The Husband got me a present the other day. It was a backpack.
In the world of gifts, this choice is akin to a vacuum cleaner (actually, he got one of those recently too but I love it) or cooking lessons. Not because it wasn’t thoughtful–I mean, he texted me from the shop to ask for specifications in an effort to pick what I’d like–but because this is my life now. I carry a backpack. Like some kind of middle-aged hiker or Cheryl Strayed-in-Wild wannabe. Except I’m not hiking, unless you count the trips through the playground sand to push my kids on the swing. The backpack is representative of my life now because I’m a bit beyond diaper bags (and so OVER them) but not quite ready for designer shoulder-wear. Not with the baggage I have: extra Paw Patrol underwear, Pull-Ups, changes of little-boy clothes, water bottles and snacks and wipes. A few Legos for no apparent reason. Not exactly Gucci material. And it all weighs on me, forcing me to choose between being fashionable and lopsided or just comfortable, and I choose comfortable (see also: heels vs flats).
But this doesn’t mean I’m happy about it.
My bag-centric practicality isn’t what I thought “having it all” would look like. Apparently, having it all refers more to “carrying all the stuff,” because guess who gets the side-eye when some vital accessory is left at home? “My mommy forgot my crunch and sip snack today,” The Kid announced to whoever happened to be standing around this morning in the schoolyard, and I felt my anxiety and resentment rise concurrently at being the sole proprietor of the Kids’ Shit mantle. I’m always carrying stuff, whether my own bag filled with their gear, or TK’s massive school bag filled with learning materials and lunch boxes, or Little Brother’s monkey pack-pack (his title) filled with pretty much nothing but that he demands to have on-site at all occasions because his big brother has one. I carry all this on my two arms that are at least one too few, or my shoulders that are knotted and tense, and they may as well be weighed down some days with rocks labeled bitterness and fatigue and issues with gender-specific task allocations and upended expectations.
And yes, I know this is a continuing theme. All of my themes are continuing. But I’m not alone. And that’s why I write about them.
“Marriage isn’t what I thought it would be,” came the statement over the phone from one friend, while another one and I discussed how much more understandable they are these days, the women who run out on their families. And my writing- and non-lesbian-life partner wrote this, which (a) reminded me why I love her; (b) made me feel less alone; and (c) weighed me down with the truth that sets me free. TRIFECTA ACCOMPLISHED. So I passed it along to others who are honest about their identity struggles within marriage and parenting, and with the joyous and grieving process it all is. To the rest of the members of the Backpack Club.
It’s all just so everything, isn’t it? And it appears that there is no other way but for this path to be fraught: with emotion, with difficulty, with victory, with ALL THE STUFF.
Like, there’s this: I know there was a time when I picked TK up from school and our rides were silent but for my voice, and me desperately wishing for his words. I know this was our life at some point. But now I cannot remember it. Because now, he opens his car window and yells out at the other kids, “Bye bye! I’ll see you tomorrow! COCK A DOODLE DOO!” and dissolves into a hyena laugh. I know there was a time when birthday parties left me crying and anxious, when all the other kids would so easily sit for present-opening or use a fork to eat their cake. And now, sure I’m anxious still, but the kids here either don’t use a fork, or he uses one alongside them, albeit in his own messy way.
There is still the hard part. There is the moment when he runs up to a girl in his school’s uniform on the way down the school path and points, asking, “What’s his name?” because he hasn’t quite got the knack of appropriate pronouns yet, and sometimes the kid will screw up her face or the mother will laugh nervously and I will wonder to myself if something was stolen from us; if there was some version of him out of which we were cheated, one that approached social situations easily and left me unworried over his interactions and everything else, and then I remember that there is no other version. There is no Plan B. We weren’t diverted from some other path; we were always on this one, the one we were meant and made for. And I think about how our car rides wouldn’t mean nearly as much if he had always talked through them; how LB’s own words wouldn’t feel so miraculous either. How I might not even notice it, the way TK burrows in beside me in the morning on the bed and whispers, “Mommy. See me,” because this is how his language puts it when he wants me to look at him. And LB, he prefaces every comment with “we get to”: we get to go to the shops, we get to take a bath, we get to go get James. Every single act an opportunity rather than a task.
They are changing me. They are taking me back to school with my backpack firmly in place and they are changing me. And it is hard and awful and wonderful and amazing.
On Friday night, we left them and went with our guests on a dinner cruise to see the lights of Vivid Sydney, and once we docked we waited at the other harbour–the one we don’t get to as often–and witnessed a light show we hadn’t known about. It just exploded there, right before our eyes, because that’s where we were standing. All the lights that, because of where I am, I now get to see.