When I first became the legal guardian of my nieces, I would forget that they existed. I would be in the middle of typing away at my computer, troubleshooting code, and completely miss getting up and picking them up from the bus. I would forget that they were in my house if they were quiet long enough, only to be startled back into a reality when they would start to argue with each other.
Now, as a parent of three years, I will find myself standing at the bus stop at exactly 2:50 PM without any conscious thought or real memory of standing up from my workstation and walking outside to get my kids from the bus stop. Now, three years into parenthood, they constantly exist in my mind, no matter what I am doing. I can be writing a book chapter, answering emails, writing code, cleaning up a data frame, installing camera traps and acoustic traps at a field site, drafting, beading, reading, cleaning, lifting weights, flowing through a sun salutation… and they are constantly in my mind. Maybe not at the front of it, but there, taking up space, owning a piece of my consciousness in a way that makes forgetting to pick them up at the bus stop almost impossible. The feeling is a bit like having somebody staring at you just outside of your field of vision. As if they are looking over my shoulder, right now, reading as I am typing. For some context, I have never given birth to a child or partook in the rearing of a child less than 4 years of age, so I don't have that experience and have no ability to comment on it. My husband and I took guardianship of my nieces when they were 4 and 6. (It's a long story, and for the most part, not my story to tell.) Everybody I talk to tells me that it is different. Giving birth is a transformative experience that helps "parentify" you. I honestly couldn't tell you. I'm not sure those other parents have the vantage to tell me, either. And frankly, I don't find those types of statements helpful… or kind. It diminishes what I am to my girls and diminishes what they are to me. I have this theory that if you give birth to a baby, you grow up with that baby. From newborn parents to baby parents, toddler parents, preschool age parents, kindergarten parents, and elementary school parents, you get to become a parent. It's time to get your ducks in a row and make your mistakes before your children start to form permanent, long-term memories. I started with a preschooler and a kindergartener (in the middle of a pandemic). So, I have a 7 and 9-year-old now, but they have the emotional equivalent of toddler parents, who haven't developed the necessary emotional skills required for their ages. This is just a thought, a feeling, probably born out of insecurity, and not a fact… But…. this is a thought that terrifies me, and I hope, desperately, that I am not messing them up too badly. I came to this theory by interacting with the parents of my children's friends. They seem… steadier than I am, calmer, wiser, less flustered, and completely unbothered by the children-created chaos and noise that surrounded us. They grew up with their child, and I feel I am still desperately trying to catch up. The parentification of my brain happened to me while I was writing my Ph.D. thesis. As a brand new parent to a four and six year old, my thesis writing took place at the strangest times in the strangest of places. The perfect quiet, tactfully cluttered working space of my pre-children days had transformed into a pile of forgotten papers I meant to read, coffee cups, and half-forgotten notes while children’s TV played in the background. Writing a thesis under the best of circumstances can be humbling. Writing a thesis in the middle of a pandemic as my world, my worldview, and my family life was altered forever... existential exhaustion consumed my all my waking hours. I would look at my childhood memories with wonder, thinking about how my own mother managed to keep a clean house, a full time job, and always have a wealth of love to share with me. Somehow... she was superhuman. But she also had help. She had my older sisters, 10 years of experience in parenting but the time she had me, and a large home in the country. I learned to cope. I found the pool at my gym to be the best babysitter. I wrote 100 pages about aquatic animal architecture while my kids swam, screaming, making best friends with other kids that they would never see again. I would be up at 3 AM, working on my citations. While they napped, I would put together my PowerPoint thesis defense. I would have to cut Zoom meetings short with my advisor as the children screamed in the background, self-righteous and furious that they didn't get their way. I would be in the car's passenger seat, laptop on my lap, checking a data frame, while my husband drove all of us to the kid's basketball game. I would modify plots on my laptop in my backyard in an Adirondack chair while the girls screamed their delight running through a sprinkler. Somedays, I wrote one word a day… for weeks at a time. Then, bursts of inspiration would produce 2000 word days. There were days when finishing my thesis felt impossible. And despite this Herculean effort that consumed almost all of my waking hours for nearly two years, I don't remember writing my thesis. I opened my thesis the other day, and it was like reading the words of a stranger—an impressive stranger, but a stranger all the same. I am proud of that stranger; they did a commendable job. Their insights are like a distant whisper somewhere in my past. I was never prone to keeping to a schedule, even before kids. I was a grad student; a fully embraced grad student who enjoyed a spur-of-the-moment department seminar with free pizza, 10 PM lab quitting time when all the stranglers trying to make experiments work would throw in the towel for a beer at Cambridge Common, or a shared bottle of whiskey with the international postdocs in the office around midnight. However, any semblance of predictability in my day-to-day life disappeared entirely once I became a parent. I also completely lost a sense of how to take care of myself. The daily multi-mile walks I would take with my standard poodle, Holly, disappeared as I became buried in laundry, cooking, and constant cleaning. Every surface of my house became sticky in a way I still can't rationally understand. My bathroom became a nightmare as I was now teaching children how to clean themselves, how to flush, how to wipe, how to wash their hands, turn off the facet, not use all the hot water… My diet became what the children would eat. Their germs resulted in my husband and I being sick for the first 12 months we had them. Always have the flu or a cold, which doesn't even include when we were infected with COVID. The COVID wine habit didn't help either. I gained around 30 lbs. I nearly dropped out of my Ph.D. program three separate times. 1) An email to my advisor telling him I was considering deleting it all and walking away. 2) A signed program withdrawal form is sitting on my desktop and uploaded in an email to the provost's office with my advisor cc'd, which just requires me to hit send. 3) My other Ph.D. advisor told me she did not feel she could advise me and encouraged me to drop out. Her motivations for such advice were probably entirely about her. But that advice stung. She soon after left the institution for another. I found myself and my body again by doing early morning hot yoga at 6 AM. I gave up alcohol for a year. What the instructor told me is that life brings you to the mat. I rolled my eyes, having no intention of joining a cult. But she was right. In doing yoga, I had to work directly with the parts of my body that were holding tension. My chronically tight hips, aching back, and deep breath work forced me to interact with the things that caused the stress. The tears running down my face would mix with the sweat on my body, and I was able to push through. Though exhausted after a yoga session, I was lighter, calmer, and able to breathe through the things, physical and mental, that would cause me pain. I could not successfully parent without him either. He is my teammate. I could not have completed my thesis without my husband’s support. He does this thing where all he has to do is look at my computer monitor and my code, which would not compile before, and then run without errors. An invaluable skill to anybody who has ever troubleshooted code. I genuinely can't imagine being there for him if he was going through the same torments that I endured trying to get my thesis written. He became a father he never had to be. His steadfastness humbles me, and I am in awe of his mental strength. He is a man without spirituality or religion and believes in only what can be proved. The strength he derives from within and the mental toughness he has cultivated come from somewhere within him, unsupported by a belief in a higher power or some predefined moral code. He seems to do the right thing if only because it is the right thing to do. I did become a Doctor of Philosophy in March of 2023 after defending my thesis in December of 2022. I am still a parent, and my schedule makes more sense. I wake up at a sane hour and don't work well into the night anymore. I don't have to troubleshoot code from the car or read papers in any quiet corner I can find. These children exist in my mind constantly, and regardless of what task I am intellectually engaged in, they are continually there.
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AuthorJordan is a proud auntie, a researcher, a scientist, an engineer, an accidental beaver expert, and desperately wants to 3D print more weird stuff. ArchivesCategories |