Night School is a haven of working adults and parents, a time to spend with other adults, learning exciting, new things. Last night was our first test and some of us finished very early, including me. We gathered upstairs outside our locked lab to wait for the rest of the class. Another mother of small children and I were trading war stories, much to the horror of a couple of the younger women. After several rounds of “terrible pregnancy”, “horrific labor”, “destructive toddlers”, “crayon-eating”, “feces-flinging”, one of the young women told us, “I’m afraid to have kids now”.

We tried to tell her that it’s not as bad as it sounds, but it is. Not that having babies isn’t worth it, it is. But, seriously, only have kids if you have a very strong stomach, it’s not for the timid or the queasy. This is what happens any time two or more mothers, who live in the reality-based community, get together. We bitch about the kids, it’s inevitable.

And my school-mate and I definitely live in the reality-based community. No “it’s always peace, light, and joy in my house” or “my kids are perfect angels, who never talk back or disobey or poop their pants” for us, we tell it like it is. I believe that more people should be able to say that having an infant in the house sucks for just about everyone, or that two-year-olds are tyrannical little monsters with no bowel control, or that pre-schoolers have pretty salty language and bad attitudes, or that sometimes, the lovely man you married makes you want to scream. Marriage and motherhood are hard, trying, and, sometimes, smelly undertakings that take fear-inducing amounts of difficult, unpaid labor. But that’s just on the bad days, there are actually good days, and sometimes there are transcendent days that make everything else fade to almost nothing. It is those transcendent days that keep me going, that keep me from wandering off to become a hermit.

I’m really sorry we scared that young woman, but eventually, should she have kids, she’ll remember that conversation and realize that: 1) we were right and 2) she’s not crazy for feeling the exact same way.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 7:08 pm and is filed under Kids' Room, Living, Study. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.