A taste of everyday rage
Today is Thursday, and every week I send out a gratitude email—like EVERY week, even the week B was born, which was not something I expected I would do. Like, I explicitly gave myself permission not to, decided I could take as much time away from the newsletter as I needed. But he was born on a Friday night, and by Thursday, I found I had something to say.
Anyway, just now I sat down to start this morning’s post, and…my mind blanked.
Specifically, my mind blanked on the very exact wording I had already been mulling over in my brain for close to 12 hours, ever since I unexpectedly ate a peach last night and from the moment the first morsel hit my mouth I knew it would be the next day’s topic of gratitude.
The headline is this: The ________ juice of an unexpected peach.
Also: Okay oh my god just now as I was typing that sentence with the blank in it, I finally DID remember the word. The word is “unruly.” But I tried to remember it at least fifteen minutes ago, and maybe fifteen minutes doesn’t seem like a long time, but I assure you, fifteen minutes is an eon in the world of a working mother, where, truly, every moment matters.
And I am pretty sure the reason “unruly” vacated my mind is because my brain is what I have been describing as “squishy,” and that is because I am pregnant.
I am not precisely sure how pregnant I am, because I am carrying my second child, and my first child ensures I do not spend any time idly engaging with countdown apps or pregnancy forums. Plus I know the timing is unpredictable regardless. But I also know that in a couple months I will be a couple weeks away from birthing a daughter.
And I also know I am having a hard time.
I would not describe my first pregnancy as magical, but there is some truth to the concept of ignorance as bliss. Because I did really not know what to expect (despite regular use of an app called What to Expect), I was able to maintain a certain amount of Zen. Even as my belly got larger and my body got slower. Even as the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly consumed all sense of external normalcy just weeks before my due date. Even as, one morning, I woke up with the worst period cramps ever and didn’t realize for almost twelve hours that I was already in labor.
There is a story that the way to boil a frog is to put it in a pot and turn the water up gradually. Because, like, if you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water it will immediately jump out, but if the water is comfortable, and only becomes gradually more uncomfortable, the frog will stick it out until—too late. You’re cooked.
I learned recently that the story of how to boil a frog is factually incorrect. But it’s still the most apt metaphor I know to describe motherhood.
(I would say “parenting” instead of “motherhood,” but, 3.5 years in, I am confident fathers are having a different experience.)
All of which to say, I now live in a pot of boiling water, and it’s too late to jump out, and I don’t even WANT to jump out—but I would really appreciate it if the heat could decrease. Like, does the water have to be actively boiling?
I was reading the other day about “mom rage” and the various critiques of what it is, if it even is a thing.
I think it’s a thing.
I think it’s a thing that happens to me when I have a prenatal appointment from 9-10:30 a.m., where I learn that I probably-don’t-but-maybe-could have gestational diabetes, so I’ll need to go in for a three-hour lab test ASAP just to be sure. And then after that I go straight to work, late, and work straight until after 5 p.m., minus a break to take a walk outside because exercise is increasingly nonnegotiable despite being increasingly uncomfortable. And then the exact moment work ends, my husband drives up with my mother-in-law and son in the car, and my son is crying because he has changed his mind about coming to dinner with my MIL and me; he only wants to go inside and watch a show, just the two of us. And my husband is leaving because he is on a civic committee that started its meeting twenty minutes ago, and it takes me all of my patience and slow breathing to calmly bribe my child into staying in the car so we can go out to dinner, which actually goes pretty well, because my bribe was an effective one—he is allowed to watch cartoons the entire time. And then when we get home, after we drop of my MIL and wait for her to bring us a box of peaches I didn’t think I wanted (but yes, I did, it turns out), I remember that my husband won’t be home till later, because after his meeting he is going out to dinner with a friend.
Dinner. Starting at 6:45 p.m. So I’d reasonably expect home around, what, 8:30? 9? Of course by then I’m already asleep, because I had insomnia the night before and since I bedshare with my three-year-old it’s very easy to pass out the same time he does, especially if no one else is around to provide an incentive for getting back up. So it’s not actually until after 4:30 a.m. that I see the text from my husband that says “Hey babe. Think I’ll be out for a few more hours.” He sent it at 8:09 p.m., but the reason I don’t see it till 4:42 is because I don’t check my phone when I get up to pee around 11 p.m. and then I am lucky enough not to have to pee a second time before dawn, but I do wake up when I heard the alarm get disengaged, and that’s when I realize it’s my husband coming home. At 4:42 a.m.
This is a larger issue, his pattern of exercising full freedom while I exist amid rather rigid, certainly consistent, constraints. You could argue some of my constraints are self-imposed. And it’s true that we have different interests—nothing about staying out past 4 a.m. even remotely appeals to me. But you know what does appeal to me? Feeling a semblance of equality in the parenting partnership.
I vowed to myself this morning that I would not make a big deal out of my husband’s inconsiderate choices—that he would stay out till dawn without a heads up, without an assurance of his safety, and then wake me upon his return. But neither could I condone his behavior, and so I chose to stay calm and ignore him.
It’s distressingly easy to ignore your spouse when your child is present. Each of you can interact directly with the child without actually addressing each other. And I wasn’t deliberately trying to give him the cold shoulder or the silent treatment. I just knew there was absolutely nothing kind I could say, because I did not feel okay, and I wouldn’t feel okay until I had a goddamn minute of personal space, which would not be accessible to me until he took our kid to school.
Lucky for me, I already had plans (appropriately scheduled, many days ago, in our shared online calendar) to meet a friend for coffee, so I just went ahead and left the house a little early, took my leave and came to this coffee shop down the block and figured I’d go ahead and take care of #thankyouthursday before getting into the meat of my day.
And then I couldn’t remember the word “unruly.”
Enraging, indeed.
Love > fear,
(M)om
Update: Once I eventually became able/willing to have a calm conversation with my husband, I learned that he actually returned home around 11 p.m.—when he said he would. But because he had been in a location that smelled like smoke, he opted to sleep in our converted garage, returning to the main house after 4 a.m.
Receiving this added knowledge/context substantially reduced my rage. Although I nonetheless had to point out that, since he did not communicate after 8:09 p.m., it was still true that from my perspective he went to dinner and just…never came home.