Choosing This (Revisited)

          "I in there!" Sylvia says a dozen times a day, and somehow the words resonate with me. I'm in here. Two years out of the classroom, and my sense of self as a teacher is fuzzy around the edges,  like the murky shape of an action figure at the bottom of the bathwater. There are many moments each day, moments when I am reduced to the menial automatism  of full-time childcare-- changing diapers, wiping counters and noses, procuring meals and cleaning up after them-- that I, too, want to affirm, "I'm in there!" Those are the times, even when I am hardest at actual work, that I wonder about my choices. Surely anyone could do this! It is not that the work is devoid of all satisfaction. I feel the same sense of fleeting accomplishment after changing diapers from the after-lunch "poop fest" as I do cleaning out the chicken coop. It is just that I do not feel that I am bringing any special skills to bear. If the kids were in daycare, or had a nanny, their meals would be served and their bottoms cleaned. Books would be read, and naps would be taken. Often I suspect that many of those things would go more seamlessly if it were not I to orchestrate them. I've seen the miracle of the daycare classroom, one- and two-year-olds sitting patiently around a table, singing songs while waiting for their grub, whole roomfuls of toddlers sleeping all at once with their butts up in air.
 It feels impossible for me to do this job without wondering, "Why?" almost daily. The only written treatise on staying home I've read began with a defense for doing so. Despite the protestations of the writer's usual publisher, and at the risk of alienating the millions of moms without the option or the inclination to stay home, she felt compelled to compile evidence for why a parent's full-time presence in the home during the early years was good for kids. It couldn't be left out, the author argued, for how else could she tolerate the endless tedium and frustrations that came from staying at home?  In other words, there had to be a good reason to choose to suffer so.
Honestly, I don't buy it.  I'm sure most kids do fine in daycare. Most kids would probably do fine anywhere; it is in their very nature to adapt, to thrive. Although in my heart of hearts I can't help hoping that this time with me will matter to my kids in some unknowable way, when I am most honest with myself, I know that it is not really for my children that I choose to be a full-time mom.
 So why? As I contemplate going back to work, it's a good question. At Thanksgiving, my dad reminded me of a study he'd read that reported couples are happiest when both partners work outside the home at moderate-income jobs. A childhood friend raved about how happy her daughter is since she's started daycare. The other morning, when everyone needed or wanted something, urgently and loudly-- Gemma a nap, Dee Dee "CEREAL IN A BOWL," Sylvia a clean diaper, Clayton paints to color the monsters we'd made out of paper towels and rubber bands--when the radio I'd turned on in the futile hope of actually hearing some real-word news was just background noise adding to the chaos, when my half-drunk cup of tea was cold on the counter and the dog was chewing up one of the baby's pacifiers, I thought, "This is nuts! This sucks! I'm going back to work!" It wasn't even eight, a whole day of the same stretched out before me. And for what?
 In a calmer moment, it's not that hard to answer. For one, I like a challenge. Maybe anyone can change a diaper, pour a bowl of cereal, get down the paint, carry a thrashing toddler to her crib for a time-out. But to do it, to make Dee Dee say please and teach Clayton not to nag, to get the milk and rock the baby and rescue the paci and change the diaper, all while maintaining some sort of cool-- that is the challenge! (A challenge, which, to be honest, I did not master on that particular morning. "I have four kids to take care of!" I said crossly to a wide-eyed Clayton, "I cannot be at your beck and call!" Being the oldest, he often bears the brunt of my frustration.)
      Taking care of a lot of kids at once is like riding a sine curve. When you're in the trough, it's good (albeit basically impossible) to remember that things will look up soon. Ten minutes after I snap at Clayton, the baby is asleep, Clayton is happily painting at the kitchen table, the girls are dressed and fed. I'm sorting laundry and wiping marker off the kitchen chairs while the girls race back and forth from the living room, holding up animal cards and asking over and over, "What's that one say?" Sylvia is the funniest, since she's not really there yet linguistically. She just mimics her sister's words, as proud as she can be: "Whatthatonesay?" Clayton, ever attuned to my shifts of mood, looks up from his painting and says, "This is fun! Mom, are you having fun?" I can't help laughing. "I am!" I say, and strangely, I mean it. Sorting laundry is my least favorite chore, and yet, seeing all three happy and engaged, while I bask in the sweet relief of having weathered the storm--well, it is a certain kind of fun.
Another nice thing about full-time parenting is that, like teaching, it gives you the chance to screw up a lot and still do a generally good job. In the classroom, no matter how poorly a class period goes, there's always the next class, the next day. You can tweak the lesson, recover your cool, turn over a new leaf again and again and again. The times that I'm at my worst as a mom, impatient and unhappy, ready to meet every new frustration with mounting irritation and self-pity-- "Oh God, what an awful day!"--, I try to keep that in mind.  Not only will the day get better (the troughs can last only so long) but I can be better, too. Sometimes all it takes is trying on a little joy. I've learned from Clayton that the surest way to lighten the general mood is to start singing about poop and pee. We just alter the usual lyrics with a little potty humor, and soon everyone is giggling away, me included, because, as cliche as it is, there's nothing quite so heart-warming as hearing your children laughing.
I also believe in apologizing. After the chaos of that particular morning had subsided,  I told Clayton I was sorry for snapping at him. "But you're a grown-up!" he said. "Grown-ups don't have to say they're sorry!" So there was a lesson in this for each of us: mine in patience and self-possession, his in human fallibility.
In preparation for the eleven hour drive to Florida for Thanksgiving, I checked out a Sesame Street video from the library for the girls to watch in the car. It's geared for the very young (even Cookie Monster is a baby), and it opens with a doctorate in child development talking to the camera with her son on her lap, telling parents that kids learn best when they share experiences with someone they love. Her words, meant mostly, I think, to encourage parents to enjoy their thirty minutes of peace and then turn off the TV, have stuck with me lately. I do try to give my kids lots of experiences, often out of mere survival, since too much unstructured time at home makes us all crazy. But I've begun to wonder if maybe it's not just the experiences that matter: all those trips to the library and the lake, the paper towel monsters and the elaborate games of make-believe on the trampoline.  Maybe my being there for all of it matters more than I've ever allowed myself to believe.
When I think of my own young childhood, it certainly mattered to me that Mom was there. I wasn't aware, then, of the time she must have spent preparing meals or cleaning up after them, or doing any of the other endless tasks that go hand in hand with caring for young children. And yet, the fact that she did those things surely contributed to the sense of abiding security and warmth that make up my memory of those times. Perhaps all those little menial tasks that never stay done are really at the root of what it means to "take care," every chore really an act of love.  Sylvia, in her little two-year-old heart, understands this: she wants to change her baby's diaper again and again. She gets it. This is the way a mom loves.
Ultimately, I choose to be a full-time parent for me. When Sylvia wakes up trembling and tearful from her nap, I'm glad it's my shoulder she rests her head on, her little legs pulled up tight against my body. When Dee Dee, normally such a tornado of destruction, slides out of my arms at Clayton's Play-n-Learn class to sit quietly with her hands clasped sweetly in her lap, her little round face the very essence of expectation-- it is a moment well worth all the times I've had to chase her down in parking lots and libraries. I choose full-time mothering because I want to do it long enough that I do it well, that I meet each new challenge with a little more expertise, a little more grace, a little more patience, and when I do not, I can forgive myself my own imperfections. I choose it for the patchwork of memories that come together from our day-to-day: Dee Dee pretending to be "Shaggy" for days on end ("Shaggy took a bath! Shaggy went down the slide!"), Clayton unrolling an entire roll of paper towels in the kitchen trying to turn himself into a mummy, Sylvia quietly reading Little Doggie Go (more commonly known as Go, Dog, Go) aloud to herself at the coffee table while Dee Dee and Clayton chase each other around the living room. I choose it for me, because I cannot pretend to know what is best for my children. Almost certainly, there is no "best." But more and more, I find myself believing that this path were on is good, for all of us.