In The Tunnel
November 2016

A homemaker with two kids (the small variety who are not yet in school) slowly grows accustomed over the years to a strained and strange relationship with the daily tasks of living. When the day dawned that both of my kids were swallowed by the giant doors of the yellow school bus to be returned at 3pm, I began to notice some of the more odd habits I had acquired over the last decade. They include, but are not limited to, the following list:

1)   Holding my bladder:
When we teach toddlers how to use the toilet instead of a diaper, we are, in a sense, trying to get them to pay attention to the sensations in their bodies and to connect the feeling of a full bladder with the action of actually walking into the bathroom, pulling down his or her own pants and letting it all go in the toilet (if possible, though the true aim usually comes only with time, practice and some tears– for the parents). I learned that myself as a youngster.

And yet, I suddenly find myself a grown woman with a full bladder who has forgotten that I have the option of actually relieving myself by using the toilet. Because for the better part of a decade, I couldn’t. Babies and toddlers will not let you tend to even the most basic needs, (particularly if you, like me, have a full-time-plus working spouse and no family or childcare assistants around you) and most of the time, it’s not because they’re being jerks.

Sometimes it’s because they need such physical holding that you literally can’t put them down to tend to yourself. Sometimes it’s because they’re just throwing a fit and you cannot walk away, no matter what your need. Sometimes you cannot bear the idea of being in public with whatever circus you’re the master of at the moment for the extra 20 minutes it will inevitably take for the entire show to stop just so you can pee. It’s just not worth it and you can hold it because you’re a grown-ass person so you head home and when you run into the bathroom, you find your potty-trained kid smiling up at you because they beat you to it.

And then ten years later you find yourself alone at the grocery store in pain because for some reason you have forgotten that peeing while alone as an adult takes about 1.4 minutes and is a perfectly legitimate reason for an grown human to walk away from their grocery cart for a moment. No one will scream at you or whine and it will not dismantle your day. But try telling this to my bladder. It apparently threw in the towel and severed connections with my brain years ago when I wasn’t paying attention.

2)   Freaking out about free time:
From what I recall, I used to be a free-time diva. I could sleep in, go to brunch, watch TV in the middle of the day and think to myself, “what do I want to do right now? Nothing. M’kay.” And then take a nap. I never felt guilty for going on a hike with a friend or staying in the shower for an extra 5 minutes. I enjoyed free time. I was good at it.

Now I know that I was good at it because it’s an acquired skill. And I have lost that skill.

The first few days the kids were in school I was very near an all-out panic attack at every moment. 6 hours of free time?! It had been almost a decade.

Yes, I’ve had an hour or two here and there. They did some preschool and it was glorious: the preschool time was a sweet reduction sauce that boiled down my interests, needs and wants into the most essential elements. It included a) exercise b) grocery shopping or household supply shopping alone and c) the occasional chat with a grown up. If I was lucky, I might have a few minutes for d) my side-time pursuit of my career. I got a few basic needs met and I was happy. What else does a human need?

I recently asked my spouse if it was okay for me to enjoy myself during the day now that the kids are in school. I know I don’t need the permission,  but I just wanted it. “Is this okay? Can I sit with the paper and the coffee after everyone leaves in the morning and peacefully read it?” I am a grown-ass woman asking permission to read the paper. That’s insane. And yet, I am riddled with guilt.

I still do not know if time that is unstructured is okay with me. I want to know that every moment is accounted for. For so many years, every single moment was crucial and now my time seems somehow unremarkable. I can waste it or not, but I’ve been a time-pauper and I’m now the time-equivalent of the grandmother who refuses to buy Tupperware because I’ve saved every yogurt container since 1952. My time must fall into some sort of category: productive, social, restorative, preparatory, maintenance, therapeutic, whatever. Anything but wasted.

3)   Still not enough time:
Paradoxically, and to my incredible irritation, I simultaneously still don’t have “enough” time. I assumed that when my kids went to school, my reduction sauce life would turn into a swimming-pool-soup-life for me to swim in (that sounds more gross than it did when it first occurred to me). But it turns out that once you add all of your actual human and social needs  back into your reduction sauce , there’s not as much time for passions and pursuits as I thought there would be.  

Because with babies and toddlers you have to choose between the needs. For example: with a baby and toddler in the house, you have to choose between exercise or showering. You don’t get both. It’s one or the other. So, if taking a semi-daily run (and by this I mean, slowly barrelling down the street, pushing a double stroller) happens to keep you sane, you deal with walking to the grocery store smelling “fresh,” and meeting friends drenched in sweat. I showed up to the 2nd birthday party of a friend’s daughter for her to tell me, “wow, I’ve never seen you out of exercise clothes before.” That was my choice.

Now however, I am expected to be a fully participating member of society. So, if I exercise, I have to clean myself afterwards. Which it turns out, takes some time. And after I all of my essential adult-human activities were peppered back in (showering, reading a newspaper, finally starting AND finishing all of those — okay, some of those– house projects backed up for the past 8 years), I’ve got only a couple of hours before I’ve got to pick up the kids.

But don’t forget to go grocery shopping before you get them or your afternoon will totally suck.

Also, the free time now falls during a time when nobody else can really enjoy it. I still can’t join that group that meets on Tuesdays at 7, what with a spouse traveling during the week.  I am still prisoner in my home every afternoon, morning and evening. But now I just have an hour from 1:15 – 2:45. Perhaps I can fit my career into that?

4)   Not eating like a normal person:
Before children, I ate meals at orderly times, snacks in between and anything else at any other time the idea entered my head. After having children, my eating habits change considerably.

I know I am not alone in this. I’d say that many parents’ changing eating habits breaks into two camps: parents who eat constantly while their babies are babies so they can ingest some energy into their bodies (goodness knows they’re not getting energy from restful sleep), and people who keep forgetting to eat altogether because they are focusing on other things, get sidetracked and occasionally confuse their kids’ eating with their own.

I’m the latter. Good for initial post-baby weight loss, but terrible as a general life strategy. I will often get the kids to school and come home satisfied, ready to get in my quick exercise (and shower) and suddenly around 10:30 wonder why I am so lightheaded. I remember pouring bowls of cheerios and milk and getting coffee… wait. That was all for other people [shake fist at the sky here]! And then I begin to slowly lose my mind and my temper with everything and everyone around me. This still happens almost daily.

I guarantee that in college I didn’t think to myself, “I feel full because I just watched my roommate Rebecca eat.” Because that’s crazy.

 

I will say that I truly did not notice many of these changes until I was emerging out of the raising-tiny-people tunnel and into the daylight of raising-small-people. Most of the time, I rather liked that tunnel, actually. It felt real and important and since there was no escape hatch, I decided to just enjoy our tiny little journey through it.

 

It seems that many parents come out of the tunnel with a jolt, suddenly finding ourselves in an unexpected land where we now have to reconcile what we had to let go of in that tunnel. I’ve seen it now not only in myself but in those around me: those of us who come through and see our friends left behind, or a beloved job, or our marriage. At the end of the day, I’ll count myself lucky that all I lost was my bladder.