Dear Young Married Couple –

Dear Young Married Couple –

The fact that I am in this position–to write this post–is somehow surreal to me.  The fact that I am “old”–with kids and stretch marks and that young people look at me with pity in their young eyes–is bizarre. When did this happen to me? Wahhh!

So you are young. And spry. And full of time and life and energy. And I have a five year old child! And a six year old!  When did THAT happen?

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And, Young Married Couple.. I see the look in your eyes–those judging eyes–belonging to people who have never been actually pooped upon in real life. Pooped on by other humans.

Or maybe it’s fear.  (Either way, you are clueless. And count your blessings while you can! Muahahhaha!)

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On Saturday night, the Expert and I pulled our Nissan Leaf to a Great Clips hair salon (salon, being a term used quite loosely) with the kids.

Yes, that’s right. Damn right. I was at a Great Clips at 6:00 on a Saturday night.

As I am getting my bangs trimmed and telling the stylist, “No, no I REALLY do believe that you are an expert on bangs,” I look over at my gray-headed (but handsome) husband, who looks so tired.  And I am remembering back only a few short years ago when I would pay a shit-ton of money for my hair and be perfectly happy about it.  But something happened in the past few years.  And now, I am in a Great Clips with the whole family.

And I have a flashback, sitting in that chair, and I smile.

But only briefly.

Because the kids are literally pulling a cash register receipt and dancing with it, like they are baby stars of Cirque du Soleil.  The Expert and I are sitting in the chairs, robed, and I cannot figure out:
1) why we are both getting cut at the same time, and
2) why neither of us give a rip that the kids are destroying a Great Clips.

(Okay, so maybe this is a slight exaggeration.)

We have become those parents ….the ones we used to smirk about.

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At some point, if you are a parent, you are sitting at a restaurant thinking, “What in the hell happened to me?”

I love my parents. But I’ll be damned why they didn’t warn me how hard parenting is. NO ONE told me. No one said, “Hey, you’ll never enjoy eating out—ever again!”  Or, “Did you seriously know that you will be within a toilet paper’s thin distance of human poop that is not your own for, like, a span of seven years?” (And that’s only for one child – keep the fun coming for more years than that…!)

Come on! How is this even real? Poop on my fingers???! Again!?

The Expert is still getting his hair cut.

I was released, meaning that it was up to me to wrangle the baby performance artists back into our electric car.

I paid for all four haircuts. (“Fifty-seven dollars?! I thought this was Great Clips. More like ‘Great Rips’,” I mutter under my breath. Also part of this tale—my transition to extreme cheapness…)

I try to coax the demons children out to the car.  I threaten them. I beg them.  I threaten the boy child and I pick up the girl one.

They are tired.  Stella had her birthday party earlier in the day.

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So seemingly innocent.
 (Another fascinating thing about this motherhood thing… birthday parties. Wow. No words. Heinous. Sorry, I said “no words.”  No words. )

Did I mention that the kiddos are tired? I am tired.  And I am literally walking/carrying  two giant, floppy drunk fishes out of a Great Clips.

The door to the Great Clips is propped open, and I see you, oh, Young Married Couple, sitting in the chairs… laughing at me.  You are smirking.

Because you can hear my pain and my MOM voice, “Get in the car before I wear you out, you do this right now, you are in trouble mister, I am going to take away your bookbag, yeah, that’s right your BOOKBAG! do not look at me like that…”

And if that it’s enough… then you, Young Married Couple, see that I push my crazy children into a car the size of a box. The Leaf.

At this same time, you also see the leftover party balloons in the Leaf, and three (not one, not two–but THREE) of them fly out of the car.

And the Swim Bike Girl Child screams louder. “My balloooooooooons!!!!”

A bona fide clown car.

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The Girl Child screams, “I don’t like YOU Mommy!”

When the young couple sees this–they lose their shit laughing.  I can see them through the glass.  I have a front row parking space at Great Clips! (Winning. Oh, and we checked in to Great Clips using the Mobile App! Oh, snap,)

Through the window, I glare at the young couple as I blare Taylor Swift on the radio and check my Instagram, waiting on my spouse.

Then the Expert’s hair cape is removed, and he walks out of the “salon.”

He opens the passenger door to our electric car. And slumps in, exhausted, just as the Swim Bike Girl Child screams from the back seat, “Mommy – you are stupid!” (As she is surrounded by her birthday presents.)

And the Boy Child says, “Daddy, Mommy doesn’t love us!”

And you, Young Married Couple cannot even contain yourself–it’s the uncontrollable laughter that one gets in church. One time my mom and I caught the giggles, and I’ll never forget it–slap dab in the middle of church. Young Married Couple, you are laughing like in church.

Is it really that funny? I want to crawl in a hole.

We are still in the parking lot.  I am in the driver’s seat, and I ask, “Where do you want to eat?”

The Expert says nothing. He’s tuned out the world.  I sigh, and I sit there, staring out the window, and my eyes pass back to you, Young Married Couple.

You appear to have forgotten about us. The old farts with the two bratty munchkins. You’re holding hands. Awwww. So sweet.

I look over at my husband of twelve years.  The man… the man, who I was sitting next to about fifteen years ago… in a Great Clips… watching the same scenario unfold with a set of parents and their two kids. And I think back to another time–in a restaurant where we watched a seven-year old boy freak out when he spilled water on himself.  How we judged that mother with eyes like, “Oh em gee. How LAME is your kid! Get ahold of it woman.”

And now, fifteen years later.  Here we sat. Outside of the Great Clips. In the insanity of the mini car.  Beeep beeeeep.

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The Expert looked at me.  Our eyes drifted again  to the young couple inside. So young, and rested.

We looked back at each other.  A smile crept across my brain first. Like a ripple which spread to the corners of my mouth.

Then I started laughing. Hysterically.

The Expert joined me, and nodded towards you, Young Married Couple.

“Poor bastards,” the Expert said.

“I know.  They have no idea what’s coming to them.”

He smiled.

“Should I streak through the Great Clips and show them really what’s in store?”

We laughed, and I pulled out of the parking deck… listening to the sweet hell that was our screaming children, in our tiny electric car, full of frustration, full of internal f-bombs, yet somehow full of love—full of exactly what we never thought would happen TO us.

And being perfectly perfect and thankful for it all.

29 Responses

  1. Truth. All of it. Thanks SBM!
    Oh, and at least you gave your kids a birthday party. Mom of the year here — I bribed my 9 year old twins with a Toys R us shopping spree to forgo the party 🙂

  3. So so funny. I actually apologized to my sister for all the mean and judgy things I thought about her as I watched her with my niece. Then I had Ruby, apologized and stopped judging. 🙂

  4. Many moons ago, before kids, my husband and I overheard a dad at a baseball game yell at his son to stop climbing on the railings. He screamed, “Don’t do that. Stupid people do that. Don’t be stupid.” We were shocked. How could anyone talk to their kids that way? We talked about that dad for YEARS afterwards. Then we had kids. Now I think about all the times strangers look at me and think, “how could she talk her kids that way?” I am so sorry stranger dad at the baseball game. So, so sorry!

  5. So so so true. I smile at the mom at the store with a screaming toddler, because I remember that oh so well. Although I do not tell them that the brattiness of a 9 year old is to come…. [shutter]

    As for birthday parties…. Heinous. My twins wanted a party AT HOME! What craziness is this?! I had to bribe them with a Minecraft cake and party for 25 (normal they get 10) if they’d just please let me have it somewhere else. Someplace that will set up, entertain, and clean up, for the low, low price of $5,940… Lol 🙂

  6. Oooooweeee you have some nice timing. This was me today, except no hubby in sight. Just picture two naked little boys screaming and climbing on lockers in the woman’s locker room at the gym after swimming lessons…. And then continuing their shrieking efforts in the gym kid care. Only to have the kid care employee, eyes downcast, search me out on the treadmill as they had an “uncontrollable issue”. Ahhh geeze.

  7. I sit and read and cry. For you. Because one day you will be where I am. My youngest is 24 (still lives at home, thankfully) and wonder where all the years went. Where are the open-mouth kisses of my one year old? Where are the days of Mommy knowing everything and if she didn’t DAD did? Where are the dinners that start off innocently enough then one of the children start quoting the Lion King? The dinners where Dad says enough but no one listens. The dinners he finally gets it and starts to sing hakuna matata? The days teaching them to drive. THE DAYS TEACHING THEM TO DRIVE A STICK SHIFT? The days you prayed for silence? 10:30pm and prayed for any word “please make it home safely!!”
    I sit and cry for you because it will go so quickly. You will blink and kiss your granddaughter, grandson.
    Wondering “where did the time go?”
    Don’t be their friend, be their Mom. Friendship will come later – I promise.

  11. One of the best ever! My hubby was laughing too! Ditto x 10 with our 8 and 10 year old.

  15. I remember being very judgy about kids not wearing coats in the extreme cold, and now I have a 13 year old who wears the same dang light fleece jacket every day whether it’s 50 degrees or 20 degrees. That couple has no idea what their future holds…

  16. Oh how true….yet somehow you’re going to miss this some day. Although then you will have all the time for training you want says the mom with the youngest in his senior year of high school. Love love love your tri blogs, but this one is so universal despite that most will not agree that parenting is NOT so fun and fulfilling sometimes for fear of being labeled “that horrible mother.”

  17. I absolutely love your posts, as a single mom of now a 14 year old teenager………..I have forgotten about all those horrible times. In fact, I’ve mostly forgot how I even managed. They grow up too fast, and there is a time when you look back and would just have “one” of those days back 🙁 I’m not looking at an empty next in a few years and it scares the hell out of me !!! Imagine that…………

  19. Your comment made me cry and smile. My kids are 9, 6 and 1. We laugh about deciding to have the 1 year old when we realized we didn’t have a baby anymore and we missed having one. Now we’re exhausted by a baby again and I shake my head when I’m up with her in the middle of the night thinking “I could be sleeping right now, if we only had a 9 year old and 6 year old”. So, so, SO worth it, though, of course. I saw a quote recently that I think sums it up perfectly “The days are long but the years are short.”

  20. 7 days a week in our house and I LOVE IT (mostly after “the (insert word crying baby, food fight, lost child, climbing child, etc)” Hell I set them up for failure most of the time…”Oh you want to jump on the couch-go ahead see what happens…”

    WOULDN’T HAVE IT ANY OTHER WAY!

  21. The ego-puncturing that is having young children has such a wonderful result: We just don’t care what the young couples, young singles, old couples, whatver–think. Who knew how much work it was to be that vain? Don’t miss it.

  22. I love how my vision of me being a perfect mother many years ago has turned into just being glad no one was seriously injured during that day. Married for almost 15 years with a 9 and 5 year old.

  25. This made me cry, also… my youngest is a senior in high school. Soon she’ll be gone on her own adventures. Wow.

    Oh and Rebecca, do you read The Happiness Project blog? I’m drawing a blank on her name, darn it, but that’s her quote and she has a little video about it, also 🙂

  26. OMG, I think I pulled something laughing so hard at this post! Fantastic! I so feel your pain – although my son is 11 now – so we are in between – no more poop, but plenty of “GOD Mom, you’re EMBARRASSING MEEEEEE!” (which of course just makes me want to embarrass him all the more – I know, I know, I’m going to hell and will have to pay his therapy bills at some point). But I wouldn’t go back to the “young married couple” days for all the Ironman medals in the world. Love, Love, LOVE your blog Meredith!!

  27. And someday – sooner then you can imagine – you will be the older married couple. Alone again, feeling a little like newlyweds. When you see younger marrieds wrangling a couple of tired kiddos out in public you will smile and remember warmly when YOU were that family.
    And finally you will be sooooo glad your own kiddos are grown!
    For everything there is a season.
    Love your blog, Meredith.

  28. I will never ever forget that day in church that we could not stop giggling. You my child, are a mess. I love you.

  29. Pingback: Breaking the Bank - Swim Bike Mom

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