Club Dread

The realization that you’re a parent doesn’t hit you on the head, like an “aha!” moment. It usually comes to you in fits and starts. At first, it’s when you’re up nearly all night with a colicky infant. You look around at your messy living room while a bad movie plays on cable TV and there are baby accessories lying all around. You sigh deeply, shake your unwashed head and think, “So, this is parenting.” It’s definitely not the glorious love and roses that you had anticipated as the pregnancy test strip turned blue. Still, it’s where you belong at that moment. And as bone-wearying as the exhaustion is, you wouldn’t trade it for anything.

To me, the dawning of parenthood is in a bad moment. Not because you don’t prove your mettle unless you’ve worried, but because in those moments, you demonstrate to yourself the depth and breadth of your love. My sister had such a moment this week and when she relayed her story to me, I simply said: “Welcome to the club.” She chuckled and knew exactly what I meant.

My sister is a teacher and her 3-year old goes to preschool where she teaches. She had dropped her daughter off and then headed to her own classroom. As the entire school gathered for a prayer service, she looked for her daughter and her preschool class to walk into the church. The class walked in, but there was no sign of her daughter. She looked at her daughter’s teacher with questioning eyes. The teacher looked at her and said: “She walked in right in front of me. She was here just a second ago!” To make a long story short, panic ensued, sending my sister running around the entire school searching for her daughter. My brother in-law was called at work to aid in the search, as were several parents that were volunteering that day. And just when full-scale terror was about to commence, another teacher found my niece, hiding mischievously under a church pew. Gigantic sigh of relief.

I’d say that virtually every parent has had such a moment – when the worry eclipses absolutely everything in your life. Suddenly every TV movie with dire consequences flashes before your eyes and you hope and you pray that your worst fears will all be for naught. Sometimes they are and sometimes, unfortunately, they’re not.

I think the point is that, ironically, we feel more like parents when things are going badly than when everything is fabulous. Is that because the negative impresses us with the full gravity of the job description or is it because, as parents, we’re used to taking none of the credit and all of the blame?

I find it amazing that we have to get a license to fish, hunt or drive a car, but raising a child, one of the most important things you can do on earth, requires only two warm bodies and does not offer any type of instruction manual. It’s a seat-of-the pants endeavor that can be the stuff of legends or nasty memoirs. Sometimes it astounds me that so many do it so willingly. Because in those terrifying moments of lost or sick children, failing grades, behavior problems, substance abuse or any number of things you hope never to endure, you really earn your stripes as a parent. Welcome to the club.