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Cockiness is the biggest hazard of parenting.
You start to pick up a swagger with your first kid. For me, my sweet
spot was when the Diva hit 18 months. I thought I could handle all kids,
based on how well it was going with her at that point. There were
challenges, sure, and moments when I thought about running away to join
the circus. Largely, though, I thought I could suddenly handle any
child based on my experiences with this one.
I have two words for you – "pride" is the second word. You can guess the
first.
The details of how baby number two is different from baby number one
really aren’t that important. What’s remarkable is my response, which
is always complete surprise that two kids could be different from each
other. You’d think I’d learn. By now, I should know that one is not going to
be a carbon copy of the other – and yet each and every time the Boy
insists on acting like an independent person, I am flabbergasted.
Take haircuts. The Diva is of the opinion that they are the most fun
activity in the known universe. She loves them. There was a brief
period when I’d take her for a haircut every other week, simply because
her hair grows remarkably quickly and she found getting it cut to be
such a thrill. We’ve had to stop, sadly. Now that she’s decided that a) she is a
princess and b) princesses have hair down to their toes, she doesn’t
want to lose a precious centimeter of her coiffure. Still, she sighs
wistfully when we pass “the haircut store.” The Boy is her polar opposite. Soon he will have hair down to his toes
simply because it is too traumatic to have it cut. There is wailing.
There are recriminations. And that’s just from the stylist.
What amazes me isn’t that they’re different but the fact that I forget
that they are different. I can’t quite tell if it is because I have
achieved a perfect Zen mind, where I approach each experience with
childlike wonder, or if I have simply grown so addled that I can’t
remember anything for more than a few seconds. Smart money should be
wagered on the latter, I suspect.
This forgetfulness doesn’t just apply to my own children. I
continuously assume that all children on the planet are just like my
firstborn. An example, picked from a sadly abundant supply of examples:
I was meeting two fellow writers at a restaurant. Due to a childcare
gap, one of my lunch dates had to bring her kid, who is about the same
age as the Diva. Due to a confluence of bad directions and full parking
spaces, I was late enough that I got there after everyone had ordered.
When I sat down, I noticed that all of those single-serve bricks of
jelly on the table were in front of me. I also noticed that the kid was
starting to get antsy, as so many kids do during the gap between
ordering and eating. So I did what I would do for the Diva. I handed
him the jelly packets with the assumption that he was going to build
extravagant towers and then knock them down, which is what she does.
Instead, his eyes grew to the size of CDs. He immediately ripped the
foil off of one of them and slurped down the contents. And did the same
with the second one. And the third. His mom’s expression would have turned lesser folk to stone, had it
been able to cut through the shield of my remarkable surprise. What I’d
missed while I was circling the block for the sixth time was the
argument the two had had over the jelly, which the kid loves but that
mom hates for him to have because it makes him more hyper than a
well-rested weasel. Enter me. I had no idea that he would eat them, forgetting that my kid
doesn’t actually eat much of anything and that other kids do,
especially when those things consist mostly of high-fructose corn
syrup. I’d also completely forgotten the cardinal rule of kids: always
ask a parent before you hand them anything, no matter how benign the
anything may seem. I’d never make the same assumption about adults. Just because I have a
fondness for America’s Next Top Model doesn’t mean that every single
person on the planet does. And vice versa – I still don’t understand
the appeal of professional wrestling or Dan Brown books or coconut
desserts. Yet I’m content to live and let live with others who may not
share my tastes. My assumptions about anyone under four-feet tall aren’t unshakeable,
thankfully. But the Diva seems to have set my brain’s default setting
for all kid behavior. The first step to solving the problem is
admitting that you have one, right?
About the Author:
Adrienne Martini has been a theatre technician, apprentice
massage therapist, bookstore bookkeeper and pizza joint waitress. Eventually,
someone started paying her for her words and an editorial mercenary was
born. She has written theatre reviews and features for the Austin
Chronicle, blurbs about tofurkey and bottled water for Cooking Light and
a piece about knitting summer camp for Interweave Knits. She is
a former editor for Knoxville, Tennessee's Metro Pulse and
recently picked up an AAN award for feature writing. In July 2006, her first
book Hillbilly Gothic: A Memoir of Madness and Motherhood will be
published. During the day, she fields freelance gigs and crams
knowledge into the heads of college students in Upstate New York. At all
hours, she is mom to Maddy and Cory, and wife to Scott.
