In the inspired words of Kevin McAllister, “This is it. Don’t get scared now.”
I recently revisited some writing that I had tucked away. It is personal and it never saw the light of day for any other eyes than my own. I wrote it for my children, when they were much younger, imagining the dreams I would have for them as they grew older. I said some really nice things about my husband in a round about way and realized he had never read this work either. I sent it to him. He reminded me that I’m good at this writing thing. He reminded me that he still thinks I should share my prose more widely. Friends and other family members have encouraged me in the same way. While flattering, this has continued to be the scariest part of writing. But, I am good at it. I love it. I’d be damn happy to get paid for it. So here’s the leap. My piece, for my boys, to start this thing up. It’s a little PG-13 with the language, but they know their mama has a potty mouth.
When I’m Sixty-Four (Not the Beatles Song)
Written By: Rachael Coughlin
We were the best parents before we had kids. We knew just what we’d do, what we would tell you, how we would discipline you if you threw a fit in a restaurant, just how we’d gently coax you into becoming well behaved model children that other parents would marvel and envy about. We envisioned our parenting awesomeness and how we’d skillfully place one hand on our hip, level a knowing look at you and you would giggle and retreat from whatever nonsense you had gotten yourself into before going back to being the most amazing children that ever lived. Before you joined us in our parenting journey, your father and I would sip our evening cocktails while preparing a meal together. Background music and conversation wafted with the smells of that evening’s culinary creation and we would talk about how great we would be as parents. How hard could it be? Give the kids rules, we thought. Tell them no. Teach them right from wrong. We totally could do this thing.
And then, after we decided how great we would be, it turned out it wasn’t really all that easy to make a baby in the first place, even if you were totally sure that you would be the best parent ever and even if you really, really wanted to have a baby. We knew what to do and we did it often. We wrote notes on the calendar and checked my temperature and tried to figure out the mysterious rhythm of my fertile days. It was scientific. It was a bit weird at times. It was also heartbreaking after six months of none of it working out just like we planned. That was our first lesson in: “you know nothing and you can’t plan this shit out.”
After the first of you finally figured out how to grab hold and stay on board, the pregnancy progressed as expected with bouts of nausea, a severe case of cankles, a strong desire for salt and lemonade and a strong aversion to physical touch. I was huge. Both times actually. Both of you made me huge and round and puffy and giant. And doughy and marshmallow like. I did not have cute pregnancies. It was more like I was minding my own business and then all of a sudden another me came along and ate former me and everything else that wasn’t stapled down.
And, apparently I hadn’t learned my lesson about trying to plan shit out because I imagined my birth plan and the way I would heroically push you into this world with solid legs hiked high up to my ears and your dad’s hand squeezed tightly in my own, while beads of sweat pooled on my strained brow. I imagined me, red faced and spent, digging deep, breathing through the pain, giving one last push and hurling you forth from my loins as nature god-damned intended. That is not how it went. The first of you, dragged my tired ass through a thirty six hour birthing experience that began with drugs and ended with a surgeon pulling you out of an incision in my abdomen. We worked on it, but together we just couldn’t do it the old fashioned way and then we got cute, matching infections and you had to be sliced out. Almost two years later, when the second of you wanted to leave the womb, your dad and I checked into the hospital and a couple hours later you were sliced out too. Both times I smelled my flesh burning and both times I had an irrational fear of falling off the table while I couldn’t use my legs.
The next five years are a blur.
But here we are. Five years later and you guys are not the fitful, screaming, poop hurling babies you once were. You are young people in this big world full of ideas and questions and stories and questions. So many questions. And now, firm in our “we don’t know shit” parenting style, your dad and I are about as proud as we can be. We are not the best parents that we thought we would be. You aren’t the best kids either if we are being honest, but you are our kids and we love the ever living guts out of you. I mean, we loved you before we ever saw you or met you and I am still at a loss for how it is possible to love someone so much that you’ve yet to meet, but that’s what you guys did to us. And maybe you notice it, or maybe you don’t, but your dad and I do that thing that parents do where one sees you doing something and then signals to the other to look and see what you are doing in that moment because whatever it is, it is so damn cute, or sweet, or awful that the one parent can’t let the other one not witness it too. Your dad and I often catch each other’s eye from across the room and smile at one another. You guys do that. You bring a joy to the everyday scuffle that is our home and lives.
The other night, after dinner was over and maybe you had been excused or maybe it was one of those nights when you leaned back slowly and slipped off your chair and out of eyesight and kind of just lurked off to your bedroom, your dad and I sat talking. I was across the table from him. It was hot, like really hot and I had my hair pulled up in an attempt at the messy bun thing, but probably more like a hot mess bun and probably already in my pajamas: the usual combination of your dad’s old boxer shorts and a tank top with a stretched out sports bra underneath. The point is, I wasn’t dressing to impress at the moment. We started on one of those odd married couple conversations that start somewhere else and end with a discussion about what the other one will do if the one dies suddenly or tragically. Really morbid shit that pops up once in a while. I was telling your dad that if anything ever happened to me, I’d want him to be happy and if that meant finding someone else to be married to, I would want that for him. He paused, then and he looked up at me. And he said maybe the best thing anyone has ever said to me in my life. He said, “I don’t know. I don’t think I’d get married again. I mean, I don’t think it could be any better than this.” And he was totally serious. He wasn’t even making one of our weird, couple that’s been married for a long time kind of snarky jokes or anything. He was dead serious. Fucking swoon right!? My face lit up I’m sure. I couldn’t even help the cheesy smile that gave away my joy immediately. Sitting there in five year old pajamas, with sweaty armpits and hair falling all over the place, I felt like the bell of the freaking ball. Here’s this man, that I love, that has seen me at my worst, that has watched his children be cut out of me, that has cried with me over money and mortgage payments and diaper rash and emergency room visits. That checked my stitches in the shower for me when my postpartum belly was too floppy for me to see beyond, that held my hair when I puked, that cradled me in his arms even when I had just hours before called him names and flung hurtful insults at him. And he, who I had also seen at his worst, when I stood by him when he quit smoking and entered a brief period of insanity, when he had curled on the floor in the fetal position with agony over passing kidney stones, when he had left the house through the backdoor after a fight and who I had held in his lowest moments of uncertainty as well; he believed it couldn’t get any better than what we have. Despite all of those things, those bad days and moments, the trying times and poor decisions, he wants exactly what we have and nothing else. And so do I. We are lucky in love, but I want you to know, we also work hard on it. We know the “we” that started the “us” that is our family is really, really important.
You will be my age when I’m sixty four. You will be walking around who knows where, doing who knows what, living in your mid thirty year old skin, old enough to have seen slices of history, felt love and heartbreak, seen the good and bad of this world, yet young enough to still have no idea, no clue to what the future holds. Young enough to still be living each day, doing your best, earning the money you can to support your life and maybe the life of a family. I hope you’ll have the love I have. I hope whomever your partner is when you are the age I am now, that they love, honor and respect you as your dad and I love, honor and respect each other. I hope we gift you that legacy. When I’m sixty-four, you will be the age I am right now. I hope for you travel and experience and long nights walking drunk down cobblestone alleys with your best friends, relishing the opportunity to live. I wish for you mistakes and failure and hardship, so when you get what you want, you know you’ve earned it and you know how to appreciate it. I wish for you work that makes you happy and brings you peace and purpose; more than something that just keeps your hands busy. I wish for you a world to live in that is tolerant and caring, but I know that that is a tall order. I wish for you.
And when I’m sixty four, I will still wish for you. If I’ve done my job right at all, you won’t need me anymore. You won’t need me to fill your cup with water, or to help you brush your teeth. You won’t need me to sing you a song before bed or wipe your ass. You won’t need me to cut your quesadilla into eighteen pieces or play Lego ninjas with you. You won’t need me to drive you here, there and everywhere, or settle your brotherly feuds. You may have your own people that need you to do all of those things. And I hope for you to live in those moments and know that you won’t always be needed either. And that maybe being needed is less a drudgery of parenthood and more a blessing that lasts for only a small window of time. I’ll try to remind me and your dad about that too because I think I may blink and be sixty four. I think I’ll be there before I know it and my babies that turned to crawling up the wall toddlers, who turned into inquisitive children who will turn into independent teenagers, will turn into good men that won’t need their mom and dad so much. But I hope that even if you don’t need us, you’ll want to be around us and you’ll know that so much of what your dad and I are proud of in this life, our greatest accomplishment is the two of you.
Rachael Coughlin 