PARENTING || HANNAH LEE

-Parenting-

It’s harder than it looks – this parenting thing. Not that it looks easy. It doesn’t. But it looks doable, ya know?

Almost immediately, you’re confronted with all the ways you’re going to screw this up. Feeling prepared to parent because you’ve rocked a few kids to sleep, or because mommy and daddy love each other very much, or because you’ve done a lot of research, is like believing you can run a marathon successfully because you can tie your own shoes, pin your own bib, and then follow the race on TV.

I don’t like running, so I’ve never felt a runner’s high. I have felt a parenting high – and also the parenting equivalent of what I assume is like the excruciating pain in every fiber of your body.

There is no scheduled training for parenting. No 6 month preparation of increasing difficulty. In fact, your 6 (or 9) months in advance are consumed with preparing to line up at the starting line. Of course it’s not impossible. Of course you’re not totally blind to what is coming. But ready? You are not. That is impossible.

Not even when you start marathon 2 or 3 or 4. Because every course is a little different – different people bumping into you, different air to breathe in, and even a different you.

There’s no finish line – just mile markers of success and places where you didn’t know how to go on. You’ve signed up to run indefinitely, feel immeasurably, and be humbled continually.

The love though.

The love.

It’s more intoxicating that it looks.