SAHD No More!

If you're ever tempted to take two 2.5 year olds on a 4 day car ride along America's Pacific coast, I have one piece of advice: invest in a plane ticket and show your chlildren the wonders of a pressurized cabin.

Is a plane overwhelming? Yes. Do some of the other passengers act as if your children are the latest strain of H1N1? Yes. Will you tingle with embarassment when you're daughter announces, "I GO POOOPY!"? Probably. But I contend that an airplane trip--even a miserable one--is like quickly removing a band-aid from the arm. A 4 day car trip is like developing an infection in the arm, which turns to gang green, and eventually results in a two-week hospital stay and an amputation. Either way, the band-aid is removed. And this angst is flowing from the parent that spent 90% of the trip in the U-haul...alone...with satellite radio. I'd love to hear Nora and my mom's take on the trip!

Last Wednesday Bemma, Nora, and I bid farewall to the Great Northwest and departed Washougal. 4 days later we pulled up to our new home in Phoenix, AZ to begin our new chapter of life. I'm the new preacher at Northgate Church of Christ and Nora is, once again, a SAHM (Stay At Home Mom). Since I last blogged, our life has been a rapid succession of very impactful realizations, epiphanies, opportunities and decisions that has resulted--almost exactly a year later--in us returning to our original parenting roles.

Almost as quickly as it began, my time as a SAHD has ended. I wasn't sure exactly how I'd feel when the roles reversed again, and I honestly haven't spent a lot of time examining my feelings about it all, so I guess I'll do that right now in an honest 'journaling' moment.

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I loved my last few months as a SAHD. I embraced it. For the first several months of being a SAHD, I was conflicted. I was thankful to not be doing a job that felt pointless and ate my soul, but I also felt out of place. It played with my 'man pride' to be the stay at home parent, and I felt a bit overwhelmed by the sheer task of taking care of twin toddlers. There was also a palbable tension with Nora, because she didn't want to work. Not full time. Not night shift. But in the situation we found ourselves, it was the most pragmatic thing to do.

I was going to school and the goal was to switch roles again in 2-3 years, but for Nora--and me, really--2-3 years felt like a mountain of time that we would never scale. I was often irritable with my role as a SAHD, which compounded Nora's frustration, because the thing I was frustrated about was the very thing she most wanted to do with her life. Thankfully, Nora is one of the most gentle, patient, intuitive people I know, and she did not unleash the confusion or frustration my temperment must have caused in her. In an act of selflessness, she carried a load she could hardly bear so that I could pursue a career that would provide me with a sense of contentment and purpose. She gave up something precious for me. I learned a valuable truth about love from her during that time.

One way or another we slogged on through the dreary winter of 2009/10 and plodded through our roles, like kids wearing shoes on the wrong feet. I found solace in school, in pursuing something besides being a SAHD. When I look back on that time I realize that when I talked to people I would always make it very clear that yes, I was a SAHD, but I was going to school to pursue a new career. Such an act betrayed my lack of true comfort with the role.

Soon after Bemma turned 2, I went through a few liberating experiences that reframed my view of myself and brought calm to the chaos that had been my self-esteem. It was when I finally began to feel at peace with who I am that I finally began to really embrace my role as a SAHD. That is also when we began our domino decision making process that rapidly led from me pursuing a career in nursing and being a SAHD, to the realization that it is time for me embrace the job I was originally trained for, but was only now prepared for. Basically, I'm very content in my new role, as is Nora. Our shoes are on the right feet and the toes of our hearts can wiggle in comfort.

I don't miss being a SAHD, but I'm grateful I spent a year in that role. I have a relationship now with Bemma that is deep and wide and full of memories forged in the monotony of parks, nature walks, nap times, tantrums, diapers, and Barney. I have a bucket of diamonds in my heart and mind, experiences I was able to witness firsthand. For a solid year I got to experience every wonderful, awful, perfect, and chaotic moment of their life. I've never had a harder job, and I don't think I ever will. Ben and Emma are wonderful, and I will always treasure my year as their SAHD.

So now a new chapter begins, but my blog will continue. Writing about parenting has been a great avenue for me to decompress, vent, share and connect with other parents. It's a topic ripe with content, and being a dad, even one who works, is a journey that needs to be shared. To that end I will continue chronicling as the blogger formerly known as SAHD. :)

Maybe in the next blog I'll spend more time detailing our trip to Phoenix. Maybe. I'll have to interview Nora and my mom first, so I can get all the juicy details of what happened in our car while I was driving the U-Haul, lost in the adult calm of NPR's programming...