Just Powers

Someone told me the other day that I have cured them of wanting kids. Ack. How terrible. I didn’t think I complained that much, but apparently I do.

So, to provide a little balance to my last post, let me say right here and right now that having kids is the best thing I have ever done. The most challenging, the most physically painful, possibly the craziest thing sure - but still, the best.

The thing is that for me the hard stuff about being a parent is tangible: the sleep deprivation, the frustration with repeating myself over and over and over, the chaos, the temper tantrums, the wondering how badly I’m screwing them up. That tangibility makes it easier to talk about the hard stuff than the good stuff.

The good stuff about being a parent happens deep inside in a place that I didn’t know was there until I had kids - maybe it didn’t even exist until then (thanks Anne Lamott). The good stuff happens in the tiny little quiet everyday moments that are tougher to describe without sounding like a Hallmark card. While I have begun to know what to expect with the hard stuff, the good stuff keeps surprising me, making me fall in love with my kids over and over again and making the hard stuff worth every second.

I don’t mean this to sound like I think everyone should have kids. It doesn’t “complete” you as a person to have kids. It doesn’t make you a better person or a more fulfilled person, but it does make you a different person. It makes you change and grow in ways that I’m not sure anything else does in quite the same way.

So please don’t be cured just yet - and certainly not just because a cranky new mother complained too much…