All Magic, All The Time? Maybe.

11.03.2010

Ask and ye shall receive.

Since my post for Monday where I complained about our society’s seemingly endless focus on only the magical side of having kids, I’ve been handed the pause button so that I can take a good look around and stop being so picky with what I choose to see or notice.

After my language lesson yesterday, my student's little girl ran up to us, yelled with glee and ran back into the living room where she was coloring on large pieces of paper. In the living room, I found her mother with a glass of wine. She turned to me and with an exasperated look asked, “So how was your hour of quiet?” I chuckled and replied with mock innocence, “You mean your almost two-year old isn’t quiet?” She gulped down wine in response.

Their little girl recently discovered the art of shrieking and runs playfully from one room to the next while one or the other parent chases her desperately trying to explain that that’s no appropriate behavior for the inside. Oh, joy!

Then today, I met with a girl friend who has a 5-month old baby and asked her what would be something that, before the baby, she imagined would be one way and yet, surprisingly, was different whether it’s for better, worse, easier or harder. She thought for a moment and then replied that she thought her kid would sleep more. Of course, all babies are different (I apparently couldn’t sleep enough) but there are moms who seem to have all the time in the world to do whatever they want and she feels like she’s always racing against the clock. She reminds herself that each situation is unique and that this is the situation she was given, and that it's getting better. Obviously, this isn’t something you can plan for because you don’t know what your kid is going to be like until you have him/her, but see, this kind of information benefits someone like me.

It’s important for me to witness the love in these parents’ eyes when they look at or speak of their children but it also helps to know that, on occasion, a glass of wine is needed to deal or a walk around the block or sitting on the floor and having a good cry. I say this because that is probably going to be me one day and it gives me peace of mind to know that that’s ok, that there may be darker colors amidst the magic’s beautiful ones but, in the end, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t magical.