Yen for Yesterday

Having kids pretty much means full-time children and microscopic-time adult. Now, I know some parents make a good deal of space for themselves and their interests. I’ve got nothing but respect for those folks. Here’s to them! I admire their dedication to their own well being. Unfortunately, I am not one of those parents.

I should be, I get the concept and appreciate its value. I know the parent-as-an-independent-thinking-adult-live-your-life-crusaders will wag their perfectly manicured fingers in my direction. But honestly, I am truly beat when it comes to creating a life of my own. Even if I carve out some precious “me time” (an effort suspiciously similar to creating a diamonds from coal). I pathetically drag my sorry ass through it, with toothpicks holding open my eyelids and knuckles scraping on the ground, like a narcoleptic ape. It isn’t pretty, and makes me seriously concerned about condition of the “me” in “me time”.

(Solution: I suspect—more “me time!” How’s that for irony?)

Today, I am especially simian-like in my posture and attitude. And I can’t help but be envious of all the twenty-something’s having coffee, the couples leisurely eating in restaurants, the joggers gorgeously sweating on the sidewalk, the teenagers making bad decisions resulting in traffic jams, the actors acting in sit-coms, the chefs on the food network…just about every being I witness without a drooling baby and maniacal preschooler in tow makes my jealousy rage.

I am a big, green-eyed, beast with opposable thumbs.

I want to be them today, because if they do have kids, they seem to have escaped the life-sucking vacuum that drains me of my very essence on this day. I really want a vacation or a stay at a clinic. Maybe the plane flight to Oakland was too tempting, I had a tiny taste of freedom and I got greedy. Maybe I am so deep in the trenches of diapers and apple juice I just can’t see the light, a light with a freakish similarity to a flame under a bubbling pot of fondue. Maybe it is just human nature to want what you don’t have. Although I can truthfully report that I don’t remember envying any families of four at the mall in all of my previous, earlier, lives.

The situation is painful. I suspect the next concert I attend will have adults dressed as furry monsters and an encore involving the alphabet song, all brought to you by the number 4 and the letter M. The next movie is likely to be rated G and involve multiple musical acts without enormous hats and gay dancers to make it fun. The next vacation will inevitably have a screaming splash pad instead of a sexy hot tub. And hot chocolates will be served as a wholesome substitute to hot toddies. Most of time, I find it all charming, perhaps even delightful. I feel pride and happiness knowing that my kids are getting a better childhood than my own.

But someday, like today, I wish that chic gal sitting in the window of the 5-star restaurant without a care in the world except for the wine list would be me. I have been told that it will. It is hard to imagine. I know after children you can never truly be carefree again. When you cut the cord, you unknowingly severe all ties to the irresponsibility that was your past.

On a good day, I would tell the world that giving up my youth and carelessness for a family was a small price to pay, especially since the seem to expire regardless of your actions. But today, I feel like missing a time when all I had to look forward to was tomorrow.

I guess that would be…today.