Yes, Kevin, Kids Change Everything
By Ann Searle Horowitz
We were having a barbecue when my husband’s friend announced he and his new wife were having a baby. This was the same guy who was an avowed bachelor until the age of 39, who still went out partying until all hours on the weekends and who dabbled in guitar and cartooning in his free time. Imagine – he actually had free time!
I congratulated him with an oh-man-are-you-in-for-it smile on my face.
A few drinks later, I went back to him and said, “I know it’s a cliché, Kev, but boy, kids really do change everything, you know?”
“Define everything,” was his response.
Before I could complete a sentence, one of my children interrupted, in desperate need of a Band-Aid. Exhibit A: another conversation, unfinished.
So here, Kevin, is the rest of what I mean by everything, in no particular order:
Your son wins a hermit crab in his second grade class lottery and you keep the cage smack in the middle of the kitchen table, because if you don’t, the crab doesn’t get fed or watered, dies, and dries up to dust. You know this because it happened to his older sister’s hermit crab.
You have a psychotic cat that hunts you during the day like you’re some oversized mouse and bites and scratches your ankles when he catches you. You have the scars to prove it. You hate the cat, and yet you keep the cat because the kids love him.
As of last count, you are the proud owner of 7 million, 465 thousand, 892 Legos. They are everywhere in your house. Sometimes you just vacuum them up rather than bend over.
During an otherwise uneventful day, the police call you to ask if you’re OK. You hang up, and find three guilty-looking preschoolers standing around the phone in another room. You wonder which of them was paying attention when they taught “All About 911” at the nursery school safety fair.
It’s noon, and the first chance you’ve had to go to the bathroom since your 2-year-old twins woke you up at 6:30 a.m. You hear a knock on your bathroom door, and your neighbor’s daughter’s voice asks if you knew your boys were running down the driveway naked.
You’re told your premature twins are ready to leave the NICU after one month, if they pass The Test. You find out The Test is sitting up in their car seats for one-half hour while still breathing at the same time. You forget to breathe while you watch.
Your 4-year-old wakes up one morning and tells you his eyebrows are too tight. You realize he doesn’t yet know the word for headache.
You’re in gymnastics class, and your son hits you over the head with a play kitchen frying pan, made out of a heavy-gauge plastic developed by the NASA engineers. You see stars like in the cartoons. You did not see him coming, because you were under the rainbow parachute with your other kid singing “If You’re Happy and You Know It.”
In the end, you don’t mind any of your children’s infractions, invasions or incidents. In fact, you’ve grown to expect and love them. You even know you’ll miss them when the kids go to college. God willing. When you look at your husband, you realize that parenthood has made you both stronger, but only because it tried and failed to kill you first. You feel good about this, and it makes you think about Kevin and his wife and their baby. This time you smile, and you mean it.
Ann Searle Horowitz lives, writes and laughs with her family in Pelham Manor, NY.
