Where's my medal?

Nobody’s handed me a parenting medal in a long time.

Actually, no one has ever handed me a parenting medal at all. But back in the days when I used to traipse about with baby twins in tow, I got a lot of nice feedback.

The girls slept and nursed on a two-hour cycle for at least the first six months of their life. We had relocated to the suburbs from Manhattan, and I was stir-crazy. So, while they napped in their car seats, I would pack up all our stuff and get ready to GO—running errands, visiting friends, anywhere.

Sometimes our adventures were ill-conceived. One of my readers will probably remember a spontaneous trip to a Chinese restaurant that went south when we couldn’t get the hang of breastfeeding our infants in public, and discovered that we hadn’t brought any bottles or pacifiers. In retrospect, what’s the big deal about three crying babies? At the time, OH MY SWEET GRIEF.

But most of the time, we had fun. I liked dressing them up and getting out of the early-parenthood fog of home life. I liked interacting with other adults. And, okay, I liked showing off.

Twins get a lot of attention. Especially the cutest twins in the world. Baby pictures show one girl a little swarthy, the other bald and bug-eyed, but I was dazzled. I was sure everyone else was, too. I loved being out with them, calm and capable. Beaming. Smiling at the woman with the screaming 6-week-old twins and telling her, “It gets easier.”

What I loved the most, though, was the encouragement. “You’re so brave,” smiled a cashier at the supermarket. Turning to the rest of checkout line, “Brave! Isn’t she brave?”

Another time, a cashier (I spent a lot of time shopping, okay) gazed at my double stroller and said, “They’re so calm. And you know why they’re calm? Because YOU are calm.”

Yup, 1 calm mother = 2 calm children. I’ll take my medal now.

What’s that you say? You are my downstairs neighbor, and you’ve noticed me leaving the building most days with two screaming and spitting preschoolers? Uhhh . . .

* * *

So my parenting life is richer and more complex and delicate and—what’s the word for something that requires a lot of thought and effort? I really need to get more sleep. The point is, I don’t spend much time in the smug zone.

Also, we moved to Israel. The culture here is child-centric, family-centric. I resented that when I lived here as a married student, trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant. Now I like it a lot. I love that when my daughter loses it in the light rail car (“Tooooooo crowded! IIIIIIII want a seeeeeat!!! You’d never know she was born in New York), one stranger hustles to shut her up with a piece of candy, and another shuffles through her purse for another one so that my other daughter won’t get upset too. I like being a mother among many others. I like that children are tolerated and appreciated in public spaces. I even like the unsolicited advice. Everyone cares!

In Jerusalem, it’s not unusual to see a woman leading a seminar with a baby strapped to her chest. Or a father and four children on the city bus. Or kids at work alongside their parents during summer vacation--a seven-year-old stamping and filing in a government office, young boys staffing booths in the shuk.

So adventurous parenting, stressful parenting, especially normal, day-to-day parenting—it doesn’t seem like much. People turn in public to pinch my son’s cheek or pick him up when he falls, but they don’t have much to say about me. I’m just another mother. No one tells me I’m brave.

But I am. I am brave. Brave and patient and hard-working and growing every day.  And it’s the best thing ever to discover that I am responsible for my own validation. That I can notice my own victories and share them with you. That my worth as a parent isn’t measured by how nicely my kids behave or how much better I’m managing than any other mother. I’m giving myself a medal for caring so much, for trying so hard, and for trusting that we are all being taken care of.