Little garden graves

The store isn't open today, so I plan to work on my garden beds. When we first made them we all joked about taking pictures of us "buried" in them because they look like graves. Now every time I see this picture I think about that. It also makes me remember Max asking me (recently) if I want him to bury me in the garden when I die. It reminds me of how weird it is to try to explain to my son's bright little face why it's illegal to bury your dead in your back yard. Kids know a lot of dark things. If you think they don't, then your own memory of being a kid has dimmed beyond recognition. Maybe out of a sense of self preservation? Maybe it's just age that has helped you to see childhood as vast expanse of innocence.

Alright, maybe you just had to start life in a hippie commune to have so much knowledge in your head by the time you're four. Knowledge of life, death, and maybe even taxes. Well, at the very least, we knew about bodies. We knew about a lot of things bodies are used for. I knew that bodies don't last. I knew that they were some how connected to earthy things like food, grass (ah, of many kinds, if you catch my drift...), the weather, and each other.

Max didn't grow up in a commune, yet he knows dark things. Dark ideas present themselves to him all the time. They always have. When he was three and I was trying to explain why he had to wait for me to cross the street with him, I avoided saying anything too scary. I don't personally believe in over protecting children, but even so, I have never wanted to scare mine either. So he asked my why he had to wait for me to cross with him. I told him "Because you can get hurt crossing the street." and he replied "Do you mean I might get smooshed by a car?" I never told him that. He made the obvious connections. It percolated in his brain. Without me to tell him.

One of the hardest parts of parenting, for me, is knowing that Max is going to know things that no one wants to know. As his parent, knowing that as his life unfolds, he's going to have to go through the whole spectrum of experiences is a difficult truth for me. I didn't particularly love the first nineteen years of my life. The kid is only six and is already worried about becoming an orphan, fighting in real wars, and asteroids hitting our house. He is also already fighting waves of self loathing that seem to rise up suddenly when he is not proud of himself. There is no middle ground for him. He is either a good little boy, and therefore should have every toy on earth as well as every privilege, or he is a very bad boy who doesn't even deserve to have a mom and a dad or a bed to sleep in. He comes up with a lot of creative punishments that we should visit on him when he feels he is among the undeserving.

While so many parents out there are devoting many hours to the planning of their children's brilliant futures and signing them up for college, I am just hoping mine will make it safely to adulthood. I just want mine to be healthy, keep all of his limbs, and be alive. While so many mother's out there are busting their butts to be the perfect moms, to give their kids all the best in nutrition, stimulation, exercise, and time lovingly devoted to their bairns, I sit here and worry about all the pitfalls that await my child: puberty, girls, aggression, competition, mental illness*, homework enough to bring down a genius, and fast food.

I have been known to make a lot of parents uncomfortable. Bet you're not wondering why.

I was thinking recently of starting some kind of club for parents with one child. There is a part of me that feels the need to find more people out there with a single child because I'm still in the minority. In the early days I felt extremely defensive of my conscious choice to have one child, which I was certain about the minute my baby was pulled from my bloody, broken, ripped, and cut body.

I was defensive because very few mothers could understand why I wasn't already planning for the next one. Not all parents of single children experience this, but people in grocery stores would ask me when I was going to start on the next one and I can't tell you how many times I heard this "Oh, you can't just have one! You have to give your little guy a brother or sister." I HAVE to? HAVE TO? At what point did I sign a contract with the universe to provide my son with a sibling? It was also extraordinary how many mothers seemed to take my decision to have just one as an automatic criticism of their decision to have more.

The defensiveness that my decision to have one child brought down on both myself and others who decided otherwise actually created a weird judgment in me of parents with more than one. Why do all these parents feel they have to have multiple children? Why are they doing this to themselves? How can any woman go through giving birth more than once? How can she find space in her life for herself when she keeps creating less and less time to meet her own needs?**

Honestly? I realized that part of the defensiveness came from realizing that other women, women having more than one child, were made of sterner stuff than me. Having one child, consciously, made me the loser in the invisible mighty woman contest that exists out there whether you want to participate or not. It's the same competition that exists in child birthing, there is some unwritten, largely unacknowledged, belief that women who get through birthing with the least intervention from drugs or doctors, are stronger and better than those of us who needed an epidural. And an episiotomy. And two doctors and two nurses. And an oxygen mask. Or maybe a C-section. No one wants to admit it, but women who just squat down and bite ax handles to bring their kids into the world are the winners of the strong woman contest.

I have come to see things a little differently now. The feeling of defensiveness is slowly wearing off. Most of my close friends have more than one child. Do they make me feel inferior for this? No. Do I feel like I made a better choice for just having had the one? No. Well, OK, maybe a tiny bit. Maybe just a tiny bit of me feels like a lot of women would be more whole, would be happier, would have more to give to a child if they had only one.

That is maybe the dirtiest parent truth I have ever admitted to.

I'm not judging anymore. That's what I'm here to say. That's what I want to say right now: I have finally come to a point where I see that for some women, having more than one child is as important a choice for them as having one was for me. I have come to respect that for some women it is way more natural for them to have a couple of bairns romping through their lives than it would be for me. I am not only coming to respect their choice, I am getting to a place where I can appreciate their choice.

I have made peace with the whole strong woman contest too. It doesn't matter to me that some women can squat down in tub and squeeze their baby out like toothpaste. I think that's wonderful. It isn't going to make me feel defensive of my own VERY DIFFERENT experience of child birth. I don't think they're better than me, or even stronger. We all have strengths and our lives will reveal what they are. I don't even feel that I have lost out as a woman because I didn't actually enjoy being pregnant and I don't think giving birth is a beautiful experience. So if you loved it, I'm happy you got to see that side of it. We can still share this experience of being moms. Of being women. We still have a lot in common. I'm more interested in searching out our commonality than measuring our differences.

So I realized that creating a group for parents of only children will not engender the kind of open mindedness I am trying to improve in myself. I hate feeling excluded because I'm different. It's natural for me to enjoy talking with other parents with one child, we have a lot in common, but I realized that creating some kind of club only for us would exclude a lot of people I love. I don't want to be a person who builds walls between people. I'd rather foster greater understanding. Now that I've started to feel some real loosening of defensiveness in myself, why on earth would I want to create it in others?

How's that for a nice cheery Monday talk? Hey, just trying to bring a little darkness to us all. While I have been writing this it's turned rainy. So maybe I won't be going outside to fill my little garden graves with AMENDMENT. Maybe I'll just do laundry and read old issues of Kitchen Gardening. And make soup.

Tomorrow the only thing I'm going to talk about is butterflies, rainbows, and Donald Trump. (Because I love to talk about persistent comb-overs and the men who adore them.)



*Runs in our family, so even if he doesn't turn out to have it, it stands as a possible pit fall.

**Doesn't matter how much a woman thrives on being a mom, she still has needs separate from her kids. Her ability to meet those needs has a direct affect on her ability to meet the needs of her children.