As my husband got up to shower, I scooped up the little new addition to our family. Normally, I would have been doing my pre-mama morning “things I love” ~ reading the paper, enjoying coffee, or, most likely, sleeping in.
Instead, I went downstairs as I held my sweet little baby, who had woken me multiple times during the night, and stared into those beautiful little eyes.
But as my husband’s shower went on longer and longer, I grew restless. I need to get ready too! But someone has to watch the baby… How will I ever get anything done again? Is our life now a constant trading of shifts with this tiny little life we are responsible for? My life used to be so simple! I could do whatever I wanted to, whenever I wanted to, but now I have this little creature to care for…
And as it became all too apparent that the baby would not go back to sleep, and as I more and more desperately longed for that time to myself in a warm shower, I asked myself, “What have we done?! Why have we traded our easy life for one that will now be so hard?! Is my entire identity subsumed in this little new life?”
And though I wanted to, I couldn’t just put the baby down ~ he might have peed on the carpet.
Perhaps it’s time to share a photograph of the little one that had completely thrown my orderly, controlled, and predictable life so out of whack:
Leonardo. A sweet, playful eight-week-old toy spaniel had turned my life upside down.
{I overreact sometimes…}
I thought I would have to give up the things I love. I had to arrange and pay for {please don’t judge} doggie daycare for this little pup who couldn’t spend 9 hours at home alone. I had to sign him up for {okay, this time you can judge} Puppy Kindergarten so he would learn appropriate behavior, meet new puppy friends, and soak up all the knowledge he could in those crucial early months of canine brain development.
And I couldn’t just have an average dog ~ he had to be a champion! So after Puppy Kindergarten, Leo graduated to Conformation class to learn how to behave at AKC Dog Shows, to be judged on how well he conformed to the breed standard. {I got some really weird looks from friends when I told them about these classes, because they heard “Confirmation class” and wondered why a secular humanist needed to ensure her dog’s acceptance into the kingdom of God.}
And now you can really judge me, because we even made birth announcements to proclaim the arrival of the future AKC Champion Cavalier King Charles Spaniel {cue Lion King soundtrack}:
Yes, this really happened.
Yes, history teachers name their dogs after famous Italian artists, and truly intense parents give their canine progeny important-sounding AKC names like “Tapestry Renaissance Man.” {And he did become an AKC Champion in early 2005, in case you were wondering}.
But gradually, my topsy-turvy new-mother-to-a-puppy life evolved into Leo just simply becoming part of our routine, part our life. A life I loved, in which I still did the things I loved. Our new baby started sleeping through the night. His intense puppy energy settled in to the quiet demeanor of a royal lap dog. I could sleep in, take long showers, and drink coffee and read the paper in the morning, with Leonardo looking over my shoulder.
I was still me. The intensity with which I pursued the new activities of dog-ownership? That was just me, expressed through a new adventure – when I do something, I take the classes, learn what I can, and pursue it with passion.
When I became a mother to a human baby a few years later, I experienced a similar existential crisis. One Sunday morning, when my daughter was about 8 weeks old, I sat on the couch, crying. I missed the quiet Sunday mornings of reading the paper. I missed being able to run errands without thinking about how my absence from the home had to be navigated through the stormy waters of feeding times, naps, and my husband’s need for time to himself, too.
I thought of all the things I used to love to do: sleeping in, going shopping, reading a book, going out with friends.
I envisioned that motherhood meant I would never be able to get back to those things and the life, the me, I had loved. Once again, I told myself, I had traded a simple, carefree life for a very difficult one.
But gradually, just as little Leonardo became integrated into the rhythm of my days and my life, so did my daughter. As she grew, her routines became more predictable, and it felt not so much like I was navigating my life around hers, but that our lives and schedules became intertwined.
And when my son was born a few years later, the transition was much better. Another life woven into the fabric of our family routines.
I’m not implying that my transition to motherhood was seamless. There were a lot of tears and struggles and confusion. Things didn’t necessarily get easier, they just got … normal.
I still read. I still find time to myself. And those other things I used to love to do? Well, some of them, I don’t really love anymore…
In fact, my first thought, upon seeing today’s Finish the Sentence Friday prompt “I used to love…”, was that I would write about all the things I loved to do before becoming a mother. And how I don’t do them now because I am a mother.
But the more I thought about it, I knew it wasn’t that simple.
I used to love to sleep in. But as I get older, I like waking up earlier. It is my most productive time of the day. I don’t need as many hours of sleep each night as I did in my twenties. Maybe it’s because I’m now a mother, or maybe this would have happened anyway.
I used to love going shopping. Now I know there are better things to spend my money on ~ not just savings for my children, but on garden projects and home improvements. Practical adult things.
I used to love hanging out with friends until midnight or even {gasp} 1 in the morning. I have no desire to stay up that late anymore. Is it because I am a tired mother? Or because I am approaching 40? I don’t know. It’s just who I am now.
I don’t think I can know for certain that “who I am today” and “what I love to do” have changed because of motherhood. Certainly being a mom is a part of my identity, but so is being a teacher, wife, dog-owner, feminist, reader, dancer, yoga-lover, coffee-drinker, blogger, and all the other aspects of my self. All these aspects of my identity have fused, and yet are constantly in flux.
In my first year of teaching, as I struggled with balancing lesson planning, classroom management, relationships with students, and grading homework, a colleague offered me words of wisdom I have never forgotten. He told me, “At some point, you stop thinking of all of those parts of teaching as isolated components. It all becomes one. It just becomes how you teach.”
I think the questions of who I am today and what I love to do versus who I used to be and what I used to love to do are a bit like this, too. It’s just how I live.
Maybe adopting Tapestry Renaissance Man marked the beginning of teaching me a lesson about the complexity of identity ~ our loves, our roles, our passions form rich tapestries, which take shape and continually change over the different stages of our life, and from which no single strand can be removed.
*****
Coda: Evidence of Change over Time
Scrapbooking 20-something me made this baby book for Leonardo, documenting all his Dog Show accomplishments:
Yes, this really happened, too.
First-time-mom early-30s me managed to get these in Child #1’s baby book:
Really tired late-30s me is embarrassed that much of Child #2’s {who is now 4} baby book still looks like this:
Scrapbooking just isn’t “me” anymore…
*****
Today’s post is part of the Finish the Sentence Friday linkup. Click here to read more posts finishing the statement, “I used to love…”
- A Mindful Approach to New Year’s Resolutions - January 13, 2020
- Just This Next Step - December 16, 2019
- WAIT: A Mindfulness Practice for Waiting in Line - December 9, 2019
