Reality Check Please!

After those last few posts about child-bearing and how amazing and holy and wonderful it is to be a mother, I had a real reminder of what it's like to actually have a child (or children) around the house 24 hours a day and the experience sort of kicked my ass.

Let me just say that my youngest is eighteen so it's been quite a while since I was the actual mother of an actual baby or toddler. We can all do that math. And I remember it as being fairly difficult and thinking that if I didn't get some sleep pretty soon I might die. And I do remember having a very real fantasy, detailed and rich, about what I'd do if I could get away and spend a night all by myself in a hotel. I mean, I knew what the bed would look and feel like, I dreamed about those curtains that don't let one slip of light into a room, I even knew what the soap would smell like if I got oh, say 18 hours to myself to bathe in privacy and sleep an entire night.

I'd say this was strange, but I've heard other mothers report the same fantasy. Forget Brad Pitt, if most mothers of small children had the opportunity to spend the night in a hotel without their children, they'd opt for the time in sweet, sacred solitude.

So I know it's hard but like they say about childbirth- I had sort of forgotten the pain.

A friend of mine who has two children, however, stayed with me this past weekend while our men went off to the Father's Day fishing tournament and all of a sudden, the whole business of what it's like to have little ones came back to me with startling clarity. And let me just say this- it's harder than hell!

This friend is an amazing stay-at-home mom and her children are two-years old and five months old and boy, does she have her hands full. Her husband is out of town more than half the time with work and she is mostly alone with the children. Frankly, I don't know how she does it and weirder yet- I don't know how I did it.

Her children are darling and smart and cute and wonderful and I love them so much I could die, but the amount of care they take is positively mind-blowing. If the two-year old isn't crying because she needs a nap but thinks she wants to watch Shrek for the eighteenth time in three days, the baby is crying because he can't get his hands and mouth on everything within eyesight. And babies have really good eyes, let me just say. And a much longer reach than you could possibly imagine that anyone with six-inch arms could have.

Over the course of the weekend, we made about a thousand snacks, cleaned up about fifty spit-ups, cooked about thirty regular meals, did about twenty-two loads of laundry, got the dogs off one child or another (my dogs love babies) at least once every ten minutes, sang songs, read kid books, filled the kiddie pool, went blueberry picking, went to Lake Ella, experimented with what a five-month old could eat, watched the aforementioned Shrek over and over and over, and went to see a production of The Three Little Pigs in Monticello. And I was totally exhausted and the mama did at least ten times the amount of all of the above than I did, plus nursed the baby and changed the diapers. One or both of them would be in tears and she'd look at me and say, "Who knew?"

I think that's the thing- if anyone really knew what taking care of babies and young children was like, they'd say, "Uh, not for me. Thanks!" I mean, this friend knows what hard work is. She worked in the very real world for years before she had children and handled that fine. Now, however, she walks around from one crisis to another with a look of baffled exhaustion on her face, wondering how in the world she'll get to bedtime without jumping off a bridge. And yet, nothing in the world makes her as happy as the sight of one of her children smiling and she thinks (she thinks she thinks, anyway) that it's all quite worthwhile and she wouldn't trade a minute of it.

I kept telling her that it would all get easier and it does. Sort of. It gets different, anyway.

And as they grow up, you do get more sleep.

But the whole experience reminded me of why I prize my time alone so much and fight for it so fiercely. Why I am still exhausted. Why I can't always follow an entire thought through from start to finish. I mean, I had FOUR kids.

They left yesterday when the men got back from fishing, to go home to Tampa and my house is once again relatively quiet, the dishes are all washed, there are no bits of zwieback glued to my shirt, and once again I can be ignorant of the line-up on the Disney channel and can cook a meal without worrying about stepping on a baby playing on the kitchen floor. I miss those babies and I'm so glad I got to know them and hug them and love on them and be with them and their mama for a few days. It was a wonderfully chaotic and terrific few days.

But boy, am I glad I've been there and done that and that it's someone else's turn now.