Happy Mother’s Day! This time of year I always think about how far I’ve come as a mom, and I think about my mom as well. My mother was a wonderful woman and writer, and she wrote a column for our local paper. Last year, I remembered her by sharing one of her articles about being a mom, and this year I’d like to do the same.
I found this article about the perks of being a parent, especially in the spring, appropriate. And I have added a few more of my own at the end.
This is the season of kites and bubbles — all in all, not a bad time of year to be on a first-name basis with some small fry.
In winter, even the most pleasant and cheerful child can be a — pain. All those buttons and zippers, boots, scarves, and gloves. All those runny noses. All of the things that small children want to do — like run wildly and shout and climb on things — become increasingly intolerable indoors, day after dreary day.
The small child wants to like winter, but it is really too much for him. Snowmen are really hard to build, all things considered, and sledding is a wet and tiring business. It is certainly of dubious fun value for the parents who end up pulling the sleds and pushing the snowballs.
But spring — ah, spring pleasures are simple. A 15-month-old can handle dandelion-blowing, puddle-splashing, and flower-sniffing. And it isn’t long before he can move right on to bubbles, kites, pinwheels, a riding toy of some sort. The days aren’t long enough or balmy enough to hold it all: Paper airplanes. Balloons. Soap boats. Maple seed whirlies. Swings. Teeter-totters. Sand boxes and dump trucks. Marbles.
Spring diversions seem especially hilarious for parents who put childhood well behind them before they got into the child-raising business themselves. Somehow it’s a little more fun to rediscover the delight of folding paper into an airplane and making it fly if you have, in fact, forgotten how to do it.
There’s no good reason that a genuine grown-up couldn’t saunter down to the drug store and buy a Snoopy Delta-wing kite and one lime-green jar of bubbles for themselves if they wanted to. You could always do a reverse of the drugstore scene in “Summer of 42” and throw in some hardcore adult items to distract the clerk. “Yeah, gimme a pint of Jack Daniels, some single-edge razors, a pack of unfiltered Camels, a Playboy and — .” You point at the counter display of novelties.
“Oh certainly, sir,” the clerk croons. “Oops, no price. Mabel, I need a price on the Mickey Mouse Magic Bubble Wand. It’s for the man in Aisle 3…”
A small, preferably smiling child just makes the whole transaction a little easier. A little more likely, certainly. The same child makes it socially acceptable to visit the zoo. The playground. The kids’ section of the library.
For many of today’s parents, it’s been a long while between rides down the big slide. On the whole, the economists and psychologists seem to think this is a good thing. In our 30s and 40s, we’re not only better able to buy Oshkosh, Fisher-Price and Gerry, we are also — the surveys insist — more patient, more “settled,” more diligent about such parental chores as insurance-buying and putting little caps on all of the electrical outlets.
The experts, though, tend to gloss over what a bumpy transition parenthood can be for these selfsame people, who, after all, have spent 10 or 15 years acquiring a taste for avocados and fine wines, sleeping late and going out on impulse. A person who has spent their 20s buying white couches and endless (unscratched and correctly sleeved) records will probably not find the realities of parenthood in their 30s or 40s one long, uproarious chuckle.
No matter what anybody tells you, it’s simply not all that easy to get used to starting the day watching Bozo’s buckets instead of “The Today Show.”
You do not automatically — or ever — lose a desire for eight unbroken hours of sleep.
And you don’t forget the days when you chose your favorite restaurants by criteria other than whether or not they gave you a crayon with your placemat.
Still, it is these parents — the ones who are simultaneously coping with their first children and first gray hair — who seem to enjoy the fringes the most. Like rediscovering the culinary pleasures of graham crackers and milk. PBJs. Popsicles.
In spring, the fringes pile up in a glorious fashion. There is something about going out on these first warm days, coatless and hatless, that returns all of us to our skinned-knee past. Getting a kite aloft, catching three bubbles on a wand — for the briefest, most shimmering of moments, listening to the satisfying sound of skate wheels against sidewalk: It’s a chance to roll back the odometer.
In spring, we get to laugh the giddy laugh of the child again. It’s a dizzying sensation. On a walk, jumping puddles, it’s hard to tell which reflection is which.
While being a parent isn’t always easy or fun, I agree with my mom that there are a lot of wonderful things parents get to enjoy. A few more of my favorite fun parent things:
- Playing board games and card games
- Watching Disney movies – with popcorn of course
- Reading children’s books, and reading every day
- Putting together puzzles
- Being silly and playful
- Building things with Legos and Magnatiles
- Hanging out and playing at the mall
- Watching planes fly above our house and guessing what they are
I love that Buddy gives me an excuse to work less and play more. I’m so grateful that I get to be Buddy’s mom! What are your favorite childhood experiences to revisit? Please share your ideas in the comment section.
