Hazel has recently entered (what I hope is) a stage where she likes her dad much better than me. If she bumps her head she wants her dad, if the noise from the garbage disposal or blender scares her she wants her dad, and his jokes are by far the funniest jokes around.
I’m pretending not to be jealous – especially considering that I was the only person Hazel had eyes for the last six months. Although, I’m pretty sure that being jealous is totally normal and probably healthy because evolutionarily isn’t in our best interest to care who the baby loves most? Isn’t that why parents happily share our resources with our off spring and forgo sleep and late-night partying and trips to Greece and fitting into their old jeans? I’m sure even pioneer people who were having kids mainly because they didn’t have birth control needed the free labor wanted their kids to like them. They probably cared about it a lot less, especially when it was time to chop down trees or churn butter or whatever, but at some point I know there was a pioneer mom who had to suppress her annoyance that the pioneer baby laughed so hard when the pioneer dad did the airplane game. Or oxcart game (more accurately).
People don’t often talk about these dirty little secrets of parenting. Everyone thinks they’re the only ones going through a petty personal struggle instead of vigilantly appreciating every single solitary moment of parenthood. Occasionally you can corner some one at book club or the rare night out with friends and get some one else to talk about it in whispered, wine soaked breath. These favorite-parent days are so important because as soon as you have a baby you realize that you are on Casey-Jones-style train ride to living with a teenager. Eventually the moment arrives when you realize that from your body came the human being who will come to think that you are the biggest idiot on the planet.
You have created this person. This person who will manipulate you and mock you and roll their eyes at you in a way that so reminds you of the way you roll your eyes at your own mother that you want to crawl into a hole. This person will come home reeking like cigarettes (or whatever they’ll have when Hazel is 15) and say right to your face that she wasn’t smoking. When you point out that she obviously was because she smells like she spent the afternoon in the visiting room at a V.A. home, she’ll roll her eyes at you. Or she’ll lie so earnestly that you’ll look at her sweet little face, that beautiful combination of generations of people that you love, and you’ll let yourself believe her. And she’ll think she got away with something. Even the sweetest, most thoughtful, most loving teenager still doesn’t want to run errands with you, or laugh hysterically when you pretend to gnaw on their tummy.
I was a nice teenager, Tom was a nice teenager, so we’ve got high hopes. Still, all the energy we currently expel on entertaining Hazel is well spent. We’ll remember these days fondly when we’re fighting about body piercings and curfews. And if my own parents are any indication, our brains will kindly erase the memories of teenagerdom once Hazel is a nice normal 34 year old.
Me: “No Mom, I wasn’t drinking and smoking! John was smoking and Bill spilled a beer on me while trying his first beer. I SWEAR!”
Mom:”OK, Honey”