The Ultimate Unfairness of Fair

We try to teach our children to play fair with others because as our reasons demonstrate it's in their own best interests to do so.  Would you want someone to take your toy from you?  Would you want to play with someone who will not wait their turn?  Would you want to play a game with someone who doesn't follow the rules? Who will want to play with you if you don't play fair?  Well ideally, the answer would be no one.  We teach them about fairness supposedly because it is in their best interests, but the reality is that they will grow up and go out into a world that is ultimately UNFAIR.

We tell them to do their best and that will be enough.  We try to brace them for the reality that "you can't win them all."  But what we don't tell them is that when they grow up, they will be living and competing in a world full of adults that simply didn't learn this lesson as a child or who simply disregarded the archaic idea that it was in their best interests to be fair.  What to do?  What to do?  One day when we get frustrated enough we will tell them "Life is NOT FAIR.  AND there is NOTHING we can do about it."

I have lived through plenty of loss, lies, betrayals, and broken promises to be the walking Poster Girl for UNFAIRNESS.  I lost my dad at fourteen before I even had a chance to push him off the pedestal.  I've worked for years for a promotion that was promised to me and ultimately denied and after fianlly quitting was doled out to a stranger free of charge.  I work hard and at every pass am made to feel that my best is not good enough because mistakes carry more weight than good ideas and intentions.

For me, I have no choice but to be the good girl that I am.  Somewhere way back in my past it must have been burned into my brain, or else we are born hardwired with the personality we have.  In any case, being UNFAIR simply doesn't register as the thing to do.  I'm not saying I'm perfect, oh I'm so the Poster Girl for UNPERFECTION as well if such a word existed.  I have been angry, frustrated, disappointed and saddened by the UNFAIRNESS of life, but knowing my children will meet it head on one day scares me.  Some part of me wonders if my training in FAIRNESS will leave them completely unprepared to survive in an UNFAIR world. 

Should I be teaching them the truth; that people who put their needs first, who take short cuts, who simply don't care whose feelings get hurt or don't look back to see whose lives are left drowning in their wake are the ones who succeed in the UNFAIR "real" world?  Am I dooming them to failure?  The short answer is most definitely YES.  But here comes my hard wiring again - I simply can't show them a roadmap that I don't have.  I will probably never know what it means to have SUCCESS by life's standards.  I have no grandiose notions of acquiring enough money not to give a crap about how I spend it or having strangers know my name and thinking that they perhaps know me too.  Happiness for me,  survival for me, depends on drowning these notions.  These notions are simply not compatible with my brain.

I fear for my children like all parents do.  We want to protect them from anything bad.  We want them to be safe and happy and healthy and we tell ourselves that if we can just accomplish this holy trinity of parenting then life will be fine.  It will open to them all the opportunities we never had.  It will give them the happiness we dream for them.  But the cynical me will always think in the back of my brain that life isn't going to GIVE them anything.  They will simply have to TAKE IT for themselves.  But my brain starts to overload at this juncture in thought because is TAKING what they want ULTIMATELY UNFAIR?

Parenthood is the BEST Birth Control

Before you have children, you use birth control because you THINK you are not "READY" for the RESPONSIBILTY of raising children. Once you have your first child, the decision to have another child becomes a sheer act of will. You must BELIEVE that you are "READY."

The irony of ironies is that already having a child or children is the best birth control. Even if you are "READY" to have a child and even if you're down for some...um..shall we say "practice" you have to fight with all the child related obstacles - lack of privacy, time, sleep deprivation, to-do list overload, etc. So just keep in mind, it takes knowing what you're REALLY in for to know whether or not you're REALLY "READY." That my friend is why, crazy as it sounds, Parenthood is the BEST Birth Control EVER!

Triage On The Parenthood Battle Field

If you have more than one child you have now entered the fun triage zone of the parenthood battle field. There comes a day usually early after you bring home baby number two when suddenly both kids are crying at the same time, and here comes the instant triage scenario: You do a mental checklist, trying to come up with an assessment of which child needs you most urgently at that moment. Is one child hurt and the other simply lonely? Is one child hungry and one is tired and cranky?

The mental checklist is long and we mothers go through it at a supremely fast rate. To outsiders it may look like we are playing favorites when we quickly rush to one child's side over another, but what outsiders don't know is that we fight the war of guilt that consumes us all the time. It's all because we had the audacity to have and love more than one child, all the while knowing that we are simply one person with the limitations of being one single person who can not possibly do all things for all children all the time. Then we find ourselves begging our children to wait, be patient, hurry up, quiet down, behave, the list goes on and on. All because once your family goes from "one child" to "one more child" we have inadvertantly given our children the upper hand. Now we are out numbered.

When one child is sick the choice may seem easy. You go to the child who is sick first. But life and motherhood are not so simple. Just because one child may need you a lot more, you still must tend to the other or others. My heart goes out to women who face impossible choices every day, who carry guilt that they can not untangle from their love and devotion.

I guess all we can do is remind them, remind ourselves, to look up from our medical kits and our bandages and our checklists to see that there are other nurses and doctors in this triage tent of ours. That love can come from more places than we can possibly imagine and though the feeling of responsibility seems so overwhelmingly ours alone, it simply is not. Our children get love and guidance from our close and extended family, friends, friends of family, co-workers and neighbors.

I think that because mothers are responsible for our children from the moment of conception a part of us never lets go of the ENORMITY of that responsiblity, but sometimes, just sometimes it's ok to allow ourselves to step back and let someone else take over. It's ENORMOUSLY important for us to relinquish the responsibilty to our spouse, mother, father, sister, brother, friend or anyone who loves us enough to take some of the responsibility off our plate. We, as mothers, can not afford to look up from our checklists one day to see that it is no longer our children on the triage cot, but ourselves.

There is no "ME" in MOMMY

If you ask yourself at least once a day, "Am I doing the right thing?," "Am I failing my children?," "Am I a horrible mother?" LISTEN UP - you're perfectly normal. What I find most intriguing about motherhood is that rarely does a woman truly ask herself, "What about me?"

The first thing to go when you become a parent is simply "you." Short of changing your identity by joining wittness protection, you are in short a completely different "you" once you have children. If you're like me, you view your pre-child life kinda like a good old familiar movie you remember watching over and over. You know the lines by heart, but ultimately you are a spectator viewing your own past. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It's just different.

I wish I could say that having children makes you completely selfless. That you are devoted 100% of the time to your child(ren)'s utter happiness, but this is real life and not the hallmark channel. There are days, especially when your feeling sick, tired, rundown, unappreciated, overwhelmed where you want to scream, "WHAT ABOUT ME???" You wonder, sometimes outloud, where's my help? Where's my vacation?" Hell most days I'd settle for getting in the car by myself and going anywhere, hearing silence and not being so utterly tired that I can appreciate it for more than the few minutes it takes to drag my ass to bed.

As a very introspective person, motherhood has been like riding a rollercoaster blindfolded. I always prided myself in knowing exactly who I am and what I'm capable of. But I have found myself, even hearing myself as I'm doing it screaming at a toddler, begging a baby not to cry, cursing a husband for working late even though I know it's for the benefit of our family but because I need help and god damn it there is no freaking end to my day. Parenthood doesn't have a pause button, a rewind, there is no do over so this is where the worry comes in "Am I failing my children?" "Am I balancing work and family or will the scale always be tipped?" God the worry doesn't stop. I simpy have to hope that we all escape parenthood and childhood without any permanent scaring. But I have decided at least for myself that there is no Right Way to be a parent. There is simply what you do and what you don't do and as long as you can appreciate that and the fact that you can't always control the outcome and for the most part you're ok with the direction you take, then you ARE a good parent and you ARE a good person.

I may wonder sometimes "Will there ever come a day where I have more than a 20 minute shower to call my ALONE TIME?," but while walking around my empty house after returning from urgent care a few weeks ago, I was a little freaked out by how ALONE I really was. I simply didn't remember what to do without children to take care of. So I cleaned, not my favorite past time by any stretch of the imagination, but I was used to feeling useful, needed, depended upon and completely loved nearly every second of the day and the temporary silence was utterly deafening. So I have traded in "ME" for "MOMMY." It's not to say there is no more me, there is just a new ME, a forever changed version of ME. Sometimes I may look back, but never with regret.