I ponder this relic of my childhood as I gently cajole (then eventually yell at) my child to put on shoes, No, shoes that fit, not her older sister’s shoes. Shoe drama comes after I firmly tell her that she must wear underwear; after I suggest to both of them to maybe not wear black thermal pants on a 90-degree day or a sleeveless dress on a 40-degree day (seasons change, but their aversion to weather-appropriate clothing does not). I walk the nine circles of wardrobe negotiation hell all while fielding my older daughter’s questions about the seven-day weather forecast, if I have any goals for how many books I want to write while I’m alive, why giraffe tongues are black, and enduring yet another explanation of the Dragonette Prophecy from the Wings of Fire graphic novels (not that I asked). I contemplate exactly what percentage of my parenting — 27%? 44%? — is just me nodding and saying “Oh yeah? Cool.”
When they are finally out of the house, I am typically overcome with the desire to get back in bed (or just lie down on the living room carpet). Memories from my TV-addled childhood enter my brain and I think: the Army’s got f*cking nothing on me. Some days I feel I have actually gone to war.
The morning routine is Groundhog Day: every morning a repetitive circle of waking to action — the alarm is a child screaming and what follows is a blur of toothpaste, tears, maple syrup, shoelaces, and mugs of coffee abandoned amid all the tending, gone cold on the counter.
Our society values production, novelty, progress, hustle (and side hustles), and, once we’ve offloaded our children to other people, weary and numb, we are then expected to get to work.
The routine is always the same, even when it’s different. It stultifies the brain, makes it easy to disassociate at the breakfast table, to float away as Cheerios are thrown on the floor and a small person talks endlessly about how Ezra or Rainer or Ada fell off the monkey bars and by the way have you seen my hard bone shin bruise?
There is no hero’s journey in this particular labor of mothering — or maybe there is, but you are definitely not the protagonist. Our society values production, novelty, progress, hustle (and side hustles), and, once we’ve offloaded our children to other people, weary and numb, we are then expected to get to work.