A Year Without Childcare or Beer
I don’t know who this post-pandemic parent is yet, but I like her.
My husband and both of our kids.
At first, we juggled. I mean, this would only be a few months, right? We set up a desk in our bedroom and took turns. Desperation led to creativity. We scrounged old climbing rope and cut wood to hang swings under the deck and crammed two kids in a single bike trailer.
It was almost fun until June came and nothing changed. I stopped working and for a moment there was more air. I remember sitting in the grass watching my daughter climb her favorite magnolia tree, and my son came and snuggled on my lap, and I didn’t reach for my phone to check anything.
Barrett
A few weeks later I was crying on the floor yelling at my husband, “I quit my job and you didn’t even notice. I gave up my identity, my time, and the work I loved and now I’m drowning in isolation and spreading peanut butter and you never even said thank you!”
And maybe we did it wrong. We have lots of friends who chose more exposures and time with friends who didn’t get sick, but the Russian roulette felt like too much to bear. In my desperate moments I wasn’t sure which sounded worse, getting COVID or being the only adult alone with two kids under five.
It hit me just how isolated we were when I figured out my almost-two-year-old knew the word people. He would point and say, “Look Mommy, peoples.”
Our morning radio station added the tag line, “Where you’re never alone.” And I would cry almost every time. Partly because I so badly wanted to feel that. And partly because it felt so fucking untrue. I mean, are we in this together? Really? Because it seems like it’s just me and my husband changing all the diapers, getting their shoes on and off, again, and getting carpal tunnel trying to scrape the dried bits from the bottom of the Costco size tub of Adam’s natural peanut butter. Since March of 2020. March 13th to be exact, but who’s counting?
I heard someone describe life in the pandemic as being under a magnifying glass — meaning it highlighted our weak spots. For me, being only a few months newly sober, it felt more like being one of those ants from the Lord of the Flies when they discovered they could make fire by holding that kid’s glasses in the sun. It was fucking hot in there. The irrational rage at my husband for how he loads the dishwasher. The unfair impatience with my one-year-old when he wants to put on his shoes and doesn’t care that he can’t actually do it, or how long it takes. The tragic frustration with my four-year-old who cannot loop the letter ‘a’ from right to left no matter how many times I show her. It hurt everywhere.
Addiction is anything we reach for to get away from a feeling we can’t tolerate. I stopped reaching for a beer, and then I didn’t have my work, and facing my monster-mom-self and their little faces when I yelled was almost unbearable. Before the pandemic, I was only alone with my kids in little spurts. I worked two or three mornings a week and my kids have always taken long generous naps. So I only needed to burn out my perfect parent muscle two mornings a week. But 50+ hours a week broke me. I simply could not keep up all the overdoing, over-giving, perfection-seeking madness — but that didn’t stop me from trying.
In August we planned a camping trip with friends and entered a heighted level of quarantine to protect one of our high risk friends. I remember walking around the neighborhood feeling like trapped tigers with meat dangling around our cage. We were salivating and could smell it, but I had to avoid all the houses where I knew the kids were likely to talk to someone. We just needed to get through two weeks until we could eat again.
The day before we were supposed to leave, my husband graciously took the kids for a walk so that I could have a quiet moment to pack. He didn’t know which neighbors to avoid, and before he could stop her, my daughter bolted out of the stroller and hugged her friend. This hug was too much risk for the group. We postponed the trip, and our purgatory of starving in the cage continued.
By the time we got to the campsite — one month, a 3-hour drive, and a 1-hour paddle in a canoe with a screaming kid later — I was absolutely beside myself. We have a ritual of making mac-n-cheese with hot dogs the first night of every trip, so we offered to go first in the group dinner rotation. Our friend asked if we could make a separate dairy-free box. Then my husband offered to keep the hot dogs separate, and our simple dinner turned into an elaborate mess of pots and dishes that would need cleaning after bedtime. After dinner, a group of adults went down to the lake, and I ended up outnumbered at the fire, trying to keep my one and a half-year-old from killing himself on the boulder cliff that was our campsite that night. One of the kids asked for help with his marshmallow stick and I screamed, “I NEED ANOTHER ADULT!!!!” The poor little guy was stunned. If there had been music playing, it definitely would have stopped.
I used to think I had anger problems. Like I just had this embarrassing temper that I couldn’t control. The longer I’ve been sober, the clearer it became that my anger makes perfect fucking sense. I’m resentful and exhausted and not asking for what I want and need. I remember feeling exhausted and overwhelmed that first day of our camping trip, but it never occurred to me to say, “No, I’m sorry we can’t handle making two dinners.” Or “Can we get help with the dishes?” Or even better, “This campsite is a nightmare for Grady. I’m beside myself exhausted. Is anyone else up for making dinner tonight?”
Had I still been drinking, I probably would have lost my temper sooner and then blamed myself and felt shame for my drinking and missed this whole underlying pattern.
When we are babies, belonging is life or death. If we are not in the tribe, we will die. I don’t think we can minimize our primal urge for belonging. I had been overriding the soft animal of my body in exchange for belonging my entire life. The tense confusion, resentment, and anger felt normal. I didn’t have the muscle memory to even hear the soft voice in my chest saying, “Nah, I don’t want to.” Or even the super loud one screaming from every muscle in my body, “I WANT TO LIE DOWN.” I had to override that to keep us safe from the saber tooth tiger that had to be waiting just outside of the safety of our tribe.
This fear of losing belonging by not performing is exactly what got activated when helping my daughter with her online preschool. In my prefrontal cortex, I don’t care if she learns to write. She’s four. I want her to enjoy engaging with whatever feels fun. But on the Zoom screen, with a teacher giving a lesson, I lost all connection with these higher functions. I yelled at a four-year-old because I was desperate to make her do it right so the saber tooth tiger wouldn’t get her.
This year, I got real with how that terror lives in my body. I could see the pattern, and I didn’t want to put that on my four-year-old. I didn’t want to make her do it right to relieve my terror. At first, I would shut myself in my room and yell and hit pillows. One time I hit the floor and had to wear a brace for months. Like anything else, the more I stay with it, the more I can tolerate it. The more I can feel, the more I can take responsibility. The more I can take responsibility, the stronger we can repair.
The reality is my habitual impulse to override my body, urgently trying to do more and better, the right way, isn’t just my flaw — it’s a violent cultural legacy. I feel like a commodity that has to perform to belong for good fucking reasons that are much bigger than me.
I don’t want more childcare or beer to get away from feeling how hard this is. I want to give myself a break and stop trying to perform my way out of an impossible situation. I want to remember that I’m part of a collective experience that is enormously shitty. We are living in a global crisis, and it hurts. Humans aren’t supposed to parent like this. We all need more faces, more touch, more love, and more helpful adults.
I used to feel proud when I made it through a whole day without letting my kids watch videos, no matter how frazzled and exhausted I was. When I disrupt this impulse to perform to stay safe, I just want a nap. I want to let my daughter watch videos so I can have sex with my husband. I can stand in the rain watching my son push his bike through a puddle, and listen to Lama Rod in my earbuds, and feel like a good mom making sure no one gets run over. I can feel like a good mother—with all of the pain and grief. I can close my eyes and remember, and feel, how the healing in my little family is part of the world all of our great-grandchildren will inherit.
Grady and a slug he hung out with for about an hour.
I want to watch my son toil over his shoes and do nothing but marvel at his fingers — and remember how much that choice matters to him and that it might also matter to my grandkids and the lives they will touch. When I yell and repair, and truly respect Barrett’s space to be excited about writing her seven-letter name with four letters backward, I want to feel how hard that was for me. I want to savor how that made 2020 more joyful and how that experience might also make it easier for her and her kids to feel more joy and contribute less violence. I want to slow down and be real with my body and honor how I show up with my kids as deep, daily, and sacred acts of activism. I want to participate in a culture of fucking up and making amends and practicing consent and coming closer, fully expressed and fully embodied, in a million little ways all goddamn day.
I don’t want to thank COVID for anything because I don’t want to minimize our suffering, but I do want to feel and savor my gratitude for the painful lessons of this year and what that might contribute to our collective liberation.
Struggling to get free of the shit we inherit matters whether we are standing in our kitchen spreading peanut butter or marching in the streets or running for Congress. It all matters. And our kids’ future depends on me and you persisting. In the words of Toko-pa Turner, “May you know for certain that even as you stand by yourself, you are not alone.”
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