I am a parent, but am I parenting?
Somehow, caring for Boeuf doesn’t really feel like I thought that word would. My mind associates “parenting” with discussions about condoms and grounding of the non-Zen variety, making sure hands are washed and vegetable negotiations. Not this part, as Boeuf lies in my lap in his food coma, “comoo.”
He is sixteen weeks old today. Truth be told, I feel like I am pre-parenting. Like I am taxiing, on the ramp. I have checked the gas, and gauges. The passengers and crew are seated and we are rolling, but we have not quite taken off. Maybe this plane takes off when Boeuf starts walking, or pulls himself up. Maybe parenting will really be happening when he starts talking. Or maybe I will embrace and appreciate it when uttering “I am a mom” ceases to feel like an act of ventriloquism.
I am a single mom, share-parenting with the dad, which I thought was an official term, but the “aw, that’s such a nice way to put it” that I elicit says not so. In this taxiing pre-parenting phase, I find myself trying to clear and swab and wax the decks, emotionally, to ensure that the parental units’ foundation of “Team Felix” is strong, healthy and bereft of da bull. Make sure that I have untangled as much as I can. Because I want to clear out my conscious bullshit, so that at least, whatever possible bullshit I manage to pass on later is unconscious, and at least I am being proactive.
I have time to think about parenting now. When Boeuf sleeps, when he is busy. It’s a perk of not having a partner right now; quiet. Maybe I am actually parenting when I realize I have stopped thinking about how I will do it and have morphed my musings to how I am doing it.
Or maybe I will never really recognize what it feels like to be parenting because I now am a parent and forevermore lack the objectivity.
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