Sometimes Your Best Isn’t Great: Thoughts on Parenting in a Pandemic

Hello, I’m a mom and I’m scared. It turns out becoming a parent doesn’t make you impervious to fear. In fact, after watching the Netflix documentary Babies, I can now say with a tiny degree of scientific authority that becoming a parent makes you more fearful, since it permanently opens portions of your amygdala, the fear center of the brain.

But right now we are all united in facing an invisible and devastating enemy. We are probably all scared in varying degrees and if you aren’t, are you paying attention? There were a lot of reassurances in the beginning that made people naively confident that this A) was not going to become a pandemic and B) only affected the elderly and sick. But now we are finding out that the young and healthy are not exempt. They are catching coronavirus and many are getting critically ill or dying.

I feel like I’ve been down this road before because I had dozens of health professionals attempt to dismiss my health complaints before and after I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. It went from \”nothing is wrong\” to \”you’re probably fine\” to \”the tumor is probably benign\” to \”it’s two small malignant tumors\” to \”it’s one big tumor that hasn\’t spread\” to \”oh, okay, it spread and this is pretty serious after all.\”

So yeah, I\’m pretty damn scared.

I\’m also a stay-at-home mom (SAHM). This is supposed to give me an advantage over the working parents who have suddenly been thrust into stay-at-home life. Don’t get me wrong, I am quite glad that parents around the world are suddenly recognizing that being a stay-at-home parent is both difficult and a job. I would gloat if I weren’t struggling so much myself.

Yeah, I\’m used to loneliness and endless messes and chores and working from home and two tiny tyrants constantly whining and demanding snacks. But I am a SAHM to a 2 year old and a 4 year old and They. Do. Not. Compute. In toddler POV, this is some kind of hellish time suck where mean mom doesn\’t take them anywhere and no grandparents come to visit. And the playgrounds and zoos and fun places are closed. And there are no lunch dates or play dates. And mom gets super yelly all the time.

Because I\’m maybe not handling this as well as I should. I don’t have any breaks at all. No going-to-the-store breaks. No moms-day-out breaks. No somebody-else-made-the-food-and-all-I-had-to-do-was-pick-it-up-or-sit-down-to-eat-it breaks. One of my kids isn’t even NAPPING any more. So yeah, it sucks, even for the regular SAH parents. Also, I had anxiety issues before this. I felt okay about them because, compared to Postpartum Anxiety, they were mild. But now, I\’m struggling.

This is most manifest in the fact that I keep injuring and nearly injuring myself. My flight reflex, with nowhere to go, has turned into a trapped-bird-flinging-itself-against-the-bars reflex. It isn\’t pretty.

Even when I try my best, things are not going well. I think all the memes mocking the fairy-tale quarantine schedules prove I\’m not alone in this.

One of my kids had a birthday recently, and even though I devoted all my attention and energy into making this an awesome day, it still involved blood, burns, soooo many meltdowns and poison control. Yaaaay for mommy. Killing it. 😬

It started with not enough sleep and a ridiculously complicated cake. Let me defend myself by saying my own mother made almost all of my childhood birthday cakes from scratch (a box), and they were always these beautifully colorful, artistic, strange concoctions. Like a lemon and chocolate cake covered in jelly beans and skittles. Sometimes I was the only one brave enough to eat these cakes. But they were love poems to me from my artist mom, who is, ahem, not known for her cooking or baking skills. And I want my kids to feel that every birthday. Wow. That was a lengthy defense.

Okay, so I started baking the cake, a fancy chocolate hazelnut thing I had planned out months ago, at eleven PM. That was my first mistake. The actual cake recipe was 4 ingredients. How can you mess that up? Well, somehow I did, because in my husband\’s tactful words the cake tasted like bread. It was a “sponge cake,” but more like a used-sponge cake, which is not what anyone wants.

So I ended up staying up until 3am making a weird, brick-hard cake that looked effing fantastic, if I do say so myself. But only because I decorated it with hand-painted Sarah and Duck dolls. I am a much better painter than baker (like my mom). And the frosting recipe including an entire jar of Nutella. Which seemed like a lock. But again, was just meh. It would have been better to just smear Nutella on a box cake. Or bread. Or just eat Nutella out of a jar and call it a day.

The kids did not notice or mind. One busily ate all the m&ms off the side and the other “loved” their “yummy” bread-cake (which is actually kind of fitting if you watch S&D). So that was mostly a win.

Until . . . our toddler burned both her mouth and arm on the cake candles while we were busy videorecording, taking pictures, and skyping with grandparents. Not a win. (She\’s fine though.)

Then, because I only got 5 hours of sleep the night before and am so old as to zombify if I get less than 8, I kept making self-harming mistakes throughout the day. Like grating finger instead of cheese. And cutting finger instead of cake. My fingers are a mess now.

But the biggest drama happened while I was genuinely engaged in outdoor imaginative play with my kids. Like everyone recommends. And skyping with my mom in order to make my birthday girl feel like she was surrounded by loved ones in spite of the weirdness that is an isolated birthday. Like many recommend. BUT during this chat, skyping videos of my kids happily blowing and popping bubbles, doodling with chalk and running around, I realized one kiddo had taken a sudden interest in a weird mushroom that I had forgotten ever existed. Interest that led to her crushing it with her hands. So I football-tucked her under my arm and ran inside, but my other daughter was refusing to come in and in all the chaos, the mushroom crusher got one of her mushroom-stained hands into her mouth.

Cue poison control. Who could not identify the mushroom based on my description. They told me that if my daughter vomited in under 6 hours it was just a mildly irritating mushroom and she would be fine. But if she vomited after six hours had passed, it was badly toxic and we would need to head to the ER. During a pandemic. Cue panic.

I went on Nextdoor and Facebook, the quarantined mom\’s version of popping by the pediatrician\’s office. And man oh man. My faith in humanity was restored. Very kind strangers redirected me to more kind strangers in the mushroom biz, who redirected me to kind strangers in the poison biz, who helped me identify the darn thing as a non-toxic mushroom (pisolithus arhizos for anyone interested). Cue grateful sobbing.

I mean it. I actually started crying as soon as those responses were posted. I was just so relieved that my baby hadn\’t been poisoned on her birthday (or any day) and so touched that complete strangers were taking time and working fast (I mean, seriously, it was a matter of a few minutes) to help an obviously distraught mom get answers.

I think I\’m also more sentimental than usual because, like everyone else, I\’m no longer taking human contact for granted. I was already living a pretty sheltered life. I don\’t like to drive my kids very far or often because I\’m an anxious person. I don\’t like to take them to crowded places. Or isolated places. Or places with toy aisles. And slippery floors. And germy kids. You get the idea. Parenting made me a paranoid hermit who sometimes wishes she could put her kids in a bubble.

But I am seeing so much good in humanity right now. There is more of an emphasis on positive news than ever before, and people are delivering. We are learning of acts of tremendous generosity and kindness. We are spotlighting our medical professionals as the heroes they have always been. We are reaching out to neighbors, friends, family, and complete strangers and offering genuine help.

So here\’s my tiny offering: forgive yourself.

Not doing your best work? Forgive yourself.

Not being the best parent? Forgive yourself.

Anxiety making you make mistakes? Forgive yourself.

Feeling like one more snack request will send you over the edge? Forgive yourself. And your kids.

Angry at the world? Forgive yourself.

Telling people that grandparents are willing to sacrifice their lives so the rich can get richer? DO NOT FORGIVE YOURSELF. YOU ARE THE WORST.

But everyone else: Forgive yourself.

We are doing our best under terrible circumstances, and the results are often not great. And that\’s okay. It\’s the trying that matters.

I’ll leave you with a poem I wrote when I was being particularly self-deprecating and needed a boost. Pre-pandemic, but seems pretty relevant in this age of mistakes and injuries.

Love the Child You Are

So you don\’t like
what you see in the mirror.
You didn\’t do your to-dos
didn\’t fix your flaws
didn\’t stop yourself
from saying that regrettable thing.
So you can\’t love yourself
right now
exactly as you are
or even slightly better.
Love the child you were.
Remember her? The girl
with the tiniest toes, the
impossibly soft skin, that
one curl your mother kept
touching.
Remember how just the smell of you
feel of you
existence of you
made her heart stop
made it explode
made it grow three times
each day.
Remember wrapping
your entire hand around
your dad\’s one finger?
Pulling him this way,
no, that way
and laughter tumbling
out of the two of you,
a tidal wave of laughter
washing every fear
away.
Remember how badly
that girl
wanted to be loved.
How she turned to friends
strangers
relatives
animals
and begged them all,
Just love me.
How getting older
meant finding out
Love would not
always be.
Remember kneeling
with your face
buried in a dog,
feeling like nothing
Nothing
Nothing would be good again.
Can you kneel beside her?
Can you reach out a hand
and cup her chin
and see her in this mirror,
hating what she sees,
not even trying
to stop the regrettable words.
Stop. Look at her.
Find her,
There.
Say to that child
what the warm coat
soft beat
breathing
in and out
presence
of that dog
said
all those years ago.