Gessen about how badly he wanted his son to play sports.
-This piece about comedian Josh Thomas’s journey with autism is super interesting and makes me wonder when self-diagnosis will take the power away from “experts” like me and give it back to the people.
-My son discovered that I put pictures in my newsletters and begged me to share this photograph of his tiny sandwich party.
I look forward to your email more than most other things in my life. No pressure.
Thank you so much.. I have not laughed this hard in weeks. Made my day!