Made From Concentrate

Parenthood is intense.  Sometimes it’s funny and sweet and sad and scary, but from the moment a child pops from the womb into your arms into your home then to a home of their own, it’s intense.  You let that kid right into your heart, and your life is forever changed.  I hear things and have done things I never imagined before I became a parent, like when my pediatrician advised me that my baby probably has pinworms and the only way to tell for sure was to wait until nighttime, shine a light on the baby’s rectum and look for the pinworm’s head, at which point I was then advised to grab it and pull it right out of the baby’s butt.  THAT is some intense shit.

FYI:  My baby did not have pinworms, and we do have a different pediatrician.

I recall a precise moment where my life took a turn at which I spent a good amount of time doing things like documenting world-wide trips made by a paper boy named Flat Stanley.  Never before I became a parent did I consider that vacations taken by a laminated paper-and-crayon man would be a thing.  Yet there I was, printing out and labeling pictures of Flat Stanley in front of the Birdnest in Beijing at the Olympic Village, on top of the Great Wall of China, and in front of a panda at the Shanghai Zoo.

I think about my husband, who found himself reading together with our child on family sex-education night about how “A woman has a clitoris at the top of her vagina to experience pleasure during sex.”  Intense.

It never stops.  Last night at dinner, I was rummaging around my purse for a stick of gum, and this is what I came up with:

Rich experiences, these are.  Fodder for funny conversations, material for blog posts, and unique memories – all parents have them.  A life with children, no matter how you came upon them, is not for the faint of heart, impatient, or humorless.  It’s a consistently intense learning experience which may be made easier if you consider that at any moment, you might find an athletic cup in your purse.

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