My kids, I joke, are on the sixteenth level of Homeschool: copying and memorizing Gary Larson comics.
It is okay, I tell myself, interspersed with major doubts generally directed at my husband. We made dog biscuits and wrapped them in festive packages–Mr. Mutt’s Christmas Treats. The boys were invested when it came to pureeing the turkey and sweet potato, less interested when hand printing the labels. My energy waned around the second batch. The math kid had already wandered off by the time we were figuring out fixing a price point. And really, I couldn’t blame him. Entrepreneurship is for the narrow-minded. I have a million ideas to pursue.
Nothing holds my attention very long. The six year old doesn’t care about Charlemagne, and I don’t either, not anymore.
Loud noises make me irritable. The second drone (useful in the Canvas drone videography class) has burned up its little propeller motor. All our Amazon boxes have been transformed into a massive castle, drawbridge included.
We have not exhausted our resources; just our mom.
The kids are still doing great. I am convinced all a kid needs is a mom and dad who love them.
I listened to a podcast interview with a novelist. The sweet English lady, having had a mother as a writer, swore she knew nothing more than a mum who picked her up from school, distracted and puffing cigarettes, one after the other. They’d return home, eat a cookie, and her mother would disappear into the bedroom, close the door, and type for another two hours before returning to heat a can of beans for supper.
It sounded romantic to my ears. I know it was not.
Neither is staying home with kids.
I married a man who is extremely successful. It came as a surprise to both of us, I think. He comes home from work bone tired. I am, too.
He makes money–I don’t.
Yes, I say, but you have a real job. You don’t put away clothes and dishes for the millionth time. You don’t yell at kids to stop running through the house.
Pearl, he says, our jobs are the same. People buy product, I order more. We restock the shelves. Then the product goes away and I do it all over again. And, he adds, an underdressed boy streaking through our living room, there is always at least one person who isn’t doing their job right, and I have to get on them about it.
He is right–of course he is right. His work life isn’t glamorous. There is no totem pole, no ladder to climb. We’re all in muck and mud–his just happens to gleam a bit.
My griping lands in knowing ears, kindly, but unsympathetic.
Our responsibilities are split down the middle.
Once a person told me the breadwinner of the family only has a part time job. When they come home from work it is time to clock in for their full-time job.
It sounds lovely. There is a piece of me that wants to argue this, to put it into practice. But the practical me, the tired me, she knows a secret: my kids have parents who love each other, and this is good enough.
Love really does cover up a bevy of faults. Grant us both the weariness to not find them, Lord.
We break out the oil pastels. I forget and let the kids use them on the carpet. My husband, who will never notice pink streaks in the carpet, not even when he lays on it every evening to stretch out his back, doesn’t mind. He doesn’t mind because I don’t tell him. I don’t tell him because he doesn’t want to know.
He loves to see me paint, loves it when I cook, loves to come home to the newest endeavor. Loves to hear our kids make music, cookies, pictures, projects. Enchanted by our homemade candle making, chemistry experiments, gingerbread decorating, outside adventures.
He is tired, I am tired, we are equal; equally tired.
It is satisfying, to be loved dearly by another tired person.
After kids are put to bed, he comes back to the living room and watches the news or Youtube. He dives in the rabbit hole–videos on growing strawberries in Alaska, choreographed Christmas lights, rednecks feeding raccoons, traveling in Turkey, how jellybeans are made. After a half hour or so, he turns it off and sighs, done for the day.
“Well, that was an interesting smorgasbord,” I tease.
“Yeah, I guess I’ve got a lot of interests,” he says.
“Or none at all,” I joke.
And these weary parents go to bed, happy.
