Letter to My Childless Friends

Dear T&G,

I still can’t believe you’re going to be saddled with our whole life in just one week.

{Backstory:  our friends are adopting a toddler and his newborn sister — they get the girl tomorrow and the boy at the end of the week.}

There’s no one who deserves this more than you do, and those are two lucky kids.  I know I’ve spilled my guts to you about parenthood on multiple occasions, so you probably think you’re prepared.  But now that it’s too late for you to back out, I thought I should finally come clean and tell you the whole truth. . .

1) Children are actually vampires who suck your blood at night.  It’s the real reason why we all look so tired all the time.

2) If you thought your attention span was short or recall abilities pathetic before, well, you haven’t, you know. . . you should. . . what was I talking about?

3) If you’re going to do something really terrible, do it before they’re about two-and-a-half.  Otherwise, there’s a better than average chance that they’ll remember it and start talking about it at, say, a party with all your friends around.

4) Baby books are intentionally written to make people go crazy.  They lay out what appear to be easy instructions to, say, make you feel like you’re fixing a toaster.  So you follow every step, but the toaster blows up and sprays green goo everywhere, and you’re left believing you’re an idiot.  But as it turns out, no one really knows how to fix a toaster.  Because all toasters are made in different processing plants and don’t come with instructions.   So as it turns out, the instruction manual you got was actually meant to explain how to faux paint your bathroom.

5) That crazy worrying thing that you hear about?  It’s coming.  You will never again be able to read a story, watch a movie, or hear someone talk about something related to a horrible act committed against a child or a horrible disaster involving children without picturing your own child in the same situation, becoming at least slightly sick to your stomach, and then most likely dredging it up later when you’re trying to go to sleep.

6) That completely rational part of you that you always thought would be able to balance out any slightly over-the-top feelings that might come up — like wanting to go shake down a bully who picked on your son or go confront some teacher who said something stupid that inadvertently crushed your daughter’s dreams or go get in the face of some stranger for acting like an obscene, inappropriate buffoon in public — well you can kiss that goodbye.  Just hope your spouse or a friend is around to save you from yourself.

And one last thing — people really do want to help you.  They don’t just say that to be nice.  Because they love you, and it’s one way they can finally show you and not just tell you.

To the adventure. . . We love you both.

-Tammy