We all know that Charles Dickens quote, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” It’s one of those things written about a very specific time and place, that somehow feels universally applicable. Or maybe it just feels that way when you’re living through late capitalism or whatever this time is when trans kids are forced to flee their home states and our children are routinely murdered while the media is owned by the same companies invested in guns.
Every month has ups and downs but this last one felt especially so. On a more personal and less tragic level, I did a decent amount of solo parenting and it really stressed my emotional and physical resources. There’s obviously privilege in not having to always be a single parent. And my revelation that “this kind of sucks” will come as a surprise to no one. But I’m going to talk about it anyways.
I’m continually reminded that much of our difficulty in achieving health and happiness arises from systemic problems. While my husband was out of town, one of my number one enemies became homework. My kids often have up to an hour of homework, much of it requiring hands on help from us. If you do the math on how many hours are in the day, subtracting time for school, after-school activities, making dinner, eating dinner, getting ready for bed, and goddess forbid a little bit of downtime, a parent will feel very squeezed. And the data around the benefits of homework is mixed. To be clear, I’m not saying kids should never learn the value of completing a task on their own. It’s just that in this country, we seem to do so many things for the sake of quantity over quality.
I really love my kids’ school and their teachers. But they’re subject to the same systemic pressures as the rest of us. We live in a city and country where schools are a competition and students must keep up or potentially be ground down in the process.
Our country does a poor job of resourcing parents and children, especially when you compare our access to things like childcare, healthcare, education, and paternity leave with that of other developed countries. And while this has disastrous effects on those with the least resources, it also causes incredible stress for some of the most privileged parents I know. For example, the laws that dictate school vacation schedules, in no way correspond to parent’s work schedules. And we’re forced into messy, unpredictable, patchwork solutions that inconvenience caregivers and then their families in a trickle down of frustration. It’s like our government has no sense of society as a whole. Or rather, it is more profitable to ignore the obvious facts of life.
It’s amazing how quickly things can unravel when you lose just one aspect of your support system. And the unachievable parenting expectations are why moms get a rep for being neurotic. I went out of town last week and tried to set Peter up for success, knowing he’d be solo parenting even longer than I had been. I hard boiled some eggs for snacks and felt a little more assured everyone would stay alive while I was gone. I made the kids bathe, knowing they’d likely forget while I was gone.
And as I was about to check off this last task before putting the kids to bed and flying across the country, karma stepped in to remind me how little control I have over anything. My daughter slipped in the shower, resulting in a deep cut across her eyebrow. This kind of thing happening when I’m alone with the kids is one of my worst nightmares. I have a huge fear of seeing people hurt, particularly as you might imagine, my own children. I’m a buzzkill whenever Peter wants to watch the latest killing movie (why is death and pain such an acceptable form of entertainment? Oh right, perhaps because it helps fuel the military-industrial complex upon which our society is based).
Anyways, shit hit the fan and I was impressed with how I handled it. I held a towel to the wound while my son helped dress his wet naked sister. I was able to stay calm for both kids. My sister’s girlfriend rushed over to watch my son. I was able to slow down and take her to the good hospital and not the notoriously terrible one closest to our home. I was able to talk my daughter through deep breaths as doctors poked her bloody head. But I was able to do it with a lot of help. With family nearby. With the ability to afford a Lyft ride to the hospital. I was able to make calm choices because of the time and money I’ve devoted to my own mental health over the years, work that felt especially imperative when the pandemic hit and I vowed not to turn the experience into a blanket of anxiety that my children would carry into adulthood, the latest iteration in a seemingly unending spiral of generational trauma.
When we were in the hospital, waiting for the numbing cream to kick in, my daughter lay there, crying about the prospect of stitches. And I did what I could to keep her calm, playing Katy Perry’s “Roar” on my phone for her to listen. I never thought I would feel so grateful for that song or that artist. My daughter was brave through it all. But there was a moment, when the numbing cream didn’t work and they had to inject painkillers all around her cut in order to give her stitches. She screamed loudly at them to stop as we held her down. And the doctor said, “it’s okay, you can scream. Scream it out.” I was so grateful for her saying that. And grateful that my daughter still trusts in her voice and in her power to say no. Because she has had enough good in her life to know pain is not entirely what she deserves.
I think for working class Americans, it’s very easy to get numbed out and shut down. And I honestly don’t blame people. Because when things are very bad, numbing is actually a really healthy coping mechanism. When we got home from the hospital (which in an amazing feat for the U.S. healthcare system was only about 3 hours after we’d arrived), after I put my daughter to bed, I sat down on the couch and cried. Because after holding it together, it was finally my turn to let it out. It was the kind of sob where you shake like an animal, trying to physically release the trauma from your body. And I was glad to be in a place in my life where I no longer judge myself for having feelings. Where I’m able to hold them and make space for them rather than try to distract myself away from it all. Where I know holding it in can cause much bigger problems down the line. Still, I didn’t sleep well. I went on a long run in the morning to release the tension I was still holding in my shoulders. Then I had a very strong Long Island iced at the airport, and passed out on the plane, leaving my husband to a week of wound care. With a lot of effort and privilege on our side, we are okay.
My daughter is fine now. As soon as the stitches were done, she giddily announced “I can’t believe I got stitches!” She was psyched to brag to all her friends. I’ve been able to laugh at the gore of it all, and even the doctor who had to excuse herself in the middle of watching another doctor tend to the wound, because she had forgotten to eat dinner and was feeling queasy. As I’ve written here previously, it’s interesting how much things can take out of us when there’s no food in our belly. A past version of me might’ve been bitter at that doctor, and the fact that she got to leave while I had to watch my own daughter’s face torn wide open. But I was resourced. I’d had my dinner. So I was able to be there for my daughter and hold compassion for this woman, regularly working in a busy, probably understaffed Emergency room.
I think one of our less healthy coping mechanisms in this country is the constant urge to police one another. Taking our pain out on those around us rather feeling and expressing the full weight of it. And I get it. It’s tempting to snap at the overworked Lyft driver to drive faster when you have a bleeding kid in the car. When we feel unsafe, we want to draw others’ attention to that. But we often do so without regard for the collective struggle. Under a culture of competition, we see pain as some sort of badge of honor to wear and identify with, rather than a thing we are all going through, a thing to be processed together.
To achieve any hope for our collective safety, I think we have to start with cultivating a sense of personal security, no matter how selfish the patriarchy makes us feel for it. Rather than feel frustrated at my kids’ teachers for not reminding us about school project due dates, I’m choosing to forgive myself and my kids for turning in projects late. I can’t change the whole system, but I can enable it a little less by refusing to beat myself up for imperfection under standards that are unattainable even for our two parent household, where our work schedules aren’t nearly as taxing as they’ve been in the past. I can bolster myself with affirmations that I am worthy of love, of hope, of good things. I’m mentally reframing a lot of “privileges” as things that should be universal rights for us all.
I’ve been hoping to make these essays a little lighter, with fun sidebars like “people I find hot” or “I pulled a tarot card for you guys,” but once again things got away from me here and I veered back into longwinded rants on the patriarchy territory. So I’ll end with a quick little list of things that have been bolstering me lately: Pedro Pascal, EFT tapping, music from old rom com soundtracks, the movie RRR, planting seeds in the garden, Tequila Old Fashioneds, woo woo TikTokers, and spring sunshine. These may not be for you. Maybe you’re more of a Katy Perry person. But as always, I hope you’re finding what keeps you calm and carrying on, in not so much the stiff upper lip way, but more the stopping to smell the roses kind of way.
Bolstering Yourself
AN HOUR of homework? A. DAY. For grade schoolers??? That sounds like utter madness to me. I have a first grader and a fifth grader (in the Midwest) and their only homework is to just read every day.
EVERY NIGHT? Every? Night? There is no way that the stress of that, for you or them, could make that great of an academic difference — can it???