I have the benefit of having sisters who are 9.5, 8.5, and 7.5 years older than me. When I was in my twenties they used to say "just wait until you are in your thirties. When you're in your thirties, everything makes a lot more sense. You just get a lot smarter in your thirties." I believe this is a lie. Kind of like when they told me it was safe to ride on handlebars.
I'm just as confused, if not more so, in my thirties. Maybe I'm just not thirty enough? Maybe they were referring to the mid to late thirties?
When I was in my twenties, I was raising small children. There wasn't a lot of time for questions. I just settled into the endless misery of diaper changing, potty training, pacifier confiscating. I just lived as best I could, stumbled, and fell more times than I care to count.
But now, in my thirties, I have little girls who aren't so little anymore, stepkids who made it (mostly) through their teenage years. I have time to ask the questions I never had the time to ask in my twenties. And I'm clueless as to what the answers are. I remember being a teenager and watching my mom fill out her taxes in the late hours of April 15. Surrounded by paperwork, smoking cigarettes by the handful as she sat at the dining room table, cursing eloquently (something my whole family really excels at. It's our legacy.) I remember thinking I will never understand taxes. I cannot accomplish adulthood, because taxes will always be beyond me.
Teenage self, I would look back and say, No worries. You will be a teacher and a writer! You will never make enough money not to get the free turbo tax edition. PROBLEM SOLVED. Now take off that blue eyeshadow, and, for God's sake, stop perming your hair. And step away from the boys. They will be around in a few years, and that thing in their pants will not have changed.
A lot of my friends are childless. Some of them have entered into the great debate of the late 20s-early 30s and beyond: Should I have children? To them I say DO IT! Or, you know, don't. Either way. Same diff. I'm not exactly in the position to offer advice. Very soon after I became a full adult in American society, able to vote (which I didn't) and buy alcohol (which I did!), I used my great power to A. get drunk and B. get pregnant. I never debated if I should have children. I guess I must have debated whether to not have children, but not really. I was pregnant. Children (or at least child) I would have.
My children made my life (children I would have. Turns out I didn't learn my lesson the first time, because two years later I had another one. I have no idea how that happened). But I was the kind of young woman who would not live for myself. I wouldn't take life by the balls and shake it. I would not charge into my future. I kind of just hung out and hoped my future would ask me to dance. But for my daughters, I would charge. I made shit happen. Because I needed my little girls to believe in me as the fearless woman warrior (literally. My oldest daughter's name means "daughter of the warrior" in Gaelic). So, I became, on the surface, a woman warrior (inside I was still the quivering teenager waiting for life to teach me how to get funky, but that's another story).
My children saved me. But who knows, had I not had children, if I wouldn't have (eventually) saved myself. It might have been kind of cool to see who I would have been if I hadn't had children.
OK, if I'm gong to be 100% honest (which I never am, so this is a rare treat), I know I would be a better parent if I had waited til, say, now..no now, wait...NOW to have children. I don't think I'd sweat the small stuff so much. I mean, I knew intellectually in my twenties that everybody goes to kindergarten potty trained, but I didn't believe it in my heart. I knew in my brain that my kids would learn to read, you know, eventually. But I didn't believe it. I knew that laughter and joy is a much better diet for little kids than anxiety and fear. But I didn't believe it. But it's hard to tell if it's age or going through the fire that taught me all this. Or maybe a combination of both.
I'm in the enviable position of being a step-grandma. Yeah, thanks for that. Grandma at thirty. Except, I'm a step-grandma, so it doesn't count, just so we're clear. I'm actually not a grandma at all. So I won't think it's funny if you call me Grandma. She has a grandma. It's his ex-wife. I'm just a nice, pretty, very young lady who loves her a lot and buys her toys and takes her on cool vacations. Are we clear? OK, if we're clear. The point is, I feel no (or next to no) anxiety regarding this little kid. She's cute. She's two. She's smart. She likes books. She's mostly potty-trained, except when she pees on my stairs. Sometimes she throws a little temper tantrum, but it doesn't make my nerve endings hum or make me believe I am the worst step-grandma (again-- not a grandma at all. As a matter of fact, let's not even use the g-word. Let's just call me "lady") in the world. I just think she's tired, she's two, and maybe she's a little pissed off about being two, which, if you really think about it, probably sucks quite a bit. I think she'll turn out great.
I wonder if this perspective comes with age, experience, or just the knowledge that, in the end, it's not really my problem. I'm just mostly a spectator in this game. I'm the fan in the fourth row who offers coaching advice and occasionally stands up to do the wave in between beers and hot dogs. It's her parents who have to live with the crushing guilt every time she cries. Ha ha suckers. I told you to use condoms.
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