So recently I’ve been thinking a lot about how we quantify the events of our lives, categorizing them and placing them into chunks of length, but not necessarily understanding or caring about the amount of energy or passion or meaning we put on the same activities. I’ve been reading articles and blog posts about the work week for an academic and not taking each moment. Numbers matter to us. We count the amount of steps we take in a day or the amount of miles we run or how long we are at work or sleep or at work sleeping. I’m guilty of this, too. I love running on the treadmill so I can give myself incentive and play the number games. I only have 3 minutes, 22 seconds to go! I can do this! It’s much better than running aimlessly around on a street with the unpredictable stones and cracks and hills.
One of the things that really bugs me about embarking on this new parenting gig very soon is the nagging piece of advice, the same piece that the blogger talked about in her no carpe diem post. It’ll go by so fast. So after it “goes by,” this means I’ll have an 18 year old, or a college graduate? After it “goes by,” I’ll be old.
So far, witnessing pregnancy as a non-biological mother, as the woman who is not pregnant (but not the father or husband), has been, in one word – long. First, we had to map the medical and legal terrains of even trying to get pregnant, and that process happened back in 2012. Then we took a break, I finished up my Phd, got the full time gig, and we started trying. We had to navigate a heteronormative medical system with awkward conversations and inseminations. The system assumed we were an infertile heterosexual couple. Then we finally got pregnant, and found out on Christmas morning. A time-stamped memory. It was also pretty cliche. As I began to notice the falling leaves today while I was mowing the lawn, I realized that Amber has been pregnant for a really long time. 40 weeks is really 10 months if you quantify a month by 4 weeks. 10 months is a really long fucking time.
I’m going to be 35 in October, and I’m happy to say I’m the healthiest I’ve ever been in my life. I’m proud to say that this journey has also been a long one: six years and counting. If you do the math, that means I’ve only lost about 12 pounds a year, or one pound a month. That’s a long ass journey, with a lot of energy and passion, but we don’t really put as much weight into that (no pun intended). It took me six years, not six months, and I’m glad it took that long. Along the way, I grew up. I removed the physical and emotional baggage I was carrying around. It didn’t happen with a 1 hour surgery or a pill I could take for a few months and be done with it. It happened with grit and a lot of research and tears and reaching into the center of myself. You can’t put a time-stamp on that shit.
Part of being a parent is realizing that you are mortal. The next generation is coming, and this new human will be part of a time in history that you won’t be. That your time and length and numbers are going to end. Once I realized what we had done, that we were bringing a new human into the world, I had a bit of an existential crisis. Bringing new energy, new life into the world reminded me of when I could feel the life, the energy leave when I was in the room when my father died. I remember I couldn’t look at his face as he was taking his last breaths. I looked at the numbers for evidence that it was in fact – time. Blood pressure numbers. Heart rate. The lines and the numbers I didn’t know what they meant. It was comforting. Then, the moment he was gone, I went over and felt his arm. It was already cold and stiff. He was gone. I don’t remember what time it was.
Now that we are bringing new energy into the world, part of me feels like I’m handing off the baton to the new warriors for social justice (hopefully. no guarantees). Yes, that sounds so warm and fuzzy, but to me, it was a sense of loss. But not grieving that I wasn’t the new, young generation. I already know that I’m, at heart, a 90’s grunge teen who listened to the Wallflowers and The Smashing Pumpkins when I was coming of age. I definitely don’t like the new fashion of the punk-80’s-meets-technology of the post-millenials. And I don’t want to be (that) young. I’ve been teaching college kids for the last 8 years, so in some way, I’ve already been around and educating the next generation.
But having a kid isn’t just about educating the next generation. It’s about creating them. And leaving our legacy to them. Leaving. There is a sense of grief and awareness that your own body will one day be stiff and cold. It will be extinct. But maybe our energy and passion won’t. And that’s a paradigm shift. Maybe it’s not about counting down the days, or calculating a due date, or figuring out the amount of miles run or races ran or cities traveled or years married. Energy and passion are coexisting with time, but our goals and values are much more comfortable with the latter. It’s much harder to feel or be our goals or values. That’s going to be my challenge as a parent – not to focus on what Bubbles’ height/weight is or her percentile or how many steps she took or how many pieces of avocado she ate, but rather what her passion and energy will do for herself, and for the rest of the world. In that order. Time lies.
