Motherhood

I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but in junior high I yearned to have a boyfriend. (What? You too? Well, I’ll be darned.) But the objects of my affection never returned that affection, and so I continued to pine after unrequited love – building up the idea of a boyfriend as the months and years passed – until one evening at a hockey game in January 1988, those affections were returned. By a really hot older guy who was an avid skateboarder. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

Parenthood and pet ownership go hand-in-hand Our family has owned a hamster for five months, but not the same hamster. We try to be conscientious pet owners. We prepared for our new pet in the same way we prepared for a baby: we read a manual, created a lovely habitat, and bought all the accessories and accoutrements needed to make our new addition comfortable. Just like many expecting parents, we even gave our hamster a name ahead of time: Penny. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change On the way home we noticed that Penny was different; Penny had red eyes. It made her look a little evil and rat-like, but it didn’t matter. We were already in love with our odd little hamster.

We are so lucky. While we have no family in this part of the country, we are surrounded by lots of friends. Helpful, babysitting, diaper-changing friends. And as the famous saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. Having said that, we have tried to balance the kindness of our friends and their needs as well as our own. Did our childless friends really want my baby punted onto their hips the minute I walk into the door? Did my friends who were already weary from their own children want to play with mine just because I needed a break?

We nod at each other. It’s more than a greeting. It’s acknowledgment. We’re in this together. We’re Passenger Seat Parents. I put off letting my teen-aged son get his learner’s permit for as long as I could. But I finally grew weary of his constant reminders of how, you know, unfair it was when everyone else was allowed to drive. Personally, I wanted to keep him off the roads for many more years (I am not sure if it was for his protection or yours), but when he bought his own car, I knew it was time. He was, after all, almost 17 years old.