Selective Memory
I didn't picture parenting feeling like this, but I can't picture what I did before, either.
Kids might be the most selfish people. Or maybe I am, for thinking it’s unfair that I’ve been home with them for most of four years without steady childcare. This isn’t what I pictured when we decided to have kids. Yet I can’t remember a clear picture of what I did before them.
Still, our biology makes us think they’re cute, even seconds after they have flung everything within their reach to the floor, screaming, throwing haymakers, biting. Is this selective memory? It takes effort to remember waking up every two hours for the first two months of their lives.
Then their simple goodness seems beyond biological, when they say “I just wanna sit and wook at da sun.” Or when they hug a dog.
Maybe we can’t remember much of our own childhoods because the sense of debt to our parents could be crippling. Best we forget the bad in ourselves and our kids, or we’d have an even harder time getting anything else done. Maybe growing up is just remembering more of the bad we’ve done. Living long enough and remembering enough to have regrets.
In that case, I feel ancient with how I’ve been as a dad lately. Haven’t got the boat in the water for over two months. I was supposed to take the kids fishing and get some exercise rowing them around. But salmon season slipped away. The skiff is full of soggy leaves. I still have to wire up the trailer and put fenders on it to make it somewhat street-legal. But I’ve hardly been outside in two days. There’s at least one day a week when scraping by is the best I can do. Feed the kids. Keep them safe enough.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I never planned on putting my life so completely on hold for so long for my kids. Quitting the first job wasn’t so bad. I didn’t know what I was getting into then. I imagined hours of writing time every day while I stayed at home with our first kid. I imagined that would last for a year or two max, until we could get him in preschool. I would still go to Bristol Bay and run our boat for two months every summer and get a break.
But while I’m away Mariah struggles more than ever with the kids. And I hear about it because cell signal in Bristol Bay is so dang good now.
Then our small-town preschool didn’t take kids until two and a half. I thought I could manage that. Then we decided to have another kid, because our first was really just so sweet at a year. He was even sweet at two, months after our daughter was born.
But potty-training him tested our marriage, grinding us down worse than fishing the Nushagak. Then he started screaming and hitting, and there are days when it feels like he hasn’t really stopped. But he’s starting to tell stories. He remembers every toy that we left in Colorado. He’s stopped asking when we’re going fishing. But when he sits at my desk and looks at the picture of our gillnetter on our desktop background, he says he’s, “Shinkin’ ‘bout fishin’.” He notices when it’s high tide.
Leaving our direct-marketing business behind felt almost as sad as quitting school bus driving. Maybe it’s all for the best. If we come out of this tunnel then I’ll just be able to focus on writing.
I vacuum the house and don’t have energy to get the kids geared up to go outside in the rain. Not even in the car to go grocery shopping. I begin purging the house again in a vain attempt to make it easier to clean. Roll up the rugs, get rid of almost all the bookshelves. Put it all in the basement because we’re renting a furnished house. Not the best situation for imposter syndrome. By the time I’ve coiled the vacuum cord there’re rice cake crumbs all over the floor.
I take a part-time job working from home, writing for the paper, but can’t find the time to do it. The fact that my parents live an eight-minute walk away seems unreal after I haven’t seen them for a few days. I call the preschool and double-check we’re on the waitlist for both kids. At least they take kids as young as two months here, but they’re full. Our youngest is almost two years now.
We had an au pair for six months, but she wasn’t as much help as we’d hoped when I left for fishing. Then we couldn’t bring her when we moved to Alaska because the program wouldn’t allow it. That was three months ago, feels like forever.
My doctor told me I should get more exercise, so while Levi was at his 3 hours of daycare I took Tephra for a run in our jogging stroller. We had a double stroller in Colorado, but didn’t bring it with, and now we only have a single one. That’s been my excuse for not running. And I had my dreams about getting all my exercise hunting and fishing and berry picking. But running with one kid yesterday was difficult enough, not because of the physical work of it—my throat burning in the cold air and legs feeling like rotten wood at the top of a big hill, that felt great—but because at the halfway point of my out and back run Tephra wanted to get out of the stroller and walk. Ok, we can walk for a bit. Then she wanted to be carried, but not in the stroller. I soon grew tired of walking holding her with one arm and pushing the stroller and holding the dog leash with the other. She wouldn’t ride on my shoulders. She wouldn’t get in the stroller. So I put her in my coat and synched up the bottom and wedged her boots in so she wouldn’t fall out. After about half a mile she was asleep on my chest, so I thought I could sneak her back into the stroller. I thought wrong. I remembered why I’d been fine with leaving the double stroller: because running with two kids there was hardly any time when both of them were happy at once. Maybe I got the physical exercise I needed, but not the mental break that I wanted and needed, what I love most about running.
Maybe it’ll be different when I get the boat in the water. Maybe I’ll be able to row for hours on end with the kids entertained with the novelty of being on the water. Maybe the preschool will call me back. Maybe I’ll get a life of my own again. To paraphrase Mariah’s response when someone at work tells her that it’s not all about her: “What if it is, though?”