I cannot tell you how many times my husband probably screams in his head that I need to relax. I cannot tell you, not because I don't know, but because I've lost count. I suppose if you counted it 1 for every second that he is awake that would be a general idea of how often he thinks this. I am sure that a lot women feel this way. Or men. Because I tell him to calm the fuck down a lot as well. If he's home, odds are that I have said it to myself every second I'm awake and verbalized it at least twice. It's a mutual theme in our family and marriage: RELAX, CHILL OUT, CALM THE FUCK DOWN, ROLL WITH IT.
We weren't always like this. We were not always uptight stuffy types. Seriously. We weren't. We used to go on camping trips all over the state. Not super structured ones. I remember all of them. I remember when he forgot to pack my tent poles when he was packing for us and we had to sleep in the car. I remember taking him all over the state to see the beautiful and amazing things I love about our state and we went to Pinnacles National Monument and the mosquitoes were so thick we barely made it through dinner before retreating to the car. I remember when he took me and the wonder dog to Dillons Beach and the unexpected cows. I remember when we were on Soda Lake Road out on the Carrizo Plains and he was flipping out that I was driving too fast so I applied the break at the wrong moment and had to keep the suv from flipping. That particular moment stands out as the reason why we don't backseat drive each other. We used to have 2 hours between jobs and run to the local quarry to get some bouldering in, or worked half days and got out for a quick hike. Day off? Grab the snowshoes and hit the snowed over trails with the wonder dog. We used to be laid back and easy going. As long as our bills were paid we were good. And then...we had kids. No joke.
I had this idea that I wanted to be a stay at home mom and home school my kids. I had big big BIG plans for our family. We would still be bohemians that only worried about paying bills and getting to the next adventure. We would drive all over the country and teach our kids all about our natural world and we would have awesome hippy kids that can send a 5.14 by age 9, thru - hiked the JMT with us by the age of 5, and eventually be able to identify trees by their leaves, nuts, bark, or pinecones. I had big, delusional dreams. Then I had my son. My amazing and beautiful son.
He and his little sister are the lights of my world. I want all the same things for them but do you know what happens when you become a mom? Forget the metaphorical monsters and pitfalls in life, the hormonal changes that make you suddenly hyper aware that your child is 3 inches from a ledge of a 4" high step. And then I start to reign in the crazy. I'm not even kidding. I was at a potluck dinner at our church recently. Small thing, just about 10 folks including our pastor. Hubs was at work so I was being super mom with both kids and ghetto paella. We're doing a game and my son is off with some older boys who have repeatedly promised me that they will not let my son walk out the front doors, through the parking lot, across the highway and off the cliff into the ocean, and my daughter is on the stage playing with a friend and some other tinies. While trying to do this game/interactive thing I am also watching my daughter. She is being supervised by my friend, but I am also keeping watch, while our pastor is having a great laugh at me as I am visibly having to calm myself down and not leap across the table and rush the tiny stage to save my daughter from getting too close to the edge. I've become the mom that has to stuff the helicopter back into the hangar every 10 minutes. I've gotten pretty good about it with my son. He took a spill on new year's day and while everyone was freaking out, I was calmly letting them know that he was fine. I was that chill mom that was letting her kid dust himself off. But I am having to learn it all over again with my daughter. Poor hubs is...stressed. Everything about our kids stresses him out. He has yet to figure out how chill out with 1 child, forget 2. So we are 2 wound up tight people who can remember what it was like before we were parents and wound up. We still dream of big granite walls, pine needle covered floors, and the sound of waterfalls. We still dream the dream.
Being a parent doesn't mean that we stopped having a life. It doesn't mean that we aren't the same people. I mean...we aren't the same people, but we want the same things and we are struggling to reconcile who we are and what we want. We need to figure out how to reconcile those two things. And so, as my husband is off doing that military thing across the country for a few months I have been preparing to refind all those beautiful things that I love and that got stuffed away when I started having kids. Not that my life ended, but that I put some things on hold so that I could be with my kids for the first year of their lives. Because while I no longer want to be super stay at home home, I do want to have these memories. I want my kids to get all the mom they want, no work to interfere, in the first year. I know that for my sanity though, I need to have my kids go to school. Maybe I'll be an 80% stay at home mom, take a few clients as I see fit, but also, I want to get back to the things that I love and those things are a part of having my kids. I want to share those things with my kids, but if I walk away permanently from them, then I can't share those things with my kids. I am investing in myself, and my kids, by getting back to what I love. To keep myself from missing my husband too much I am going to get back to hiking, running, photography, I'm going to keep teaching my son to fish (maybe we'll use real bait this year), I'm going to make my daughter's first doll, play my guitar until my fingers bleed, I'm going to invest in myself and the things that I am passionate about. Because that is investing in the 2 people I am most passionate about: my kids.
ps. When hubs get back, we'll have to make sure he is investing in the things that he is passionate about too. Maybe he'll chill out a bit...a girl can dream.
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