Turn That Emo Clown Frown Upside-Down!

Yesterday I had coffee with two of my favourite former co-workers, deep in the bowels of the building where I used to work. Mom watched the kids in her back yard and my purse and I took the bus to downtown Vancouver.

Co-worker G – she was my boss, actually – is a mom. She has three kids, two boys who are 14 and 13, and a girl who is 9. G is the one who reverse-engineered my brain almost five years ago so that I went from “no kids, ever!” to “omg kids, now!” But she doesn’t know that.

When I was pregnant with Trombone she gave me all her old baby stuff. She told me – honestly and in sometimes florid detail – what motherhood would be like. On slow days in the office, she would kick off her shoes and talk to me about the early days with two boys under Two. She had a lot of advice for me, advice I listened to and stored away and have rarely used but still remember.

On my last day of work before Trombone was born, she showed me how to swaddle a baby, using a stuffed dog I’d received as a gift. “Like a burrito,” she said, with her fabulous Peruvian trill on the “r”. I must have heard her voice saying that a hundred times over the past four years. Like a burrrrrito!

Yesterday, in the bowels of the building where I used to work, one of the security guards recognized me and came over to ask how I was doing.

“Where have you been?” he said.
“At home,” I said.
“With your kids,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Wonderful,” he said.
“Not all the time,” I said.

He chuckled. He is a chuckler. And a shoulder-patter and, truthfully, a bit of a pervert.

“Some days are better than others,” I added, “I like to be honest, in case there are any teenage girls around.”
“That’s me, too,” said co-worker G, “I never saw the point in telling people ‘oh it’s so great’. What’s so great about it?”

I nodded, laughed. Of course.

If you have been reading this blog a while, you know that I am firmly on the side of telling everyone what’s not so great about motherhood. It is my backlash of sorts, against the people with the perky faces and voices who never seem to crack the way I crack. At least not while anyone, ie: me, is watching.

It is not always great, being a mother. It is not always awful. Nothing is great, or awful, all the time.

But this place, where I come to let it out, to vent, to attempt to make it funnier, sometimes feels overmuchly negative. Often it comes down to “things I can’t do now that there are kids.” That is a long list and you all know what’s on it. But there are also things you can’t do the same *without* kids.

Five Awesome Things That Are Made Better By Adding Kids:

1. Conversations in the car.* It doesn’t work on public transit or when walking. In the car, when everyone is restrained in his/her own seat, the conversations go from “what’s that guy doing to that car’s insides?” (changing the oil) to “what’s a playoff? The man on the radio just said playoff!” to “Fresco took off his shoe and now he’s wiping his peanut butter sandwich on his toes” (maniacal laughter from Fresco).

* as we are planning a road trip this summer, I reserve the right to rescind this item at a later date

2. Rolling down grassy hills in the sun. Already super fun but when Trombone rolls with his head craned up so he can see where he’s going and Fresco rolls sideways instead of from top to bottom, man, that’s some belly laughing.

3. Puppets. Puppets are fantastic anyway but when you add a kid, a young one, who believes the puppet is real and likes to hug and kiss the puppet and then puts the puppet on his own hand and makes a squeaky puppet voice? Past fantastic to stratospheric.

4. Making up new lyrics to old songs. Trombone went through a phase where he didn’t want me to do this. Thankfully it was a short phase because it is one of my Magic Powers and if I don’t use it, it atrophies and falls off.

5. Hugs. There is something about small arms squeezing you as hard as they can. Double extra good if the 2 year old says, “You a nice hugger, mummy.”

What thing is made better for you by adding kids? They don’t have to be your own kids. And don’t say soup.