A feeling I can't quite name
Reflecting on parenthood
Welcome to Techno Sapiens! I’m Jacqueline Nesi, a psychologist and professor at Brown University, co-founder of Tech Without Stress (@techwithoutstress), and mom of two young kids. I’m so grateful you’re here.
Happy (belated) Mother’s Day, sapiens! In honor of the day, I’m sharing this short reflection.
5 min read
A few weeks before my older son started preschool, I ordered him a backpack. An impossibly cute, miniature bag, adorned with bright colors and smiling safari animals.
I got you a backpack for school! I shared, right after placing the order. And guess what it has on it? Animals!
His eyes grew wide. A huge smile. Want to see it!
Oh, I immediately realized my mistake. It won’t be here for another week. I just ordered it online. Do you want to see a picture of it?
His expression didn’t falter, eyes looking up, expectantly. Want to go to the mailbox!
Oh, buddy, I don’t think it will be here yet.
His little feet skittered across the floor, finger pointing urgently at the front door. No, want to go to the mailbox!
We walked out to the mailbox. No backpack was inside.
We come back in the afternoon, he assured himself, brimming with anticipation. It was 4pm.
There were so many things he didn’t know. He didn’t know the time of day, or what it meant to order something online, or how long a week lasts. He didn’t know that those safari animals were a desperate Hail Mary to ease the upcoming transition to school. He didn’t know what school even was, or that it would mean being away from home, surrounded by strangers, for the first time.
And despite, or maybe because, he didn’t know so many things, his face was filled with hope. No fear of disappointment, no effort to protect himself, just pure innocence and unbridled hope, baldly on display.
In that moment, I felt something I didn’t quite recognize.
***
I expected parenting to be hard. I expected sleepless nights, and tantrums, and balancing a crying baby on one hip while a toddler grabs at your shirt, shouting a list of demands.1 I expected endless baby bottle-washing and stomach bugs2 and the precarious Jenga of summer childcare.
I expected the joy, too, though nothing could have thoroughly prepared me for it. The gummy smile of a baby when he first sees you in the morning, the wet smooches and love you mama’s, the giddy tap-dancing of little footsteps on the floor, the toddler belting out his version of Hark the Herald at Christmastime (RICE IS BORN in Bethlehem!)
What I hadn’t expected was this feeling I cannot name. Somewhere in-between joy and sadness—empathy, maybe, but with worry, too. Overwhelming love, and desire to protect, but the helplessness that comes with knowing you cannot. Fear of their disappointment, of what the world will do to them and that innocence, and wishing you could shield them from it all.
It comes on unexpectedly—a sudden pang in the chest, a glistening in the eyes, the slightest constriction at the back of the throat. And in moments that sneak up on you.
I tell him his grandparents will be over in a few hours, and minutes later, hear a scraping sound from the kitchen. What are you doing? I call. Moving my tower to the window,3 he says, panting, So I can see when Gigi and Gamba4 are coming.
We’re at a friend’s house, and his whole body vibrates with excitement as he notices a plate of cookies on the table. He looks at me expectantly. Then asks, for the first time in his life, Do they have nuts? I hadn’t realized he knew he was allergic.
He comes running out the preschool door just last week, beaming, waving a crumpled flower over his head, stumbling over words as he shouts It’s-for-you-for-Mothers-Day! Hours later, the flower sags over the edge of a vase. Will the flower die? He asks. He bursts into tears at the answer.
I spend an evening making cookie-cutter Mickey Mouses out of cheese slices to pack in his lunch. (I do not recognize myself.)5 The next day, he arrives home from school in a state of near-shock. He throws up his arms. They were Mickey Mouse…but they looked like CHEESE!
***
This feeling is one I had not experienced before becoming a parent, at least not this intensely, and never in the passing, routine moments of the everyday. As someone whose career revolves around feelings, and, increasingly, turning things into words, this feeling is one I still cannot quite get my mind, and words, around.
We spend a lot of time trying to avoid feelings. Numbing ourselves behind our screens and their endless scrolls and autoplaying videos. But parenting forces you to feel something. The challenges, the joys, and that indescribable in-between. The one that squeezes your heart just a little too tight, but that you wouldn’t trade for the world.
Before my older son was born, at my baby shower, friends and family wrote down small bits of advice and words of wisdom. Someone wrote, simply, that being a parent is “the best part of life.” They were right.
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A common demand in our house recently: Mom! Play “The Wellerman”!, by which he means that he wants to play this pirate song over the speaker in our house. Anyone else’s toddler in a big sea shanty phase? Just mine?
To be fair, I did not expect the frequency or intensity of the stomach bugs. When my younger son was a month old, there was a week-long period when every night involved a 2am baby feeding immediately followed by a toddler crib vomit cleanup. By the time the cleanup was done, it was nearly time to feed the baby again. This was a low point.
This “learning tower” (basically, a step stool with safety rails) is now a mainstay in our kitchen. Partially because it is so large and heavy, I couldn’t move it elsewhere if I wanted to. This is a win-win because with a single request (Why don’t you push your tower over here to the counter?) I can: (a) get my toddler involved in cooking, and (b) tire him out completely.
“Gigi” and “Gamba” are my kids’ names for my parents. Gigi by choice, Gamba by some unexpected evolution of “grandpa” when my older son was learning to talk.
The cookie-cutter Mickey Mouse cheeses were another Hail Mary to ease the transition to preschool. He very quickly came around on foods-shaped-like-things. Much less quickly on the whole “going to school” thing.
I couldn’t agree more. Parenting makes my soul writhe and I both love and hate it.
It never goes away — those feelings you described. My sons are grown with children of their own and I STILL get the heart clench and misty eyes. When my sister’s last child left home and she was officially an empty nester like me, she said “It never ends, does it?” Nope; it never does.