Through the Gauntlet

Lunching with sheep, originally uploaded by sundaykofax.

As we come up on 80’s first birthday, folks are asking me if we’re having a big party.

I’m taking my cue from the hilarious parenting book Be Prepared, which points out that you’ll just be stressed out and not enjoy it, so you should instead photoshop your baby’s head on a thoughtfully provided first birthday photo. It’s not like 80’s going to remember.

We happen to have friends coming to town that weekend, which will provide a special-event feeling. After thinking about what I might look back and wish we had done, or a tradition to begin, I decided that the one very birthday-like thing to do is provide the right environment for a traditional “smash cake into face” scenario.

I’ve been having waves of “oh wow, 80’s just about a year old” feelings. It seems impossible. There are two factors at work: this has felt like the slowest year of my life, and when 80 was a newborn I also spent a lot of time thinking about how some day she would be a year old, and it seemed devastatingly far in the future.

Along with the loads of advice and comments people made to us while I was pregnant, “it gets easier after the first year” and “it goes by so quick!” are the two most common. I hope it gets easier after the first year. This first year was HARD. Harder than I had anticipated. Of course, there have been many things that have made the difficulty more than worthwhile, but still. If it got easier, I’d be stoked.

The other comment, about how your children’s life goes by so quick, comes from parents of older or grown children. I can see how parents would feel this way, but I wasn’t sure what made this such a standard experience (and comment to me, which always feels like they’re lying to help me get through it). At this point, I think this past year has been both the slowest and the quickest year of my life. My friend Jake just happened to blog about this on a more general level:

“Time passes by quicker as you grow older as a function of perception of time in proportion to your lifetime; i.e. that 1 year in the life of a 10-year-old = 1/10, while for a 50 year old =1/50.”

It all makes sense then. I’m experiencing 80’s first year with her, which means every day is significant and memorable struggling to turn the page of a book, or put food into her mouth). At the same time, trying to look at MY year is nearly impossible because it’s intertwined with hers. I can remember a few events that aren’t 80 related — going kayaking with Jason for our anniversary, having too many margaritas with Margaret, and this series of similar moments during naps when I’d eat chocolate-covered almonds and read photography books. Mostly this has been 80’s year.

I’m OK with this. It was a pretty important year. As Jason and I keep saying, “Hey, we haven’t killed the baby yet!” 80 is turning out to be a happy little person, and she has zero scars. We’ve done our work. Jason told me I was a kick-ass mother yesterday, and I hold on to that as an intangible reminder that I’ve actually been working very hard. What I have to show for it is packaged into 20 pounds of duck-down-hair, blueberry-eyed, husky-voiced awesome.

So think of this when you talk to someone whose first child is turning one: they have made it through the gauntlet. The first year is over, and they will never be so terrified of a newborn again. They are inevitably thinking about their child, about how awesome they’re just starting to become (words! steps!) and their birthday, but they should be congratulated for having made it through this first year. They’ll never be first-time parents again — from now on, they’ll have a modicum of experience to guide them. It’s an intense year no matter what their life is like (stay-at-home parenting is hard; not being the SAHP is hard), and they should be recognized for it. Something like “A year old? Wow! You did such a good job! I hear it gets easier from here.”

For those parents just starting The Gauntlet, I’ll tell you my secret. There’s a guy who humor-blogged about each week of his daughter’s life. Reading those blog posts on my phone while nursing a newborn kept me sane.