On adulting

Sunny is completing her first trip around the sun. Everyone said her first birthday would mainly be a celebration of keeping a child alive for a year and it very much is. That and an ode to the fact that Nick and I are still speaking to each other most days.

On the one hand, I’m so excited to celebrate her. She’s grown so big, she’s nearly walking, she’s getting engaged in books, she has friends. And then on the other, I’m so excited for me.

Gasp!

When these tiny kernels of human beings arrive, they are pulpy mewling beings that rely on you for everything. It feels like you’re inside a shell and there’s no thinking beyond the shell—you’re just in it, doing the needful to keep a small being alive. It’s been a bit since it felt that extreme but I’m still astonished that Sunny can drink water on her own, she can hold her own bottle and she eats her yogurt with great aplomb.

Finally, I’m seeming to find it within my grasp to think a little bit further out than the fifty foot  radius of our house, on what adventures I can dive into myself. What better person can I become that Sunny can see, and that I can see? Who can I be that I can be proud of? Podcaster, author and contemporary oracle, Rich Roll talks about the feeling of being dismantled as a great opportunity. And much of the last year of being a new mother, I felt dismantled.

Step one of this new year keeps coming back to this, the topic of my current writing project: adulting.

I’ve started out on a series of essays about it—this adulting, a word that my AP English teacher no doubt would have cringed over, and an act I often find impossible to do, or at least do gracefully.

So along with visions of a surf trip to Puerto Rico and a long-distance paddle and a family trip somewhere exotic, I have dreams of this year simply registering my car on time (an example Merriam Webster actually uses to exemplify adulting and one I wrote a whole essay draft on), of being able to knowingly switch out a bit and wield a drill, of writing thank you notes less than a year from the date of receipt.

A good friend and fellow writer Susie Seligson once quoted such a concept in an exchange from A Raisin in the Sun:

“I want to fly! I want to touch the sun!" "Finish your eggs first.”

And it’s true. Let’s make space for the grand … and let’s eat our eggs first.

goodatnothing

Right now, I feel like I’m failing at everything. This sounds incredibly dismal and dire but for the most part, I am only stricken by a lightning bolt of anxiety and despair 1-2x’s per day. Most of the other time, I’m swimming around and flailing and washing bottles by the sink or scribbling more to-do’s that I’ll forget in five minutes.

I’m not really sure what I do most days—seems like laundry gets done occasionally, I empty the Diaper Genie when it’s full 5 out of 6 times and my gas light has been on since Tuesday. It’s simply utter chaos and we’ll wake up and do it all again tomorrow.

If my brain were a shoebox, there would be no shoes in it. The place feels totally empty. I feel like the best example of the emptiness is this: I have no desire to read or forage for good books. Thank God Lisa and I walked into River Run today and she pointed to a book “This book is amazing” and so I bought it. That’s what I need. A best friend handler who shoves things into my hand and says “This is for you.” It would be fantastic for food, workouts, books, anything.

My other friend said Tired is your new friend. I was railing against that for a while. But what if I take a supplement? What if I eat really well? What if I go vegan, go pescatarian, go Atkins, go something. Can I evade Tired then?

Nope.

Tired crept into my shadow and we are Now One. I knew it would be this way but I didn’t know it would become the marrow of my bones. And you can’t run from the marrow.

Somehow, new parents are allowed to operate heavy machinery — drive cars and such — and sign legal documents. Doesn’t everyone know we are not of sound mind and our fine motor skills are toast?

Anyway, right now my finest skill is smiling at the baby and not losing my car keys, and perhaps that’s the best I can do right now. In fact, it is.