The Great Adventure

So, you spend your twenties “discovering who you are;” carving out your “identity.” If you are of a particular millennial breed, perhaps you even create a “personal brand” around said identity, tailoring it, perfecting it like Michelangelo’s David or a clay bowl in one of those Color Me Mine pottery places that Charlotte York was eager to join. Perhaps you move to Paris to take that self-discovery process to the next level, and you start a dating blog. A few years later, you write a book loosely based on that blog. You analyze yourself into a stupor. By the time your early thirties roll around, you are convinced that you did it. You. Know. Who. You. Are. (Somebody who loves “adventures,” hates party brunches, needs quiet mornings and five hours of alone time a day.) You are defined. You are finite. 

You meet a guy. You’re uncannily attracted to him, and your values match up and he is equal parts challenging and kind and, by some miracle of God, it finally works. You date, you move in together, you get buckled down by the Forced Domestication that is the year of Covid. With nowhere to go and no more self-discovery to do, and two Baby Tickers going off in tandem, you decide to test out fate and try to have a baby. And, just like that, you (along with half a dozen of your closest friends-cum-future-enemies when you compete for preschool spots four years from now) are pregnant. And it’s hard to figure out how you feel about anything, because every emotion you have is overpowered by never-ending nausea and fatigue, mixed in with a touch of howthefuckdidigethere syndrome. The first trimester passes, the nausea and fatigue begin to depart, and the pounds begin to pile on, each one bringing on a certain amount of certainty. By the time you are ready to pop out the baby, you have processed, you have accepted, and you have established a solid vision of how you want this to transpire. You are going to be a Cool Mom, the one who still lives in jean shorts and has Real Interests and single friends. The kind that travels. The kind that structures her kid’s life around hers and not vice versa. The kind that detaches from her baby and travels alone with her partner. Once again, you have it. All. Figured. Out.  

At first, it kind of works. You have the baby and it’s as hard as they say, but it’s also pure love and adrenaline and the rest is easily forgotten. As soon as you submerge from the newborn learning curve, you race back to the “old you” – to her body, to her wardrobe, to her friends and deadlines and busy-busy attitude. You recruit your mom to help. You pick up a few small gigs that you work on while the baby sleeps, because that makes you feel more like those women who you hear in your podcasts, the ones who “do it all.” You read a book about sleep training and decide to do it once your baby hits three months. You are in control! You fit into your old jeans! You’ve got this!  

Simultaneously, you immerse yourself into your new role as a mother. There’s something new to learn every day and you try to catch up, filling your brain with new information. Before long, you find yourself speaking a new language, that of Doonas and Noonas and Lovery and Yumi and Holle and all the other “baby must haves” a 2021 mother is brainwashed into spending a small fortune on. You become more and more consumed by your daughter. You watch baby monitor-generated collages of her wake-ups like it’s the new season of Succession. You spend an hour perusing the produce section of Whole Foods for the best puree ingredients. You sign up for a Mommy and Me music class, the kind you used to make fun of but now almost enjoy because it makes your baby smile. You hate all the baby milestone comparisons, but you still come home and order a “sitting toy” that somebody in the class told you about – because, how can you not? 

A friend asks you for dating advice and you find yourself at a loss. It all now seems so long ago, and you can hardly remember it really, and it all works out for everyone anyway, doesn’t it? You speak on a Clubhouse talk about dating and you have no clue what you are saying, and you wish somebody would invite you to a panel on Noonas and Doonas instead. You find yourself judging childless people for daring to use the word “tired” – perhaps, they should try waking up four times a night and doubling as human pacifiers. Speaking of which, you drop your sleep training agenda: she will grow out of it, and you can’t bear to hear her cry. 

One day, somewhere between making a zucchini-cauliflower-basil puree and singing to the beat of the Hello Song of the baby music app, you realize that you haven’t had a solo morning in months. That “adventure” now involves not knowing what you are eating for dinner; that you are still breastfeeding and there is no childless vacation in sight; that the person you wanted so badly to preserve, to freeze in time with all her convictions and principles, has mutated into somebody you hardly recognize. A planner. A worrier. A mother – softer, rounder, more patient —as if the wiring of your body has become dedicated to servicing another human. Your ambitions, once driven by fulfillment and ego, are now driven by a stride for balance: How much can you give to yourself without taking away from her? You want to work more, but you don’t want somebody else to become the person your daughter smiles more brightly to. You want to be her sun and moon for as long as she allows you to be. 

Occasionally, you manage to return to the “old you.”  Maybe your mom gives you six hours off and you ride a Citibike up the West Side Highway and sneak looks at boys and flash back to a time when this, right here, was your life, and the future was still unknown, and everything seemed possible. Or maybe you go out and you get drunk, not survival tipsy but a real kind of drunk, and suddenly your former “wild” self seems to take over, and you are ready to keep drinking, to find a club, to book that ticket to Paris and escape into a beautiful stratosphere of unpredictability. But then it’s quickly over and you remember that somewhere in this city there’s a little body that needs you. And you will come home and pick it up, and it will release that pent-up sigh as it slumps against your shoulder and your heart will break into tiny pieces — not because you will never be free again, but because you never want to be. 

And you realize that maybe it’s okay not to know who you are anymore. And that, chances are, you will never really know again, because you have stepped into something chaotic and beautiful and ever-changing, something you will never truly be able to control. And maybe this, right here, is the greatest adventure of all.