What Carrie Bradshaw taught me about being a parent

(It's not what you think.)

Vincent van Gogh / First Steps, after Millet

1890

In my younger, more ridiculous years, and like nearly every other college-aged girl I knew, I was obsessed with Carrie Bradshaw. (I say “ridiculous” not because it was ridiculous to be obsessed with Carrie Bradshaw*—because I think that’s just a rite of passage at some point in every woman’s life— but because I was just an altogether ridiculous kind of little woman, back then.  And I say “more ridiculous” because, I am still somewhat ridiculous in my own, somewhat more refined, way.) But anyway, back to my college-aged histrionics that I convinced myself were charming and coquettish and feminine…

I inhaled melodrama like it was my back-up Albuterol inhaler. Any impassioned speech about the desperation of love from Carrie or really any iteration of her via the CW network quietly arranged itself into my schema of just what trueeee loveeeee was supposed to feel like. I had a little notebook of quotes about love that I kept, describing how it would most assuredly feel when I fell in love.  I was convinced that when it finally happened, it would be because I had met someone who incited within me the culmination of all these ideas. Here’s a small selection of the quotes, echoes of which, I was convinced, would be the only compulsions that would “induce me to matrimony”:

“I will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love, above all. Not the artful postures of love, but the love that overthrows life. Un-biddable, ungovernable like a
riot in the heart and nothing to be done come ruin or rapture. Love as there has never been in a play. I will have love …” -Shakespeare In Love

“You have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on.” -The one, the only, Mr. Darcy

“Each time you happen to me all over again.” –Newland, Archer, The Age of Innocence

“And if you’ll let me, I will keep you here inside the stars. I will love the sound of my sheets- oh, you have moved beneath them.” -Rickie Lee Jones

“You touch me- I hear the sound of mandolins; you kiss me- with your kiss my life begins. You’re spring to me; all things to me. Your life itself. Like a leaf clings to a tree, oh my darling- cling to me.” -Nina Simone

“I’d like to be the first white hair upon your head, your cherry pie, your daily bread. I’ll cook for free, I’ll make your bed…I’d like to be the owner of the zipper on your jeans… The beginning, the end, and everything in between.” -Shakira (Aggressively shaking my head at this one, now.)

“Oh but if I had the stars from the darkest night, and the diamonds from the deepest ocean, I’d forsake them all for your sweet kiss, for that’s all I’m wishin’ to be ownin’.”
-Bob Dylan

“No love, no glory.” -Damien Rice

“I wanted you to fight for me! I wanted you to say there is no one else that you could ever be with and that you would rather be alone than without me. I wanted the Lucas Scott from the beach that night; telling the world that he’s the one for me.”-One Tree Hill

… Hopefully these paint a somewhat vivid picture of my highly-romanticized, ever-ardent twenty-something heart.

…She says to herself, really trying to believe it, and then continues furiously jotting down love quotations in her tiny little notebook.

But, back to Carrie. In one episode of Sex And The City I can still quote by heart, Carrie tells Alexander Petrovsky that she wants “Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t live without each other love…” I used this schema for most of my dating life. If my significant other did not make me yearn with every fiber of my passionate heart, keep me up at night and sick with longing, well then it simply wasn’t true love. I tarried through numerous iterations of this trope to feed that cinematic, Piscean part of me, for yearssss. (It is no *great* surprise that not one of these contrivances at love ended in marital bliss.) Then, I met my husband. And quickly, very quickly, I realized that I had gotten all of it completely wrong. True love, real love, wasn’t any of those things, at least not for me. It was so very different. Of course in the beginning it was many of the usual fluttery things—butterflies and daydreaming, and replaying every conversation over and over in blissful reverie. But as time persisted and true colors went a-flyin’, I learned that real love for me was quiet, steady, safe, anchoring, and a welcome and supportive place for me to grow in whatever direction I needed or wanted to. It demanded nothing aside from a desire to be the best version of myself.

And so we got married. And then, I got pregnant. And as if like clockwork, I fell back into my old ways— musing over and over about that moment of all moments, when your very own baby is placed on your chest. I imagined inhaling his sweet smell and nesting him into the crook of my neck, a single, glistening tear streaming down my cheek and baptizing him into the world of being my son. Again, I found myself tarrying… only this time it was in reverie, ruminating longingly on how my heart would bloom so big that it would fill the whole expanse of my ribcage. Absolutely I would cry and cry, tears of elation, because that’s mothers always cry when they finally get to meet their baby. …Right? This was the expectation I had placed on myself, but it was also one that I believe had been set for me by the euphoria culture surrounding birth stories. Before I actually gave birth, I had only heard about how the love just gushes right out of you. (Much like everything else about labor and delivery, tbh.) I had always felt like I would just instantly connect with my babies, because that’s the kind of human I am— those soul-to-soul human connections are everything to me. How could I not instantly connect with one that I actually grew myself??

“I can’t help soaring up on the wings of anticipation…”

-If there was ever an Anne Shirley quote for me, it’s this one

But, alas. I didn’t collapse into love for him. I didn’t feel that instant connection I had heard about and longed for and daydreamed about for nine long months. Much to my dismay and guilt that I’ve since (almost completely) resolved, it took a little bit longer for that to happen for me. I did love him, of course, but it was definitely more obligatory than anything else. Those first few hours and days were a dutiful kind of love. Yes, he was precious, so very precious, and beautiful, and smelled Heavenly, but I kept waiting for that love to envelope me and… it just didn’t. I did cry, like I had anticipated. But the tears were so different. They were tears of overwhelm, and guilt, and confusion, and gratitude that he was finally here and healthy, and then more guilt, because why oh why wasn’t I drowning in love for my new baby? It seemed so antithetical to every part of who I am. It’s very hard for me to write these words, but I think it’s important to be honest about them. I think it’s important for mothers-to-be to hear birth stories like this one, because though I didn’t get to have all those feels I wanted initially, I still got my happy ending. The more hours this little creature was in my possession and my care, the deeper the love grew, the more attached I became, and before I knew it, I was consumed by love for this tiny little being that I literally unearthed from the loam within me. I can’t believe I’m quoting John Greene, but, falling in love with my baby boy was like falling asleep: “slowly, and then all at once.” It’s as if I just woke up one morning and I literally couldn’t live without him. I couldn’t imagine a life without his little face beaming back at me every single day.

And so, to borrow another phrase from Carrie, “just like that”, the love she was talking about so fervently became the love I felt for my little boy. And it happened all over again when my little girl came. (For those mothers-to-be out there, it came a little faster the second time around.) It is ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t live without each other love. And it is the most blessed thing.

It is ridiculous because they literally throw up all over you and poop all over everything and rob you of precious sleep and your free time is long-gone and your ability to just go see a movie willy-nilly (or do anything willy-nilly) is definitely gone. You want a spontaneous pedicure? Not now, not ever. Feel like a quiet little stroll through the aisles of Target with a small popcorn and a cherry coke? Dream on, Lady. Inconvenient because, well, literally everything you do now is centered around them. Meals, activities, bedtime, sex, thinking a coherent thought, everything. No more spontaneous ANYTHING. Unless by spontaneous you mean a fun, off-the-cuff little jaunt that only seems spontaneous because you already have the stroller, sunblock, diapers and wipes, any number of discarded sartorial items, and copious amounts of snacks and random sippie cups strewn about the backseat of your car, so you kind of already have everything you need. In the grossest way possible.

Consuming because of how often you feel like your heart couldn’t possibly be any bigger but it’s also somehow not big enough to hold all the love that exists? But, it’s not just the love that is consuming. It’s the thoughts, too. Thoughts like: Are they eating enough? Are they eating enough of the right things? Did I give them their vitamins?Have they watched too many shows today? When is the last time we said a prayer as a family? Sports? Dance classes? Clyde needs more pants for church. Hazel needs more pajamas. I need to get contact paper for that fall craft I saw on Pinterest. How do I talk to Clyde about body safety while still protecting his innocence? Where the %$#@ is his %$#@ing baby?… And on and on and on it goes. Not to mention the intrusive thoughts… My own mama made an interesting observation about all of this when I was visiting her and my dad in Utah this past August. “You were such a carefree, little bohemian soul growing up. And now you worry so much! You have so much anxiety! I just never would have thought this is how you would be as a mom.” And she wasn’t wrong. I did used to care very little about very much, but now that I have these little heartbeats walking around outside my body, how can I possibly be insouciant about anything? I think the reason for the anxiety, though, is because the love is so consuming. The love that is evoked by even the smallest little things— like his slanted, little closed-mouth smile in the striving light this morning, or his mischievous little laugh, the gap in his teeth (or the extreeeeme lack thereof in other cases… *cough cough* Hazel), how tiny her biker shorts are, her dirt goatee after the park, the little smudged handprints on every. last. appliance., the talking to herself in her crib about “Cinduhrrella”, the “conversation” amongst monster trucks in the playroom— is utterly consuming. It is consuming in the way that breathing takes up your whole day and you don’t even think about it but you do it all day long. One of my favorite things Clyde has ever said is, “I love you as big as everything, Mom.” And that is the only way I’ve ever known how to explain it right back to him. For someone who sees everything regarding color and shape and size right now, saying I love him as big as everything, too, is really the only way to adequately convey to him the size and the shape and really, the color, too, of my love for him and for his sister. It is every color, every hue, every shade. It is small in how the expanse of the ocean is made up of the smallest drops of water, and how the smallest little parts about them ignite it, and immeasurable and amaranthine in how much it persists, sometimes despite all odds. It takes the shape of everything. Yesterday I walked by his little bike for the 67584983984348^th time and my heart just plummeted. My love for him is the shape of that little blue bike that he loves so much. It is the shape of the crescent swoop from his forehead to his nose. (My favorite thing lately is to run my index finger down the slope, back and forth. When he was six-months-old and all his little teeth were coming in, miles apart, I used to say that I wanted to live within those gaps, I loved them so much. Two nights ago, running my index finger up and down that kindred sweep, I thought, “I want to live on this little slope for the rest of my life.”) It’s the shape of his little backpack hanging up on the hook. It’s the shape of those aforementioned, extremely spaceless, shmooshed little teeth in Hazel’s mouth. Every time I see them, without fail, is like the first time seeing them and it sends me. It is the shape of her dough cheeks and her tiny little body and her little “push stroller” and her “Rella shoes”. It’s the color of all the little green treasures Clyde leaves all over the house for me because “green is [my] favorite color!” and the heinous shade of purple of her hand-me-down Rapunzel nightgown. It’s the color of his deep, dark, chocolate-chip eyes—the ones he got from his dad. It is every color and hue and shade because I can be filled with rose-colored shades of adoration in one moment and fire-engine shades of red rage the next because for the love of ALL THAT IS HOLY HAZEL CAN YOU PLEASE STOP WAILING LIKE THAT AND CLYDE IF YOU TOUCH YOUR SISTER ONE MORE TIME I AM CALLING THE SCARY WITCH AND SHE IS GOING TO BE YOUR NEW MOMMY.

…Anyway.

Can’t live without each other because, quite literally they couldn’t live without you, but also, because should anything ever, EVER, befall them, you wouldn’t be far behind. (see: Intrusive Thoughts.) I can’t even let myself think about something happening to either one of them without extreme panic setting in and having to pull over and suck on that aforementioned Albuterol inhaler.

There’s one more part of the quote that I didn’t share. Carrie ends her impassioned speech with: “I don’t think that love is here, in this expensive suite, in this lovely hotel, in Paris.” Turns out, that part of the quote turned out to be the most true. Because my love for my babies is that love she was looking for, and it isn’t found in fancy ass places like Parisian hotels. It is found in the simplest of places: our bed in the middle of the night, the kitchen table at dinnertime, the “big friendly tree” on our walk… dare I say, it is even found in the crayon hieroglyphics on the walls of our house. Because it has become the shape, size, and color of everything, it echoes everywhere. So when it comes right down to it, I did get the love Carrie, and that younger version of myself both sought after. Only it came in much, much tinier packages than I had imagined. The love didn’t gush out of me right away. But it gushes all the time, now. It didn’t engulf me in those first few moments, but oh, how it engulfs me now.

“I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle.”

-Marilynn Robinson, Gilead

*Afterward: Ok I have to admit that in rewatching the original series now, as a nearly 40-year-old woman, I do, indeed, find Carrie ridiculous. Lots and lots of second-hand embarrassment. But the clothes though. Her body! Her hairrrrrrruh (most seasons). AND THAT APARTMENT.

Thanks for reading!

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Frivolities:

I finished my P&P podcast/audiobook and I’m very, very sad. I think I am going to listen to it every fall because it really helped usher in the season for me. In my mourning, I remembered this snarky video. It has helped get me through my grief until I can devote 8932892 hours of uninterrupted time to watch the whole adaptation. (This one is very good, too.)

Speaking of Pride and Prejudice, I don’t know how I went all these years without making this apt and now quite obvious comparison…

I’m currently listening to THIS for book club and I’ve never been a man-hater (in theory) but my. gosh. I for sure would have been committed. Fun fact: Before Jay and I met, he saw a picture of me on our dear, dear mutual friend’s Instagram and asked her, “On a scale of 1-10, how crazy is that girl in your picture?” What I’m saying is, I’m grateful I was born in 1984 and not 1816…

I finished Britney’s book in two days, which is 48 hours longer than everyone I’ve talked to who's also listened. Guys. We did her dirty. Poor thing. My best friend and I saw Justin Timberlake in college and were both in agony for weeeeeeks afterward because he would never be our boyfriend. Turns out we were both better off. Maybe the least BF material a guy has ever been? And that’s including K-Fed!

We’ve had our dishes since we got married (aw!) and I still love them but we *do* get third degree burns every time we take them out of the microwave. These are dishwasher AND microwave safe! I’m sincerely trying to not make green be my whole personality but it’s not going well.

I’ve been wanting to get a chore chart for Clyde to help him feel the value of responsibility but mostlyyyy to keep my mom rage in check… I found a couple on Etsy I thought were cute: Cheap and not so cheap.

Speaking of mom rage, I love the emotion wheel so much. There are ones more exhaustive than this, but I loved the color scheme of this one. (And that probably tells you all you need to know about me and how I handle conflict…) But I find this wheel such an enterprising thing! I have really tried to teach Clyde early on about how to differentiate his emotions and how all emotions are ok, but all behaviors are not. I found this emotion wheel for smaller children (here is one for 5+) and I can’t wait to use it at home. We also really love this book that teaches all about feelings.

Again with the green. I don’t really wear heels ever but I might have to break out of my sandals-only shell for these beauties. And we cannot talk about pumps without mentioning Amy Winehouse (RIP). Her song F-Me Pumps is still one my my favorites. Ugh. I miss her. <3

We’ve been making these pumpkin pancakes on repeat.

My favorite sweater lately! Trying to figure out how I can wear these without getting divorced. So cute for fall and yes I am very sorry about the green again.

I spent way too long down going down this rabbit hole of cake toppers considering our birthdays are all over for the year. Sad! But also, praise be.

xo