what i don't write

A friend recently told me that it seems from my blog that I've embraced parenting more fully than she has. I was confused, and told her that most of the time I don't know what I'm doing and that I'm just barely keeping the whole thing together. Then she pointed out that I don't put any of that on my blog. She does, because she wants her children to know that it is hard to be a parent. She doesn't want them to go into it thinking that it will be a walk in the park.

So I started thinking about those things that I don't write. How hard it is to know the right thing to do or the best way to handle a situation. How every choice I make ends with at least one person being miserable while at least one other person is overjoyed. How easy it is to hurt their feelings with a look, with a wrong word, with a harsh or more impatient tone than I intended. How I have carried worry and exhaustion like a constant backpack for seven years now, and feel like I will never get a rest.

And then there's work.

Most of my friends think that being a freelance editor and writer is something to be envied. And in some ways, they're right. I do theoretically get to make my own hours (though in practice, it doesn't work out that way). I don't have a commute. I don't have chatty coworkers or bosses. I can be home with my children and doing the laundry and working all at the same time.

The reality is a little different. If the children are home, they need my attention. They need to be fed and watered and cleaned and played with--and they need these things even if I happen to be in the middle of a job. The laundry is there, staring me in the face, reproaching me for being a pretty crappy homemaker because I'm too focused on my work. The nearly empty fridge mocks my occasional halfhearted efforts to make dinner. I've traded in the bosses for clients, and the chatty coworkers (I still miss you guys!) for a schedule where if I take a break, I don't get paid.

This is the bargain that we made to give the boys a house with a yard, good public schools, tons of family nearby, all the wonderful things that will make their childhoods special, and it's a bargain I'd make again. I am lucky because I have a regular job (basically a hybrid between freelancing and telecommuting, meaning that I have a set schedule and work 40 hours a week, but no benefits). But because I am still officially a freelancer, and because I've been dumped in the past by a sole client that suddenly got bought out, I can't just have one client.

So I work, hard, all the time. I work during the day while the boys are at school, I work at night when they are asleep, I work on the weekends. And the children hate it. It's like a special hell reserved just for me. Once a day, at least one child will ask me why I have to work instead of coloring, or playing games, or taking them somewhere special. It doesn't matter that I played games with them yesterday, or that I made up a fantastic bedtime story for them last night. All that matters to that child at that moment is that I am working instead of devoting myself to him. They don't ask Mike every day why he has to work, which I'm pretty sure has less to do with gender roles than it does with Mike actually leaving the house at the same time every day to go to work, as opposed to sitting in the office, there but not really available. So they save the working parent guilt for me, and they give me Mike's helping too.

Don't worry. I'm not going to turn this blog into my own ongoing rant about the struggles of being a parent. I'm pretty sure that it's not easy for anyone to be a parent. But I do agree with my friend that it's important for the boys to know (someday) that even if it looks easy (Does it look easy? How can that be?), parenting is messy, impossible work. It's a constant bargain of every detail of your life. But in the end, it's a bargain, not a sacrifice. I'm not just giving up my time, my efforts, my sense of self; I'm getting three incredible people to share those things with.