Do loner parents raise loner kids?
When you are a parent, all of a sudden, you can not enjoy the wondrous benefits of being a loner. Though, I am fascinated and enamored by other people, I really do enjoy doing my own thing. I never joined a sororiety or kept a large group of friends. When I went to Spain, the college kid group I was with voted me most likely to wander off and meet someone interesting. I relish wandering alone in a new city. I crave setting my own schedule, drinking coffee in silence reading, taking a long quiet walk, doing some sort of alone work, art or yoga. I don't even mind cleaning the house, cooking or running errands too much alone with my own thoughts and my own schedule.
As a parent, my "alone" time has shrunk to include only my morning commute with NPR. The kids and husband have violated almost all other aspects of life, from poop time and showering, to running errands. I must always take others into consideration now. Dinner becomes a huge production complete with screaming little people and individual demands. As a loner, a beer, popcorn and strawberries would have sufficed as a delicacy, but now plans must be much more elaborate. Even checking the mail becomes a shoe finding, but I don't want those shoes, I wanna carry the mail, Eli don't put that in a mud-puddle, y'all come on back inside now kind of ordeal. I have even joined mom groups.
One day, I will miss their companionship, observations, mishaps, and quirks tremendously, but when I do, I will also relish my loner-ness again.
2 comments:
I'm a loner too. As an only child, I CRAVE alone time. To not be able to go into my own room and read and listen to music all by my lonesome is sometimes enough to make me nuts. But oh well. What do you do? Wait until a few more years and then you'll have plenty of alone time, I suppose. Ironic, a little.
Amen AND Cheers! I love my peeps--large and small, but I also love deciding when and where. Thank goodness school is almost over and I will be finished with enforced entertainment and edification of the teen age group. I can have adults or little people on my own terms. Summer, Summer, Summer!
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