Bugs are Good for the System, Too

It had a bug in it, and I drank it anyway.

That might be the subtitle of my collection of parenting essays. It is certainly the subtitle of my evening.

The "it" in question is the glass of wine I drank up on the roof deck a few hours ago as I sat by myself in the twilight, high above the city streets, surrounded by rooftops and thousands of windows, behind which likely sat some other parents with their own glasses of wine, equally desperate for an hour--just a hour--alone.

I say this is likely, but in fact I know it to be true for at least five or six parents around the country, for as I sat up on my roof deck, in blissful solitude, I made a few phone calls when it grew too dark to read, and every single person I reached, between the ages of 30 and 60+ expressed to me some level of angst about their children, about the job they'd done this day in particular regarding them, and this in spite of the fact that parenting was neither the covert nor ostensible reason for my call.

I have to say, this made me feel a little better about the fact that I had been pushed out of my own front door by a groundswell--a tidal wave--of exhaustion, defeatism, anxiety, anger, and sheer grime the instant I closed the door behind me after depositing Annika unceremoniously in her crib. This day was like any other, twenty-four hours long, but it felt like eighty, and suddenly I couldn't take it, being a mother, for one second more.

My provisions: aforementioned glass of wine, still bug-free, the most recent New Yorker magazine, my phone. I forgot the Hershey bar with almonds I'd bought guiltily at the drug store while picking up a prescription--guiltily because I spend so many hours explaining to Lily why we don't eat junky candy from the drug store and then buy and hide it like a CIA operative with a career-threatening sugar addiction. And I don't even like candy that much.

The funny thing is that nothing out of the ordinary even happened today, except for the fact that I didn't work in daylight hours, meaning that I was actively on parenting duty all day, from daybreak--literally--to that moment of flight. Lily had a friend over, and they covered themselves from head to toe with what looked like Native American tribal signs in magic marker. When I told them both that they should know better, they blamed each other. Annika followed me or Lily, variously, around the apartment, screeching. She fell twice, once forward, once backward, part and parcel of the whole learning to walk thing, but no less traumatic for being a stage. We went up on the roof for lunch. Lily and her friend dumped water on each other. Annika ate some dirt. Lily explained to her friend that her mother thinks this is okay because it's good for the "commune system." I wondered how long it would take Lily's friend to tell her parents that Lily's mom lets their baby eat dirt. And on and on.

But by the time Ben got home, I was ready to comb the banana out of my hair, stop explaining why rice cakes aren't dinner and burn all the board books in the middle of 16th Street. I understand that repetitive sounds are good for language acquisition. It's just that they kill brain cells in those over the age of 35. I made it through dinner, through my 500th reading of Strega Nona, through the agonizing tooth-brushing session during which I suppressed what I always suppress: the intense desire to reveal that brushing your teeth three times a day for the ridiculous length of time advocated by our overpriced "pediatric dentist" will not actually guarantee admission to Yale. And then, I fled.

As it turns out, one of the conversations I had up on the roof, the final one before my Dante-esque descent, did in fact make me feel grateful, intensely, profoundly so, for my two little devils. But the knowledge that every day, in every year, for the entire duration of the proposition, holds the possibility of agony made me feel in my today, a lot less alone. It's really hard to be a parent. It's really hard for everybody, and--bite your tongue, I am telling myself--it's hard if your kids are ten months old or 38. I'm not an age concealer: that's meant to be a nod to you, Mom and Dad. Thanks for never saying to me: My god. It never ends.

Which brings me to the last scene of my roof deck adventure. I will switch unsubtly to the present tense to underline the experience for you.

It is 9 o' clock. I am standing by the elevator door on the sixth floor waiting for the elevator to arrive. My phone and my keys are in my pocket, my unread New Yorker under my arm. I am holding my not quite finished glass of wine--alas, even under the most stressful circumstances I am only driven to drink in minuscule amounts. I notice, casually, that there is a tiny bug in the wine. Then I spot another. I consider the tiny bugs. I flick them out with my forefinger. And then, I drink it anyway.

It was just that kind of a day.