My favorite comment about children is from the Bill Cosby book "Fatherhood". He interviewed parents asking why they had children. When the mother of several children was queried she replied, "I kept falling asleep."
Having birthed four beautiful children myself, I can honestly say that only one was intentionally conceived. I love children, my own in particular. Parenting is not a job for the faint of heart. By all standards of human decency and human rights parenting should be illegal. Even the bible acknowledges the travesty when God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son on the alter to please God. Abraham's willingness to follow God's command might seem unthinkable and an extreme act of faith when reading the biblical account. Perhaps we should interview Abraham and Sarah to get a clearer picture of the truth.
Since neither would take my calls I will have to share from my own experiences. Sleep deprivation became a way of life when I had three children under age four. I lived for naptime! I would get all three little ones in their beds or crib and sit on the floor to read them a story so they would fall asleep. The baby would oblige and nod off promptly, this was a brief window though as he would require feeding again in ninety minutes give or take twenty. The pressure was on to get the other two sleeping so I could rest. The three year old would make it through about ten minutes of reading Beatrix Potter stories, the series of choice most days. Twenty five minutes in, I felt myself struggling to see the page. The two year old was still awake and aching to get out of the bed. I felt myself slide to the floor thinking I was still reading but I had to get more comfortable. It would be alright, I would tell myself.
The baby was crying again, that hungry cry startling me to consciousness. Surveying the room quickly I see the beautiful three year old son sleeping angelically and to my horror the two year old had managed to escape. Who knows how long she had been on her own and what she had been up to? Snatching up the infant from the crib and grabbing a diaper on my way out of the room, I make a mad dash through the house looking for the sleepless wonder. Her creative skills were pure inspired works. I can remember special talks I had with God, offering my appreciation for such a gifted child as she was.
Filling the twenty-six gallon fish tank with so much dry fish food that the filter had stopped and the fish were no longer visible was one days naptime inspiration. Dumping mom's pearl earrings down the toilet with assorted other gold earrings and the small ceramic container they were kept in, which didn't flush down like the pearls and most of the lighter earrings, was shear genius. These were the truly blessed times in my life! Much of it is lost from recollection. Thank God for obliterating the memories of traumas that we can't cope with. I think I was in a state of shock through much of my children's early childhoods. Who knew how devastatingly hard it would be to be a loving, kind, nurturing parent? Why didn't anyone tell me?
I know I shared these stories with my children as a warning to them. Two of my four have thus far taken the warnings to heart. The other two have disregarded the biblical sagas of parenting as Old Testament. My gifted naptime wonder daughter called yesterday looking for support as her three year old son had just had a potty training accident after holding his bowels for four days. She needed to steam clean the carpets in her bedroom before she would be able to sleep in the room again and the three month old infant was waking, needing to be fed. What goes around comes around?!? Thank you God!
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