Several days ago, Green Peace stopped me at Trader Joes and asked if I would join their movement and commit to $15/month donation. He kept saying, “You know about the whales, right? You know about the endangerment of many of our large predators in the ocean?”'
While in college, I was invited by a friend to attend a showing of An Inconvenient Truth and my life was never the same. It was a cause I could lay my life down for. Shortly after this I learned that UNCG professors were trying to pioneer an Environmental Studies program and I jumped in headfirst. I changed my major the next day to a Bachelors of Science. I braved statistics for the whales I was going to save! One of my professors was a specialist for sea turtles and I was in love with this cause. A whale scientist came to speak in one of my classes and encouraged the students to join his company on a research gathering tour off the coast of South America. It was all I wanted out of life. My favorite professor would show us videos of rebels handcuffing themselves to cattle trailers on their way to being slaughtered inhumanely and I was ready for it. I worshiped Rachel Carson. When I mentioned her name to visitors and no one had heard of her, I started volunteering to host tables around the campus, handing out brochures I had made highlighting her accomplishments. She was a woman. She was a fighter. She made a difference. That is all I ever wanted to do.
As I slouched before the Green Peace guy, growing tired of his speech, I read his “STOP GLOBAL WARMING” sticker plastered on his notebook and smiled. Because I’ve been there, I wanted to do what he is doing. I wanted to save the world, and I was going to do it one regulated buffalo reservation at a time. Or whatever. Most of you know I became pregnant just before my senior year of college and dropped out before the baby came. Just like that. All of my dreams of growing dreads and sailing the seas with scientists wearing cool visors became just a mystical fantasy. That side of me never came alive again.
I have children now. Three of them. If life goes my way, I will have another one next year. Sometimes in the day to day grind of dirty diapers, fifty thousand million snacks served up, and sleepless nights like a single person cannot and should not imagine, I wonder why I gave up my dreams for this. I wonder why I exchanged my dream of studying animals abroad to being the most domestic person I know. I have been sort of sold out to this new Coke commercial that gives a quick glimpse into the lives of naive parents that celebrate a positive pregnancy test. The baby comes, their life gets messy. The baby becomes a toddler, chaos ensues. At the end of the commercial, the mother holds up another positive pregnancy test and just when you think the parents are going to freak out, they are instead completely elated. It’s how I feel because parenting is so hard. I cannot even began to convey how difficult my days are sometimes. Yesterday I was jealous of the Wal-Mart cashier because he smiled at me and asked about my day. I realized I hadn't made anyone's day better, myself least of all. I whined in the car, I love to talk to people. My goal this weekend is to finish folding laundry, and there is a possibility that Y2K will regenerate itself if I actually get these three loads put away in their designated places before Sunday. It never happens. I managed to cook a healthy, filling dinner tonight. And I made cookies. Nasty, sand tasting cookies stuffed with raisins. I try so hard for my kids and usually my baking experiments make me laugh. I am good at laughing at myself. There are so many learning curves. Today I thought, “I am doing such a good job with my kids, they are well behaved and well adjusted. Go me!” But two days ago, I was weeping because I felt so inadequate. I am inadequate. I couldn’t do it without the reassurance that God really does pick up my slack, a lot. My point is, like the commercial, no matter how crazy and quite unpleasant life gets with young children, I can’t ever go back. Yes, they are needy, loud, and little anomalies that don’t seem to need sleep to function.
But…
There so many butts…to clean. No, no, I mean to say, they are amazing. They have stolen my heart and it takes a Green Peace guy with a global warming sticker in my face for me to even remember what I once wanted because this takes up all of me. Having children is the most life changing, life course altering, amazing- just amazing experience in the world. I always wanted to be a mother, but I had no idea what that really meant. I had a smidgeon of an idea concerning what would be required of me physically and emotionally. Let’s just add here, intellectually, because the amount of brain power it takes to dissolve sibling spats is far beyond my capacity. Those little people though, they have wrapped me around their fingers and it makes no sense how they do it, for they are only 2-3 feet tall. They push, push, push me to my personal edge every single day, to the point where I am questioning my identity, questioning my sanity, questioning what on earth God put me on this earth for. Still, at the end of the day I find myself curled up in their beds, pulling their sweet smelling faces up to mine and whispering in their ear, “You are the best thing that ever happened to me.” And they truly are.
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