Park bench musings

On a beautiful October afternoon in 2023, a friend asked me how having children changed what I care about in the world. Had it narrowed my sphere of interest? I wish I could remember the original wording of the question, which was much better than that.

I wanted to make this into a coherent blog post, but unfortunately, the topic keeps sprawling in a million directions, so in the spirit of just getting some ideas down, I am doing a stream of consciousness with light editing, to get this done before I hit three years since the question was posed!

Changes enumerated

The biggest change is that I care way more about what happens, but here is a sampling of the ways in which life has changed.

  1. I care more AND less about what is happening in the wider world

  2. I care more about my vocation as a mother than I could have imagined and do not think pre-mother me had an inkling of how much being a mother would mean

  3. Life was a spectator sport; now I’m in the arena

  4. Constantly considering how something (policy, law, event) will affect my children

  5. I pay way more attention to people, their lives, their outcomes because I care way more about discovering and adapting good qualities and avoiding bad ones

  6. At times I feel hypervigilant and a small subset of things feel much more in focus, but most things don’t reach the new, higher bar for serious concern

  7. I find traveling away from my children physically painful

What I am thinking about these days

  • Preparing my children by keeping them safe and making them strong but with the goal of helping shape them into “good men, well spoken”

  • Noticing the different roles my husband and I play in the lives of our children

  • I think a lot about my own parents, the things they did well and the things that I will do differently

  • I love my children so much, and I think a lot about how to let them carve their own path but how to stay close to them in the future

But tell me exactly how!

A selection of specific examples of how I’ve changed or how life has changed:

I have never known a person like I have known my children, from before they were born noticing how they reacted to loud noises, to how busy they were to watching their personalities reveal themselves to me. To see how they interact with each other. To understand how hunger and tiredness affect a mood. Knowing a person before they have the capacity to lie or effectively conceal their emotions is a wild ride. I know a person better than they know themselves, but soon my boys won’t be sharing their every thought with me and my model of them will start to be less predictive than it is now.

I’d not known exhaustion until I had children, and I did a pediatrics residency (to be fair, that’s not a surgical residency, but it is still no joke). Suffering doesn’t bother me as much (though I still feel like a wimp, I know I am far more emotionally and physically resilient). I basically tell myself a few times a week, “Wow this is so hard, I just want to go to bed right now. Lolz, too bad, you still gotta finish cleaning the kitchen.” And then the burden of the exhaustion leaves. Still tired, but the emotional pain of exhaustion is far weaker.

Your priorities are clearer and you don’t matter as much. Apartment searching, for example, has a clear goal which is to have a place that is good for the children: quiet so they can sleep well, near school and parks, safe. The question “Is this a hip place?” never enters into the equation. Needs for the adults are easily prioritized according to how they allow us to serve the children. For example, a commute is important, but after basic standards for adult needs are met, these aspects don’t contribute more to the ‘fitness’ of the apartment, and only improvements for the children count.

I’m more interested in learning than ever before, and I have always been interested in learning. I want to know as much as I can and share it with them. I want to allow them to learn faster than I did, so they can exceed me in every way possible.

I love explaining and teaching them things. I love seeing the world afresh from their questions: why does it rain? Why do plants need dirt? How do birds pick their mate?

You get to ask yourself interesting questions too: why does my super tired baby not want to go to sleep?

Random thoughts

Forgiveness: your young children do things that are terrible and selfish and mean. But my goal is to get them to a better state, which means loving them, being calm externally when you are screaming inside. You will also fail more and in more heart-wrenching ways now that the stakes are higher, and forgiving yourself so that you can carry on with this difficult journey is necessary.

There is nothing that can be done that would make your children not your children. They are your children forever. The history you share with your children isn’t something you get to revise. Your son is only 5 years old for a brief moment and the impressions and expectations you set at different important times will follow you your whole life.

Your weakness and failings with them lay bare many things you have probably struggled with and never mastered, but your children will also find new creative ways in which you have shortcomings!

Your children, created from a reshuffling of you and their other parent, possess some of your own foibles. Some you have mastered, and some continue to crush you. Watching your children struggle with some aspect of life that you continue to struggle with can immiserate you if you let it, but also inspire you to grow and overcome now that your child has the same problem.

Having more than one child was an amazing experience. It is wild to see how alike they are and their stark differences. I see much of my husband in the boys, and I suppose others have an easier time seeing similarities between the boys and me than I do.

Teaching my oldest son to read was one of the best experiences of my life. It felt like his brain was meant to read. His younger brother seemed even more prepared to read given his exposure to his older brother.

You don’t realize how much time you have “wasted” in your life until your time surplus runs dry when you have young children.

Routine is the most powerful sanity tool you can imagine. It’s good for you; it’s good for kids; it’s good for your marriage and your finances.

Having children made me feel love in unimaginable ways. Also, it makes you vulnerable in ways that can be frightening. Seeing my first son for the first time felt like my body had been punched through to a new sphere of reality where you don’t understand the physics of it. Love was now a physical ache for this little red baby. The first night was overwhelming because I could not stop looking at him. I didn’t want to blink. The freshness of that first night doesn’t last forever, but it did leave an indelible impression upon me.

With my second son, I was pulled into that freshness again but the world was known to me. With all subsequent pregnancies, the anticipation of the explosion of love was fantastic. I had a scheduled c-section for each of them, and the moments before the procedure were akin to a spiritual dawn. I remember feeling euphoric and my heart bursting with the anticipation of meeting my child in a few moments.

You’ve likely heard the saying that having children means that part of your heart leaves your body and walks in the world. It’s fairly accurate.

You need to ask for grace often.