The Rewards of Exhaustion

Parenting

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us in odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”

Umberto Eco (Foucault's Pendulum)

I am spending a few days in Nashville with my niece and her husband and baby girl. This little family is in the process of moving into their newly built home, my niece has just gone back to work from maternity leave, and baby is adjusting to daycare all at the same time. I am fairly boggled at the enormity of change being made, but they just go about it as though it happens every day. I am reminded once again of the resilience of youth—and of the difficulty of everyday happenings when a baby is in the mix.

Little Elise is now four months old and beginning to cut her first teeth. She snotty and cranky and wants to be held and walked with all the time. If you sit down, she cries; if you hold her in a position she doesn't like, she cries; if she's hungry, she cries, and once she gets going, she's reluctant to stop. Yesterday as I was walking and bouncing and trying to soothe a fussy baby, I had a flashback to my first year as a mother. I thought I simply wouldn't make it through that year. My heart was so full of love and fear, that I hardly took my eyes off Jake. He was a beautiful, fabulous creation that required relentless tending—from the constant feeding, to the everlasting washing, to the middle of the night floor-walking. He wheezed and sneezed and sounded like at any moment he might draw his last breath. I was frazzled to the bone, but there was no let up in the needs of that baby boy.

Parenting is the hardest job anyone ever undertakes. If we knew ahead of time what we were in for, we would have gone the way of the dinosaurs eons ago. And, at the same time, the rewards are without compare. We grow up when we become parents, at least we grow up if we parent well. We give up being the center of the universe, and become slave to a needy master, and most of us relish our loss of freedom. A farmer friend once told me that when a heifer becomes a cow, in other words has a calf, she goes from being bony and lean and rangy to being lush and round and beautiful. Parenting fills our gauntness, smooths our sharp edges, and softens us in all the right places. But, oh my Lord, is it ever hard!

                                               In the Spirit,

                                                    Jane