Parenting

I think nearly all parents have moments where the stars align, the kid is an angel, the house is clean, the hugs are free-flowing, and we believe our kid is the most amazing kid ever to grace the earth. I grasp on to those moments fervently as a measure of my parenting when there’s shit everywhere, the kid just dumped milk on her head while dropping f-bombs, and I’m the asshole who says things like “if you lock that door again, so help me, I will spank your ass”.

When H started preschool, I was a ball of nerves, even though I’m 30 feet from her classroom the entire time she’s there. My stream of consciousness on the first day went something like this: What if they don’t recognize her blood sugar is low until it’s too late and I have to try to figure out how to use that fucking Glucagon pen and I do it wrong and she dies right there on the floor? What if (because I packed peanut butter celery for snack that day) she touches the girl in her class with the peanut allergy and I am responsible for killing someone else’s kid? What if she hates school and I went through all this for nothing and then I have to find another, expensive, useless nanny? What if I forgot to turn off the coffee and I burn the house down? Shit, I need sleep.

Every day, she is the kid who takes barely a second to wave goodbye before running into her classroom. She hugs everyone in her class before she leaves nearly every day, including her teacher. Sometimes she remembers to hug me when I pick her up.

On days when they have special snacks, like cupcakes for birthday, I come into her classroom and give her insulin so she can enjoy a cupcake like a “normal” kid. And she says “thank you, mommy”. Today someone brought apples and I gave permission for her to have one with everyone else. Three of the kids in her class asked if they could watch while I gave her the shot. One told me that she screams and cries at the doctor when she has to have shots. My daughter looked at her and said, “I get 5 every day because I have the diabetes” and she smiled at me and said “thanks, mommy”.

I try to remember moments like these when her A1C is too high (which obviously means I’m a complete failure as a parent). Or when she shows up at school with eggs in her hair. Or when I put her pants on backward. Or when I’m just too fucking tired after dinner to give her a bath. Or, or, or. I fail every day. We all do, I guess – some big, some small. But then I remember the “thank you, mommy” I get after nearly every shot, every day. I remember yesterday’s “thank you for juice last night” when I had to wake her up at 2 am because she was low. The “I missed you while you were sleeping” I get every morning. I am constantly asking myself, “She is a genuinely happy child so I must not be totally fucking it up, right? Right?!”

Mind you, I am not suggesting that her happiness, her smiles, her general fabulousness, is all because of me. It takes a village. Rather, I often think it is for me – as if she somehow understands how harshly I judge myself and wants to help.

My mom always used to say, “There is always going to be someone better than you and there is always going to be someone worse than you – at everything”. Because I’m somewhat of an overachiever, I lie to myself and say she was full of shit and that I can and will be the best parent in the history of parenting. But I’m not and I never will be. Because who the hell is qualified to judge that? I suppose my daughter. And she looks at me as though she thinks I am the best mom in the history of moms and she is the only judge about which I care.

My point is this: we are all going to fuck our kids up. Somehow. We just have to hope it’s a small fuck-up and not a million-dollars-in-therapy-fuck-up. And the more time we spend dwelling on the mundane, insignificant failures, the less time we have left to focus on the really amazing stuff.

Oh, and this: If there is such a thing as karma, I did something really fucking great in my last life to get this kid.