I recently had dinner with a single friend of mine, and when we exchanged our "what's new with you?"s, I said, "Not much, just dealing with the kids," while she informed me that she had just completed her first marathon. "Congratulations! WOW!" I replied.
Then it struck me: what's so impressive about a marathon? A marathon ENDS. Twenty-six miles, and you're done. If you are tired one day, you can skip your 10-mile practice run. Parenting never stops. Tired? Grumpy? Got the flu? Too bad, you still have to give your kids their bath and make them dinner.
Yet nobody says, "Congratulations! WOW!" when you say you're a mother or a father. You don't get a t-shirt or a free power bar or people passing out water all along the way. Nobody sponsors you for every child you raise (OK, maybe the grandparents do); there is no Team-In-Training program for how to parent.
People do it every day, every minute of every day. But it's not celebrated as an achievement. Nobody answers the question, "What's new with you?" with "My kid is six this year and I helped to get her there." What an accomplishment to bring a child into the world and teach him or her how to be a good person.
Over the holidays, I met someone at a party who told me excitedly that he and his wife were planning to spend New Year's Eve in Las Vegas. "We can finally afford it now that we've put the last of our four kids through college," he said nonchalantly, to which I replied, "Congratulations! WOW!"
2 comments:
Oh yeah, it never ever ends. Even when they are out their own and you think are done paying for them, the worry is always there for them about something like a 50 pound watermelon stuck in your gut.
Hmm, that's true. I never thought about it that way. Good work, Mommy!
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