"Mazagines"
Backstory, Part 2
My husband and I got married relatively young. We had known one another since we were kids, and started dating in high school. He proposed the summer after our first year of college, and we got married the following one. Both of us were still paying for school. I took classes in the evenings at the community college, and he was an engineering student working toward his Bachelors of Science at MSU. I worked full time to pay the bills, but we had to be very careful with our cash; there wasn’t much extra. We didn’t buy name brands, or pay for cable TV, or buy magazines.
There also wasn’t much “free” time. Between work, housework and school, pretty much every minute was occupied. But I was okay with that, because I was sure that just over that college mountain was a vast open field of leisure time. I just had to work hard to get there.
When we had been married for a little over a year and half we learned that we were expecting our first baby. This would be the first grandchild on my side of the family and the second (and first girl) on his side. We were amply spoiled with showers and gifts and advice. No need went un-met, but we still had to be careful with our cash. My husband got his degree and went to work. The plan was for me to keep working until she was born, and then stay home.
I was the secretary for the leasing office of our local shopping mall. I would wake up every morning and drag my tired self out of bed in time to get just “ready” enough to look like a functioning adult. I would leave the house at 7:50 to arrive at my desk by 8:30. I had an hour-long lunch break that I would usually kill sitting in the book store in the mall. Generally, I would spend the hour looking at crafting and home decor magazines. They were something that I enjoyed, but couldn’t really justify the expense of. Instead I would flip through their pages dreaming of the day I could stay home and make my house look like something from the tour of homes. Then I would put them back on the rack and go back to my desk.
Each evening, after a half hour drive home, I’d whip up a simple dinner for two, and do housework until bedtime. Being pregnant meant that I was perpetually exhausted and often nauseous. Cleaning sometimes fell behind, and there were nights where grocery shopping was about all I could manage. Non-perishables would be sitting in bags when I left for work the next morning. But it was okay. My field of leisure time was just around the corner.
In the meantime, life got even busier with a baby arrival to prepare for. We moved from our one-bedroom apartment to a rental house a few months before she was due, and it seemed like there was simply NEVER enough time to get everything done. Nights got later, mornings got early, and lunches filled up with small tasks that I could take along to work. Lunch dates with my magazines were replaced by making doctor’s appointments and grocery lists, and paying bills. Two hands and 24 hours in a day just weren’t enough. All the while I knew, though, that I would be staying home for good once she was there, and that thought of not having to go to the office everyday and give a company the time of mine that they owned was what kept me going. Only a few more weeks until I would have a baby in my arms and be able to have time to do what I wanted!
I would daydream of sitting and rocking a sleeping baby, and reading. I even splurged and bought a magazine subscription, and started setting them all aside for after my delivery. I didn’t even open a single one of them, just piled them neatly up for when I would surely have hours of time to read and craft and cook… My mental image glowed with sunlight and freedom and sweet smelling baby-ness snuggled in my lap. I started the subscription months early, because I wanted to make sure I had plenty of them waiting to read while I was nursing and rocking. Then I bought parenting books for the remainder of the waiting time, and I read those through like they were the Bible.
I took notes, highlighted parts, marked pages, bought the things, prepped the home… The nursery was set, with a crib and changing table, a rocking chair and a spare bed. There was a humidifier to keep the air comfortable, a baby monitor that would tell us if her heartbeat stopped, a thermometer to gauge the temperature of the room, and a fully stocked supply of diapers, wipes, and the tiniest little socks you’ve ever seen. The rest of the house matched. The basinet was clean and covered to keep dust off while we waited. The play-pen with the infant insert was set up. The swing, bouncy seat, high-chair (that wouldn’t get used for many months) were all ready. The stroller and car seat had been for test drives. And every possible baby-proofing measure was in place.
I even thought that ahead to take off the two weeks before my due-date and get some much needed rest. I would make sure I had a little free time. Friday, November 11th was scheduled to be my last day of work. I couldn’t wait. I would probably even let myself get started on one of those magazines. .
If you had asked me on November 9th how prepared I was for my first child I would have smiled broadly and replied, with confidence, that I was as ready as I could be. And this was, I suppose, true, because motherhood is one of those lessons that you just have to learn the hard way, and that’s all there is to it. True as it was, I believed it on a very unrealistic level. Sure, I was as ready as I could be. Which was basically not at all. I was the picture of naivete, my friends.
November 9th started like any other work day, and ended in the labor and delivery ward, with the hope of two weeks of free time dying a slow and painful death. The following day we welcomed our first daughter into the world, and simultaneously unlocked an entire universe of fear and inexperience that I hadn’t even known existed. Life was like one of those video games where the parts of the world that you haven’t earned access to yet are covered under cute little clouds. Only, when they cut that cord and her screaming blew the clouds away, it wasn’t a new little square of game-land, with little rocks to clear and treasurer boxes to open. It was the vast expanse of Mordor, filled with flashing red question marks.
We spent a few extra hours in the hospital with her, making sure her bilirubin levels were okay, and that she would eat well and could poop (she could, plenty). When we couldn’t find any more excuses to stay in their comfortable, safe little baby palace with room service we were forced to take that tiny, helpless pink creature out into the big scary world. It was positively horrifying. I found myself wondering who on earth thought it was a good idea to let me procreate. Where were the grown-ups? I was 22 and had been adulting just fine for four years, but I was NOT ready for this. My husband was even more terrified. I’ve never seen him drive more carefully.
We managed to get her home in one piece and tucked in comfortably in the living room. Then we just stared at her for a while wondering if there were unknown ways of making babies self-destruct. Finally I went and put away the hospital things and then fed her, and made dinner and then fed her, and washed clothes and fed her and changed her and bounced her screaming self around for a few hours and tried to sleep, and then fed her...
This pattern continued for a few weeks, or months, it was really a thick gray fog for a while. Some days I managed to get fully dressed and put on makeup. I remember picking up a curling iron one day and having a flashback to times when that even made sense. Other days I forgot to eat. There was no “free” time.
When she was six months old my husband took a new job and we moved a state away. I moved the untouched pile of magazines with us, still hopeful. The move was a busy time of packing and unpacking with a cranky baby. That was also the week that she got her very first fever. I was terrified and lost; trying to find the new pediatrician with a MapQuest printout and a screaming baby, but I had learned a few things already. For one, I didn’t even bother with half of the baby-proofing gadgets in the new place. She was barely mobile and all of that was horizontal, and there simply wasn’t time. There was never enough time, even for necessary things like sleep.
She grew to be a very active and very strong-willed child who barely ever slept. She was way too smart for her own good, and definitely too smart for my good. I did baby-proof as she grew. It didn’t work. She could pull the outlet covers out better than I could, and managed to squeeze an arm into the sink cabinet and eat some cleaning supplies. There was a cabinet lock preventing it from opening more than two inches. I was standing over her washing dishes. It took her all of 20 seconds. Turns out that even moms who have read every parenting book they could find still get sent demeaning pamphlets after calling Poison Control. She was fine. I was frazzled.
A couple years and pink lines later her little sister arrived. I assumed that I could apply the previously gained parenting knowledge to this human and do better. Turns out only about half of it applied. I thought that maybe they would entertain one another and I could start on those magazines. LOL, yeah….
My second seemed like an angel, at first, by comparison. She slept. She didn’t cry as often. She grew up tagging along behind her sister, and learning all of the tricks to drive me crazy. That kid could empty every cabinet and drawer in a room in under a minute, I swear.
We moved to a bigger rental. I moved my pile of magazines along, still unopened. Laundry for four was somehow about ten times as much as laundry for two had been. Dishes were endless. I was always behind on cleaning. I couldn’t figure out where all the free-time I had planned had disappeared to.
Long before we planned for her, the third made her existence known, and how. Number Three about did me in before she even showed up. I remember days of carrying a bucket from my bed to round up the three and one year olds in the morning, put them on a blanket with a pile of Cheerios, turn on Dora, and sit on the couch hoping not to throw up or fall asleep, lest they hurt themselves. That’s when my chronic migraines started. I was told that caffeine might help. I started drinking coffee.
We bought our first house while I was pregnant with her. The fam was growing and the price was right. The memory of it is fuzzy, though, and smells of cleaners. I moved the magazines again, probably more out of habit this time. I’m actually not entirely sure how we got that more done, but we did. I was able to paint my own home for the first time, and that made nursery preparations so much more fun, in spite of endless sickness.
My third-born was the cutest little curly-headed trouble-maker ever, right from the start. She crawled before the others, and walked before the others. She could open the fridge before her first birthday and liked to carry raw eggs around. And right about then there were two more pink lines.
By this point you’re probably thinking one of several things, and I guarantee I’ve heard them all. Yes, we know how babies are made. Yes, we wanted a big family. Yes, that’s a lot of girls. No, I don’t “wish” I had a boy. My husband is a brave and able sailor on the estrogen ocean, and the very best father my girls could ask for. And, if I could go back and do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. Except, I might not waste as much time with parenting books.
By this time we had completely changed as adult humans. We said “potty” instead of “bathroom”, even to other adults. We used terms that our parents had - “I’m just going to rest my eyes…- and used terms that our kids had coined. Most of those were mis-pronounced words that we thought were adorable. We still say “stunk” (skunk), “sketti” (spaghetti), and “mazagine” (magazine). Kids change you, man.
My fourth was the perfect completion of our family. She was sweet as pie, and broke all of the norms. I literally never knew what she was about to do or say next. It was terrifying. There are stories there, so many stories… I’ll get to them later, I promise.
When she was five we bought our second home. It was the one we’d been dreaming of, we just didn’t know which one it was going to be yet and we were looking in the wrong places. We kept searching for a house that was ready for us; that didn’t need a lot of work. It took a little divine intervention to show us that the place we wanted most was hiding under several layers of age and filth, and needed a bit of restoration. To make it perfect for us was going to take some hard work and time. And with my youngest about to go off to school I was going to have more of those, I thought.
We’d come a long way from our one-bedroom rental where we first learned we were expecting, when all of our belongings could fit in the back of a couple of pickups. This time it took the biggest moving truck we could rent, and then some. The infant-era was over for us, and during the packing I found myself tossing out a lot of baby stuff, and unused things. The magazine pile was one of them. I considered flipping through a few pages, but it occurred to me that the styles were more than a decade old and honestly, I just didn’t have the time. They all went into the trash bag.
That was six years ago. The house has been great. Barring unforeseen circumstances I would be happy to live the rest of my life here. Motherhood has been even better. We’re well past the little-kids stage now. The teen years have been pretty wild. Nothing in the parenting books could have possibly prepared me for it. Advice from other parents did help along the way, as much as it could. Everyone tells you that it’s “really hard.” That didn’t scare me; hard is okay with me, and I was ready for it. What I wasn’t ready for is how hard it is on them. Parenting may be tough but growing up is, too. Watching my kids go through the hard stuff has been the most difficult part.
Even then it’s all worth it. In all the tough moments I know how blessed I am to be able to walk beside them through it. The ups, the downs, the victories and the tears are worth every effort and every moment spent.
I have learned by now that there is no such thing as “free” time. Time is very expensive; priceless, even. There are no refunds on days, there are no banks to borrow more hours, there is no amount of money I would take to give up these years. They are hard, and exhausting, but I wouldn’t change it for the world, or any stack of magazines.
My oldest is a few months from being a senior in high school. Though still on the horizon, another new era is looming closer, and I know just how fast it will come. And I know that I won’t be entirely ready for it when it gets here. People keep warning about “empty nesting” pains, and asking me what I plan to do with my “free” time. I don’t expect to find any of that, and I don’t even want to anymore. But just in case, when the time comes, I think I’ll get a “mazagine” subscription.