Voices

My 8-year-old keeps surprising me.

I love her to death, but she’s a bit of a space cadet. 99% of the time, she doesn’t hear a word you’re saying because she’s goofing around.

Trying to talk to her about important things (logistics, life lessons, etc.) is worse than pulling teeth, unless you enjoy repeating yourself over and over. Getting her to sit still and listen, or move efficiently from Point A to Point B, is a herculean task.

She’s rarely serious. Not aloof, just silly, the way a kid should be.

And she can be moody, of course, often preferring to listen to music in the car instead of making conversation.

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One of the biggest challenges of being a parent is keeping your shit together around your kids.

Sure, When they’re little, they do little kid stuff like drawing on themselves, the couch, the wall, and the dog in a very black, thick, and hard-to-get-off Magic Marker. Or they whizz in their pants when you’re a whopping five minutes from the front door. Or if you’re raising boys, they pee everywhere that isn’t a toilet. Or these minor demons refuse to eat when you let them pick out every ingredient on the plate.

(God, how many times have you made Kraft Macaroni and Cheese or pulled out a cheese pizza from the freezer? Most adults need a multiyear detox after the kids’ palates expand.)

But I’m not talking about those kinds of moments of small furies.

Instead, it’s when kids say things that make you clasp your hand over your mouth, look away and pretend what they just said wasn’t hilarious. 

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In the filing cabinet upstairs, I retrieve the beautiful keepsake box my mother gave me when my son was born almost two years ago. Still in its packaging, the personalized “vault” contains over 50 labels to show what, as parents, we’re supposed to save.

As I read through them–pregnancy test, birth story, important firsts–I can’t help but feel like a failure, as I don’t have most of these things.

And the guilt has been weighing on me.

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According to the Urban Dictionary, “Daddy Issues” Is “When a girl has a messed up relationship with her dad. Usually the father’s fault. Either he left or is acting like a total bitch.”

Not sure how accurate that is, but I did laugh out loud.

In layman’s terms, Daddy Issues refer to a dysfunctional father/daughter relationship resulting in a myriad of issues for the daughter ranging from a lack of self-esteem (check), people pleasing (check), falling for emotionally unavailable men (CHECK!!!)

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May is the time for both Mothers’ Day and Mental Health Awareness Month. Coincidence?

I think not!

Perinatal depression has been rising, and suicide is among the top killers of new moms.

And with the pressure from social media to only show our best moments, it’s easy for new, already-overwhelmed parents to get sucked into a vortex of doom, gloom, and hiding to eat snacks and cry in the bathroom.

So it makes sense that we try to lift new parents up with strained optimism, but when we do that, we sometimes make things worse. It’s called Toxic Positivity — and it can invalidate a person’s feelings and add an extra layer of guilt on top of everything else they’re already dealing with.

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There is plenty to worry about with a kindergartener.

They are tiny balls of cosmic energy focused entirely on whatever whim enters their head at any given moment and prone to forgetting anything they learned at school that week in favor of committing a particularly quirky and fun limerick to memory and shouting it, loudly, inside the house and to passerby at the park.

They are perfect and flawed, just like all of us, only more so and without the inhibitions and anxieties brought on by knowing exactly what the world is and what is lurking in it.

It seems great, to be honest.

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There’s a podcast I listen to called One Life, One Chance, hosted by hardcore singer Toby Morse, an explicitly positive person who’s a straight-edge vegan who sees the best in people.

And at the end of every interview, he asks, “do you have any regrets?”

Some say yes, and others say no, that the path they’re on is theirs alone, complete with its successes and failures.

I cannot relate to this. Like, at all.

Every single time he asks about regrets, my mind does one of those montages of moments where I die inside, pinpointing my fuckups, leaving me wishing certain things were different, curious what my life would be like had I played situations a little smarter.

I know I can’t change the past, but the past has come collecting its tax more than once. And because of those hard-knock lessons, I’ve learned to think critically and strategically when it comes to being a parent, for better or worse. 

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I made it five days into my dream vacation before bursting into tears in the middle of the elevator in my hotel.

I was in London, giving myself the break everyone told me I needed — the break I’d wished for so many times. Finally, I could put down the weight on my shoulders that never goes away. No work. No responsibility.

And, most significantly of all, no kids.

I’d never been away from my kids for longer than a day. I’m a single dad, and they’re teenagers, so it was a long time coming.

And it was great… until it wasn’t.

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As a man in his soon-to-be late 30s, I’m pretty far removed from puberty.

But from what I can remember, there were mostly a lot of pimples, a growth spurt or two, and awkwardly trying to find myself in middle and high school.

Overall, though, not a crazy experience and certainly nothing that required a lot of hand-holding.

Now, I have a daughter, and she’s starting to go through puberty, and I realize how much different the experience is for girls than boys. The worst thing I had to worry about was an erection at a bad time. For girls, a worst-case scenario is much more intense.

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