It turns out i’m sort of bad at this
“Becoming a mom to me means that you have accepted that for the next 16 years of your life, you will have a sticky purse.” – Nia Vardalos
What feels sticky this week though, is my brain. I heard so many things about parenting before becoming a parent myself. I think I knew that I had given my parents a run for their money what that I am a high energy creative who’s always on the go and who went through the typical wilds of Townships teens, and have contemplated what it would have been like to be my own mother (you’re the best, Mum). I think I thought I knew that it would be tough at times, gut-wrenching at times, flabbergasting at times. I think I thought I knew what it would be like, and I felt so motivated to be a mother that I figured I could just make my way through it and it would all be okay.
But you don’t really know what it’s really like until you get there. I’ve never been to Disney World or the Grand Canyon – or New York City. But I imagine what they are like – I imagine what it will feel like to be surrounded by Disney things and Disney people and Disney everything. I imagine what it would be like to gaze out over that expanse of space, the colours of the canyon – everything that I’ve seen in images and films, and National Geographic. I imagine what the lights, sounds, colours, people, energy of NYC will be like. What it will be like to people watch and eat pizza, to attend a play on Broadway, to be in Times Square. But, I’ve never been there. These are moderately educated guesses.
“You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.” – Franklin P. Adams
I wasn’t betting on how much they would teach me, and even that I thought I had an idea of. I’ve worked with youth all of my life – they have definitely been right up there with the most important teachers of my life. But, nothing prepares you for what you learn from your own children.
And sometimes what you learn you sort of wish you could do without. Some of it hurts, and you think to yourself, “Is this entitlement? Is this poopfacery? Have a raised a poopfacer?!” And sometimes, we sort of have. At least temporarily poopyfacey. We aren’t sure we recognize them, and we aren’t sure that we want to.
And sometimes, they are right.
And not just right, but very, very right.
And we suddenly feel poopface-ish ourselves. And we think, “Oh CRAP, they’re right. I poopfaced.”
We lose sleep over the poopfacing. We feel it rolling over in our heads, our sticky, sticky heads, as sticky as our purses, attempting to process the fact that while we tried to avoid it, we still managed to pull off poopface-osity without even realizing it.
Secret poopfacing! Look it up! No, wait, don’t, it doesn’t exist, except that it does. And you’re getting the definition right here, right now. You’re welcome.
We secretly poopface and sometimes when they very pointedly poke us in the poopface with their sticky smart brains, we are SHOCKED and we see perhaps something we learned in our own households (although GOD FORBID, had we called out the poopfacing, we would have been buried in the yard). But, here we are, in 2024, a poopfaced, stickybrained parent, attempting to do a little better.
And yes, they just might be right in that moment, and we have to admit that, DANG IT, they stick pointed you in the secret poopface. AND THEY WERE RIGHT TO DO SO. And a bit brave.
And then you wonder if they’re spoiled.
Because that is the first line of poopfacery-admittance avoidance – CONTEMPLATION OF SPOILEDNESS. So not only are you getting poked in the sticky secret poopface by truths you absolutely wanted to avoid dealing with, but you have also raised a spoiled brat. Way to go us, parentfailing with two big bad things.
Until a moment later when you realize, looking into their rather sad eyes, or their slightly defiant entire face, and it is poop-free. And then it hits – and you start to see a bit of the spectrum, the matrix of the biggest challenges of parenting – being faced not with them, but with ourselves.
The conversation ends, and as you don’t sleep, and as you drink your coffee in the morning, you have to make a second coffee for the secret poopface and have a talk with it. You have to face it even though it’s the worst secret roommate ever. You have to look it in its eyes, twins to your own, only poopfacier.
And you feel a weird mix of humbled and small and alone and sticky. And defeated. And out-debated. And wrong.
And that is the stickiest thing about parenting. It’s not the purse.
It’s the secret humbled small alone sticky poopface.
It’s tricky to know where to go from there. Where do you go? What do you say? Or not say? How much space do you give? How much do you lay down a tiny bit of law, and how much do you open yourself up to the hurt of what they are right about?
It seems, you open yourself up pretty wide. And you stay sort of still. And you paint a fence. And you prepare the day. And you do chores, and the stickiness stays in your thoughts, and the wrongness doesn’t come with an instruction manual. You wonder if the secret poopfacery will have permanent damage. How will you ever really be close again if it turns out it was there waiting to begin its sticky haunting?
Well, you just take your time, and you give them space, and you set your own boundaries. And you self-care, and you listen to them, and you don’t justify your behaviour too much. You ask them questions about how to do better, and you try.
Some of that is bound to stick, in a non-sticky-purse way, more of a brokenin, moderate quality Velcro sort of way. Because you love them, and you learn that it’s okay to be wrong and to learn, and some of it washes off, and poopfacing can fade – for them sometimes entirely, even though you may have a tiny poopface scar, the mark of a true parent.
Parenthood – it’s messy, sticky, and not for the faint of heart. There is no manual, and it is like visiting somewhere you’ve heard about but have never been. It can be breathtaking and a boot in the teeth, sometimes in rapid succession. And no matter what, it’s worth it, and the single biggest character-building experience there is.
May you have the fortitude to withstand the appearance of your sticky secret poopface. Proceed with caution, but mostly with a little space, and a little patience.