I Too Have Yelled at My Kids in the Grocery Store.

I assume that anyone reading this is a parent. I am also going to assume that you love your kids. I am finally going to assume that a large investment of your time and resources are allotted to providing for your family. The above statements are also true for my wife and me.

How do you keep from losing yourself?

My sense of humor is not child-friendly. My interests and hobbies take a back seat to the needs of the offspring. A lot of my words and feelings have to go through a filter and be distilled into something that is appropriate and digestible to a young mind. I no longer choose my friends. I have to sort through the parents of my kid’s peers from school or other activities and find people that my wife and I find tolerable, who in turn will tolerate us, in order to have some semblance of social interaction beyond my place of employment.

I want to have the time and resources to date my wife again.

I want to remember who I am.

I want to be able to choose how my free time is spent.

The chances of these things happening are about as likely as the email that I received from the Nigerian prince wanting to give me money being legit.

I can hear the prior generations of parents’ thoughts now. That’s your job as a Father/Mother to be there for your kids and to provide. You should place the children first and sacrifice everything for them. These are also the generations that would kick their kids out of the house at first light and not see them again till the streetlights came on. If I tried this then I would go to prison.

I love my family. I am there for them always and forever.

However being there, always, forever, can be a source of great frustration. Feeling this frustration also makes you feel like some kind of child-hating monster who shouldn’t be a dad. I blame unrealistic media portrayals of perfect families whose parents have an infinite amount of patience and wisdom. Here in the real world, we have to be out the door at a certain time in the morning and if the kids move any slower they will cause time itself to reverse flow. If they miss the bus to school then someone will have to drive them there and be late for work. Being excessively late for work can cause disciplinary action up to and including the termination of employment according to everyone’s employee handbook. Not having a job causes finical issues which are the leading cause of relationship troubles. Having relationship troubles can lead to divorce.

So kids when I beg, plead, and yell for you to hurry up and finish your damn oatmeal and get your shoes on, I am trying to, in a roundabout way, save my marriage.

It’s hard to keep your composure all the time. I will be honest, I lose my temper at times. I am not proud of it.

Before I had kids, I would see some Mom or Dad lose their shit in public. I would be aghast and think, those poor children. How could you be so mean to someone so young? Now, I see the parent at the grocery store, by themselves, with two toddlers and a ten-year-old, and the poor Mom or Dad ends up yelling at the older child over a Lunchable while trying to keep the younger kids from climbing out of the cart. I think, you poor bastard, you must have been under pressure all day. I understand. I am not saying it is right, I am just saying I get it. I have been there.

Get Out of the Groove

I remember the day my oldest daughter became mobile; I had laid her down on a tummy-time mat while I was doing something on the computer. I felt something touch my leg and voila, baby at my feet. I set her back on her mat and she crawled over to me again. I was a proud papa and called my wife, who was at work, to tell her. We were both excited, but it made my wife upset that she missed that milestone. I can understand I have missed my fair share of things.

I hate missing moments.

I hate the fact that my and other parents’ working years coincide with all of a child’s developmental period. We miss so much. From birth and beyond, they spend large pieces of their lives with other people. Daycare providers, teachers, grandparents, and many others take your place when you are not there. Even when a baby is first born we only are allowed a few weeks away from our jobs.

You can’t go back and see firsts. You can’t make kids unsay their first word, or take back their first steps. They insist on growing up in a blink of an eye and making you wonder where the time went.

I know where the time has gone.

We are all time-travelers. Unfortunately, we can only move forward and we never get to go back. We are allotted a limited amount of time in our life.  It is a finite resource, with which we are frivolous. We waste so much of our time, and you cannot reclaim what you have lost. You can, however, slow time down.  You have to break your routines and not get into a groove.

We try to squeeze in as much time as we can during the work week. We try to do something special on the weekends. Something seems to come up, or you are tired. Plans get canceled and you fall into the groove. All the days blend together.

Once you start having days that are almost exactly the same then those days fade in your mind. String enough of those days together and whole chunks of your life turn into mist and you only remember the times when something was different. Remember the time three weeks from last Thursday when you had an uneventful commute to work?  No, of course, you don’t.  But I would wager that you remember the wreck you were involved in two decades ago.

Last week, I took some time off from work. The girls’ summer break is now over, and I wanted some time to decompress and time to spend with the kids before they went back to school.  The week was nice, we had fun, ate too much ice cream, and it was over all too soon. Monday comes and with a heavy heart, I resume the routine: Commute to the workplace, do work, commute home and dream of more time off.

That Monday morning was hard, I sat on the couch and dreaded going to work. Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining about having to work. I am grateful that I am employed and able to provide for my family, but my family is the reason I do what I have to do. I would much rather stay at home instead of going to a building where they expect me to do tasks that I would rather not do and spend at least 40 hours a week with people I can barely tolerate.

This is why I want to start making more memories. I don’t want to look up and find that all of a sudden my kids are moving out of the house to go to college. I want to slow the ticking of the clock. I want my kids to look back and remember moments with my wife and me. I don’t want to stay in the groove. I want to start taking more moments to enjoy life.

Going With the Flow

My wife and I had arranged a rare night out this past Friday. We decided to go a Cincinnati Red’s game and enjoy each others company while engaging in a session of people watching. The weather wasn’t cooperating. The humidity was around 99.9 percent and showers were moving into the area. Being the troopers we are, we would not let Mother Nature deter us in our quest for a kid-free, date night.

We started our journey behind schedule. This is not unusual for us, we are typically at least a few minutes late to about everything.  We packed a cooler, stopped to pick up food, and made our way downtown. Anyone that goes downtown, for an event, knows that finding a place to park is one of the prime concerns. Neither my wife nor I know the ins-and-outs of downtown driving, and finding a parking spot involves a lot of meandering around looking for parking garages close to the stadium.

The navigation went awry. We took a right onto a street and it ended up being the on-ramp to the bridge going to Newport. Once you take that right-hand turn there is no way not to cross the river to Kentucky.  (For those people reading this that are not familiar with Cincinnati, downtown and the stadiums are adjacent to the Ohio River. The bordering towns on the Kentucky side of the river are Newport and Covington.)   Due to construction and ever changing traffic patterns,  it is extremely inconvenient to cross the river going from state to state even if it isn’t rush hour.

We intended to bust a u-turn, cross the same bridge, and resume our quest to go to the Red’s game. This plan deflated before it even got off the ground. Orange barrels and construction signs blocked the path of the lane heading Northbound back across the bridge. We had reached a decision point.

Do we drive back to the interstate and have a second go at downtown driving, or do we abandon mission?

The humidity. the on-again-off-again rain-showers,  the fact we were coming up on being an hour late for the game, all played a part in our decision.  We gave up on the Reds game.

We went to the movies instead.

A wonderful time was had. Marriage Batteries recharged. I am glad we didn’t let a small detour ruin our night.

Flexibility is important in a relationship. This was a minor instance, but it illustrates a broader point. Plans and situations change, and you can either let them affect your attitude, or you can roll with the punches.

 

 

Laughs and Looks

One of my most favorite sounds in this whole, wide world is my wife’s laugh. She, like most people, has many different types of laughs: Her polite laugh, her laugh when she is making small talk, her triumphant “HA!” when she does some difficult task, and many other varied laughs depending on mood, and situation.

All her laughs ,I love, but the one where the laugh comes out as a high pitch giggle/squeal is the one I know she can not hold back. That is the laugh I am 100% sure she means.

In contrast one of my least favorite things is the “look”.  I am sure you know the one I mean. Its the look that says that there is hell to pay and the bill is due. The one that says you are a stupid jackass and I don’t know why they allow you to keep breathing. If your partner is giving you the “look” too often then it becomes an almost  permanent expression and the laughter starts to die.  This will poison a relationship.

This would kill me.

 

I would hate if I never heard my wife’s genuine laugh again. I have been in relationships where the laughter has died and instead you get looks. I would rather have a marriage  full of laughs and embraces instead of disdainful glares and cold shoulders.  I have an awesome relationship and couldn’t as for anything better.

We aren’t perfect but where I have cracks she has edges and we just fit together.

With us being in a good place that means I don’t get the “look” often, but I know its there, just waiting, for the time when I hurt her or when I am too stubborn to admit I am wrong. I try my best not to bring the “look” out because I know her anger is a reaction from bruised emotions or disappointment that I caused.

I get sick to my stomach and I get anxious when I disappoint her or have hurt her somehow.   I loath that feeling of not knowing what to do to make something right. That is why I give my best effort to consider her feelings and make our marriage a team effort. A lot of it is small things. I ask her how her day was and kiss her first thing when I get home. I will pick up the groceries or do the dishes if she needs me too. If she has had a rough day with the kids then I don’t complain when she wants to leave for a couple hours when I get home from work.  I am not perfect and  I still fall short sometimes but she knows that my intentions are good.

Bring home wine that helps too…