Wherein I Submit My Writing

Sarah The Writer sent me a link to a request for submissions on NPR's website.  I am not sure that I this CBC-listenting Canadian is even eligible, but I sure enjoyed the opportunity to write for a deadline on an assigned topic.  What follows is my submission, now submitted to the cadre of readers who kindly encourage my ongoing attempts at writing. 

Thank you Sarah.

A.

The question: Has parenthood changed you? Was there a moment or incident that sparked the realization? Tell us about it.

I wasn't a bad person.

I mean, I wasn't criminally bad. Maybe more Square-Girl-In-A-Big-City bad. Certainly nothing requiring the involvement of police or the producers of "Intervention". 

And yet. And yet I entered motherhood sure that the journey would be my making. I was counting on birthing babies and simultaneously birthing my own New and Improved Me.  A Me that would be sweetly gentle, prone to acts of selfless goodwill who reveled in surprising joy.

I'm not aware of an exact moment when I realized it had not happened. Perhaps it was the night (is 3am night or morning?) I stood over my wailing seven-week old and hurled obscenities that would make a trucker blush, urging her to please-god-stop-crying.  Maybe it was the one of the afternoons I realized that my toddlers had a closer relationship with Cesar Millan than was probably wise, and then next realized it was a small price to pay for an hour of uninterrupted email reading.  It may have been the time I ate six chocolate cookies at once so that I wouldn’t have to share Every. Freaking. Thing.

The details are fuzzy, but the truth made itself all too clear: I was still a Not-So-Great person.  Parenthood hadn't changed me at all.

However, I am surrounded by kind people who love me and who love our small people who have pointed out that while I am still Just Me, I am a lot more of Just Me than I was when I started.  Certainly I am More Angry, More Impatient, More Tired than I ever was prior to my babes' arrivals.  But happily I have moments when I can see that I am also More Loving, More At Rest, More Generous and sometimes even More Forgiving - of myself and of my people.  My not-so-greats remain not-so-great and sometimes even worse than they ever were, but my goods… my goods are so greatly improved, so deeply wonderful, if I may say so.  My only hope is that my children will grow up able to remember most clearly the Good Good and somehow forgive the Terrible Awfulness that appears to be inevitable.

Oh that I had been changed into a kinder, gentler person. The world would have rejoiced, it is sure. Instead the world must content itself A Little Bit More of a Lot Of The Same.  As must I, I guess.