About Sweetmama Editor
Nadine Silverthorne’s love of journaling began in Grade One with the entry, “I am the greatest dancer!” Two babies (and countless diaper changes) later, she has found her home away from home as editor of SweetMama. Don’t miss her humorous bi-weekly accounts of the joys and pains of working while raising them fabulous.
How She Does It
silver spoons canada
(Mar.15.09)
I complain. A lot. To anyone who will listen -- and often just to the room at large. I'm sure that my Sweetspot and Sweethome colleagues have made mental notes to never have children since I've been in the office.
"I don't know how you do it," they will remark after I go through the Herculean effort it takes just to get to the office each morning. (Admittedly, I'm not as organized as some moms and sometimes I feel like the character in a mommy lit novel, but we'll grade me on a curve here.)
Many of my girlfriends (who had their first babies after I'd had my second) will call me after their child gets sick, after a night of no sleep, after returning to work. The refrain is the same: "I don't know how you do it." Though they might also add, "With two!"
My reply is always the same, "You just do it." I'm not trying to be smug, or to make it look easy. (It's definitely not.) But parenting is kind of like getting on a train that you can't get off. There might be brief stops (but you blinked and you missed it), and I suppose the view changes, the menu gets interesting and you begin to enjoy the company more, but that train. Does. Not. Stop.
So you just move forward, regardless of tired, of sickness, of tears -- of wanting to give up and run away like Thelma and Louise. Instead you go down to the basement to do laundry, or escape to the grocery store to be alone for a while. And you get disgruntled, because wow, you're such a badass that you storm off in a huff to separate whites from darks!
But the secret to getting by is in the children themselves. They may be the source of the problem, but they also hold the cure. They are magic and goodness and light. They love you completely and don't see your flaws. When you come home to soft, raspy whispers and tiny, pudgy hands around your neck... well, it is ALL WORTH IT. All it takes is 30 seconds of burying your head in downy, fragile baby head and the whole world makes sense.
Lately, I've been watching Showtime's United States of Tara on TMN. Starring Toni Collette (Muriel's Wedding, Sixth Sense) as a mom of two teens -- who happens to have a type of multiple personality disorder -- and the delicious John Corbett (Sex and the City, My Big Fat Greek Wedding) as her extremely patient husband, it's the best depiction of family life on TV (even with the crazy) I've ever seen. My mantra for getting through the "I don't know how you do it" moments has come from the theme of that show (by Tim DeLaughter of The Polyphonic Spree). It's also goes well with my train metaphor.
"I know we'll be just fine when we learn to love the ride."
So I guess this is me, learning to love the ride. And that my friends is how I do it. All aboard?