Parenthood stretches you, makes you more elastic – your dinner plans, your budget, your boobs, the size of your jeans.
Sometimes I feel like the mom from The Incredibles, you know, the one with the stretchy arms, spoon-feeding guava to the baby from a jar of Purity (yeah, yeah – judge me McJudgersons) while tying the two-year-old’s sneakers with one hand and yelling: “Stop licking the TV screen” to my six-year-old, Travis. He’s autistic, so there’s an interesting relationship with household appliances going on there.
Growing up, during our 30-minute drive to school every morning, my dad would use the opportunity to connect with us – father/daughter time – imparting little “Life is like a box of chocolates going a moderate 120km an hour” lessons.
“Anybody can be a good starter,” he’d tell us, “but it’s how you finish that matters.”
I was one helluva good starter. My childhood bedroom was a graveyard for the best intentions – beautifully covered diaries with only three entries, abandoned grow-a-bean-in-cotton-wool assignments… I couldn’t even finish a sandwich; crusty triangles would be shoved still on their side plates under my bed to become exciting science experiments.
It’s a woeful habit that leaked into adulthood. (Being a poor finisher, that is, not hiding food under my bed.) There’s the abandoned UNISA degree, with 15 credits to go. The diets that don’t last longer than a couple of days.
Parenthood, now that’s something else. It’s irrelevant how you start.
Maybe, like us, you’d only been dating for a couple of months when you fell pregnant – surprise! Maybe, like us, one of your children was born with special needs. Maybe you are a single parent, a divorced parent, an adoptive parent… It really doesn’t matter how you got out of the starting blocks.
When I think about the biggest thing that’s changed since I became a mother, it’s this: suddenly, I have what it takes to be a good finisher.
For the first time in my life I have stamina, willpower…
I clean up puke, get up five times a night, pack school lunchboxes, and play peekaboo. Again, and again, and again. There is no ducking the hundreds of thankless tasks that make the wheels of child-raising spin. A baby will not feed itself. Your toddler can’t drive himself to nursery school.
You push on, fueled by bedtime snuggles, tummy tickles, and milkshake dates that are parceled out to you as sweet reward.
This gift of endurance that my children gave me has sparked a radical makeover in other areas of my life.
Today I run my own business, often working from home, something I’d never be disciplined enough to do pre-motherhood. I would have binge-watched Grey’s Anatomy when I should have been doing the books! I lost 7kgs this year on my first ever diet. I still have to get around to wrapping up that UNISA degree, though.
Since becoming a mother, I have my eyes fixed on the prize.
I can see the finish line: where I have raised good men, who go onto become good fathers, who teach their own children, in the car on the way to school, about the importance of being a good finisher.
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