Today I was driving down the road to run some errands. In the backseat my young daughters had begun to fight, like siblings do, but their screeching and screaming was beginning to get out of hand. I yelled into the backseat, something about settling down or else, and I wondered to myself if they would have gotten quite so rowdy had their father been around. I wasn’t sure the reason, maybe it was my pushover persona, but I felt like the girls acted much differently when I was the sole parent in charge. I mean, they respected me and listened to my direction, but we all knew they listened to their dad fairly immediately, without him having to raise his voice to an octave associated with a crazy person. Just being honest.
As I drove along the back-country road, the leaves turning a burnt orange and waving goodbye as I went, the children’s voices slowly ascending in volume, I realized that this was the first time in a long time I had gone somewhere with our daughters on my own. It was certainly a lot harder to parent alone. I thought back to when it was basically just me.
This time a year ago I had the blessed opportunity to stay home raising my babies. I say “blessed,” but that doesn’t mean it was always easy. In fact, it was dang hard most of the time. My husband owned his own business, and I was working just one day a week. But when I say “working,” I mean outside of the home, of course. I mean the job I got paid for. If I just meant work, in general, then you could say that I worked twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I worked at the job of parenting, otherwise known as feeding the masses, clothing the tiny streakers, molding young minds, homeschooling, chauffeuring, and generally keeping people alive. After all, they weren’t the brightest when it came to that last part.
At that time my husband worked what seemed twenty-four, seven also, but his work was outside the home. Running a small business kept him occupied 12-13 hours a day, most days, and even when he came home I would watch him hunched over a ledger, entering numbers and counting stacks of money to deposit and pay to other people. Even on his day off he was running errands for the store, but at least we had Sunday. He took that day as his own, even if I could tell from the look in his eyes that he was thinking about work. He was stressed and exhausted most of the time. So even when he was around, a part of him was not.
I can remember having our third child years ago. It should have been a happy time, and in essence it was. But I was also drowning. He went back to work two days after I delivered, leaving me alone to marathon breastfeeding sessions and diaper blowouts, plus the usual motherhood chores for a three and five year old. I didn’t blame my husband. I wasn’t angry at him. I wasn’t even jealous that he got out of the house! I loved being a mother, and I truly appreciated how hard he worked so that I was afforded the opportunity to be home and consistently raise my own children. It was a dream come true! But it was hard, y’all! And I think the hardest part was that it was like I was doing it by myself.
I didn’t really have a tribe. My sisters worked, my few, cherished friends also. Most folks figured by number three I had it all figured out. Even the ladies at church didn’t bring casseroles like they did when I was a first time mom. But I believe what really made this the hardest newborn for me was that I felt like I was parenting alone. I thought often of single mothers as I rocked my nursing newborn in the waning afternoon hours, and I wondered how they managed. I at least had a helpmate who came home late at night and held the baby while I showered, but that didn’t change the fact that all the many hours he spent away from home, they made me feel like I was mostly doing this parenthood thing without the father.
So when your spouse works more than anything, and you’re the parent who stays home more than anything, it’s hard. It’s hard because you feel a lot of the time like you’re parenting alone.
As I drove down the road today with my arguing daughters behind me, and I realized how long it had been since I’d taken them shopping alone, I smiled with thankfulness that we now could parent together. When my husband had let his floundering business go, when we had decided to downsize, and when we had decided to live a life focusing on time together, it had changed everything. I worked three days a week as a nurse, but for some strange reason I realized I felt like I worked way less than I did when I only worked one day a week as a nurse. Why was that?!
It was because now when I was home I wasn’t alone. Parenting is hard work, but it’s even harder when only one parent is responsible for the most of it. Now my husband is around to help me parent. We get to parent together, and that makes it a more enjoyable experience. I find myself less stressed and more able to savor life, even the crazy parts. I find myself yelling less and laughing more. I don’t feel so much like I’m on a timeline, tight schedule, or struggling on a job site. I can just enjoy myself. I can slow down, ask for help, and find it right beside me.
Forty years ago things were different I think. People didn’t have to work as much. Grandparents weren’t working past retirement. More women stayed home and could help one another. We didn’t strive so much for wealth, bigger homes, or fancier cars. I don’t think women were so alone in parenting back then.
I still think about single mothers and wonder how in the world they do it! And although you can’t compare the two, I also think of the stay-at-home moms with husbands who work long, demanding hours. I guess because I was there once myself. I was there, and I know how hard it is. I know how alone you feel in the midst of a long day.
Today, as I drove down the back-country road, the orange leaves waving me along, and my daughters’ musical voices in crescendo, I smiled for my life.
“Just wait until we get home,” I chided.
I said it with a smirk, though. I smiled because my husband was home, waiting for us after having busied himself with home maintenance, and the fact was parenting just didn’t seem to be such an exhausting experience when you weren’t doing it alone.
Dave says
My dad was a quiet easy going man but when he spoke in his “don’t do that” voice or when he just gave me “the look” it commanded my attention! I would talk back to my mother though! She had a way of taking the steam out of me though if she ever caught me arguing with my sister who is 6 years older than me! I was like a gnat around my sister’s face just “bugging” the heck out of her until she became combative but I tried to do it without mom in hearing distance because that punishment was devastating because mom would make us sit in a chair facing each other smiling for what seemed like an eternity and to top it off we had to kiss each other on the cheek and say I love you! Kissing my sister??? Ewwwwwww! That punishment was a good weapon in my mom’s quiver of arrows! I praise God for you moms! You have a gift to care for the smallest of boo boos, defuse major wars and take care of what the EPA would classify as “Hazardous Waste”! I see some dad’s that are good at it but there is nothing like the nurturing of a mother and her voice and touch of comfort is God given! Thank you mothers!!
Beautiful picture of ya’ll Brie!
brieann.rn@gmail.com says
Thank you so much!
Your story of your mom made me smile and chuckle out loud!