What no parenting book will ever tell you

A friend of mine is thirty-six. She lives in the San Francisco area in a lovely craftsman style home with her husband and some cats. She teaches composition at a community college. She is all at once brilliant, kind, and pretty. She is fence sitting on the issue of having children, if at all. She doesn't feel ready.

Part of me wants to take her by the hand and show her the way. But how can I show her, really? That children are life's lesson. The lesson. That children, despite drippy diapers, late night teething, and Kindergarten homework, teach you more than any college degree, book, or library of books? The secret is this:

Nothing. Not Dr. Spock, Dr. Sears, or Dr. Phil. No class, no course, no online training. No one is ever ready for this thing called parenting. Whether you're eighteen, twenty-nine or forty-one, it doesn't matter. It could be compared to cliff diving. Does someone standing on the edge of a cliff, churning waves and unknown depths below, and nothing to protect them but a Speedo, think rationally? No. It's an emotional leap, unthinking.

Parenting is the same. If we thought about it too much, lingering on the pay-outs versus the income, realizing our account would always be empty on some level, would we ever do it? Probably not. My children are joy: constant, miraculous joy. Like my two-year old son. Last week he stopped, mid-bite and laughed. He put down his peanut butter and blackberry jam sandwich and moved his chair closer to the window where the sun was playing through our bamboo shades. He turned his hand this way and that, amazed, giggling at the sun's criss-cross patterns like a tattoo on his skin. He was thrilled, overjoyed at this, the sun's shadow. It was a joy watching him. My son.

My children, without knowing, are patience; raising them requires it. I've worn a scarlet letter “P” for the last seven years since our oldest daughter was born. Why? Because I'm exactly the opposite (impatient). And I will wear that scarlet letter many more years, hopefully gaining patience in time.

My children are discipline: Not for them, for me. Because having children means regular meal times, bath times, and chores. Without my kids, I'd eat chocolate for every meal. And I wouldn't eat at a table at all. The discipline I'm learning through parenting is regularity, a quiet clock ticking away in our lives. It is also a quiet comfort. I know my children will get black trampoline grime on their shins and knees today but I also know that tonight we'll wash it off in soap suds and stories. And the same will happen again tomorrow and the next day.

My children are forgiveness: When I shriek, they run. But just as quickly they find their way back to me. They hug me with stripey crayoned stick drawings overflowing with flowers and hearts drawn where our real hearts would be. They hug me with the word, “Mama” and a pleading look, “I need you. No one else will do.”

There's a story Bill Cosby used to share about taking your bottom lip and pulling it over your head. It was funny stuff. But consider this: In parenting, instead of your lip, take your heart and wrap it around the world.Because where ever your children go, there, too, is your heart. Words of advice like these may enter you on some level, maybe sticking, maybe not.

I'll speak for myself: Before having children I was a blockhead; snarky, all knowing, with tidy answers for life's questions. No parenting advice ever reached me. It was like parenting was some strange club and I didn't hold a members' card.

But now I do. In living through spit up, fit throwing, and first-day-of-school jitters, I've found answers where I would never have looked before. In holding my seven-year old daughter's face in my hands, her blue eyes mirroring mine and seeing a majesty greater than mountains. In tracing our names in beach sand with my five-year-old twins, and seeing them leap in excitement as the waves crash around their feet, washing the letters away. In giving my two-year-old son my index finger to hold as we walk down our tiled hallway, my one step to his two.

Any rational mind wouldn't see truth or life's answers in a girl's eyes, sea soaked children, or in a toddler's hands. But a parent would. A parent sees the quiet truths that the rest of the world, childless, does not.

If you want a tidy life without children sporting broken bones, multiple crowns on rotten teeth, or peed-pants from ignoring a too-full bladder at a birthday party, that's OK. Another word of warning: Kids have a knack for bringing home stray dogs, lizards, or birds. Keep in mind my oldest child is seven; I'm waiting for the day she brings home a stray boyfriend. If you prefer plants and cats as best friends, don't have kids. If you'd rather skip lessons so deep, so moving, that no monk, saint, or poet can express them in words, don't have kids.

Because having children is not only life's question, but life's answer. Children will push you to grow. It is honest, painful work. True, you may lose yourself in bearing children, but in raising them, you find yourself again. And realize you are somehow more. You are smoother in places that used to be rough. And that is good.

And me? I kill most plants, plus, I'm allergic to cats. I'm just glad my kids are around to eat all the brownie edges and watermelon.

(I hate watermelon.)

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guest post submission by Terresa of The Chocolate Chip Waffle.


Photo by Todd Baker