Forecast Crazy

Several people talked to or e-mailed me about my last post. Turns out that more parents go crazy than I originally thought. In fact, almost everyone I know. Which leads me to question why so few people talk openly about it. It might just be a perception, but I get the feeling some people put family explosions on par with talking about nose hair and toe-nail trimming. Too private, too yucky, too personal. We all just pretend it doesn't exist, that it never happens, that we're above it, that our nose hair stays perfectly and inoffensively in bounds. That our kids don't make us nuts....

I see this dynamic mostly at school in the morning. You might see a heaving sigh from a parent arriving late to school, kids grumpy in tow - the climax to an inevitably rocky morning. Or the faint admission that some kid was a wanker in the wee hours the night before. Or a gorgeous eye roll over some kid's whine..... but it's all very cursory, ephemeral - like the whisper from someone walking away in the wind. Then everyone goes away and gets on with life. The moment passes, gone, like it never happened. Except that the feelings don't really go away, the shame doesn't go anywhere. And there's always more to the story than the parties will admit to. I feel like we're all leading secret lives of shame with our parenting, sharing only what will not be too harshly judged. We carefully craft the perceptions of others. Not unusual; appearing to our best advantage has some serious evolutionary underpinnings. But with parenting, with kids, we're all losing it, some more than others, and yet the "perception management" persists. I'm not sure why it's nearly impossible to admit that parenting is so difficult, so interminably insufferable on certain days, but it seems to be.

Could be that parenting, like nose hair maintenance, falls under the same quaint notions of Victorian idealism. Present the coiffed, corseted, effortlessly perfect person; never the work behind it. But it seems that we're all just afraid of judgment, for being who and what we are on any given day, myself included. If it's a monster who says horrible things to your children, let the monster roar. Maybe if we heard more roaring, we'd get used to the sound, find more monsters, form a support group, be less monstrous and relax about the highs and lows of this impossible job. Hope so; at least I can start doing it. Or try.