Spoiled

 

This past weekend was a hard one for me-as-a-mommy. I don’t know if it was the constant rain, or that the kids were both getting over illnesses, or just the fact that I haven’t had twelve seconds to myself in, oh, about 15 months (I exaggerate) – but I spent the whole weekend wishing I had a nanny. Or a decompression chamber. Or at least a set of earplugs.

But at the same time, I realized how very lucky I am. No, I don’t mean lucky because I have two (mostly) healthy, bright, funny, sweet kids, although that’s certainly true. (On Sunday night, when Phoebe was finally back to her old self, I said to Chris, “I’m glad she’s feeling better. I was beginning to wonder who took my baby.” Mallory said, “Who cooked the baby?”) I’m lucky because I have help. My inlaws live exactly twelve minutes away, and although sometimes I joke and say that’s twelve minutes too close, the truth is, I don’t know what I’d do without them there. On Friday night when I thought I couldn’t take another minute of my demanding 4-year-old and my whiny 1-year-old, I was able to leave them both with the inlaws and go out for a quick bite and a trip to the grocery store with Chris. On Sunday, we were invited over there for dinner and I was able to relax for a bit while Mama and Papa gave the girls a bath. I’m so spoiled in this regard. Two of my siblings are single parents, and my other sister (I don’t know why I’m being mysterious here – I mean Aimee) lived far away from family when her second baby was born. I don’t know how they do it, or did it. I mean, I know that I, too, could manage on my own if I really had to, but man, I am so glad I don’t have to.

That makes me feel guilty, sometimes – that maybe if I were a better mother I wouldn’t get so overwhelmed. But speaking anthropologically, I’m perfectly normal. (Aren’t you glad to hear that? I’m sure you were worried.) I read a fascinating book last year called Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection. It was a multi-species examination of the evolutionary aspects of motherhood and infanthood, and the bottom line is that infants of all species have had to develop specific traits to encourage their parents to take care of them, and that mothers have to make certain decisions about whether any particular offspring is worth the investment of care -- for example, human babies tend to be born fatter than they strictly have to be, because parents assume that fat equals healthy, and thus more likely to survive, and thus more worth the time and effort it takes to raise them.

Also, different species have vastly different levels of investment, depending on how fast their infants develop. Baby mice, and kittens and puppies, are born completely helpless, but they mature really fast and leave the next at seven days, or ten weeks. Human babies are also completely helpless (and in fact are born about three months before they’re ready – mothers have evolved to deliver earlier because our brains have gotten so big – that’s why newborn babies are so twitchy and squally and generally unsociable – they really should have more time in the womb) and stay helpless for a really, really long time. Really long. Can we say really? And, to get to the point I began so very long ago, in other primate species (monkeys, chimps) and in the “primitive” human societies that anthropologists have been able to study, mothers and fathers are very, very rarely left to carry the full brunt of parenthood by themselves. These mothers, after all, have to continue to be productive members of their tribe, and to gather food and build nests and arrange for protection and so forth, and they can’t do that effectively while providing 100 percent of their infants’ care. So they are surrounded by “allomothers” – grandmothers, aunts, younger females – who help out with the babies and with the daily tasks of survival. It really does take a village; we’re not supposed to have to do it all alone.

I guess knowing that doesn’t particularly make it any easier when you have a bad day with your kids, but hey, there it is, for whatever it’s worth.

And I will add that it’s not only for selfish reasons that I’m glad my inlaws live so close – I’m also glad that Mallory and Phoebe know that there are other people who love them and can take care of them. My only wish is that we lived closer, or at least equi-distant, from MY parents, so they could get to know them better (and so my inlaws could catch a break too!).

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ART for the Day
You’re going to think I’m making this up but it’s really true. Mallory loves to write letters, by which I mean, she dictates a note to me, folds the paper up in an envelope, and puts it in the mailbox, usually with a Sesame Street sticker affixed. (Mostly I remember to fetch them out of the mailbox, but not always, which means that our mailperson must think we’re a bit nuts.) The other day she dictated thus: “Always remember to write this: ‘Dear Mama and Papa, here is a candle for you in case your lights run out, and always remember that. Love Mallory.’ The first ‘always remember’ is for you so you’ll remember what to write, and the second ‘always remember’ is for them, so they don’t forget about the candle.’ ” Did you get all that?