My 5-year-old twin boys, Mikey and Charlie, started kindergarten a couple of weeks ago, marking the end of their preschool careers. They walked into class wearing backpacks full of back-to-school supplies, like markers and glue. With their summers in the rearview mirror, they stepped into a world not with circle time or naps, but with desks, textbooks and a more mature curriculum of ABCs, rhymes and yes, even simple addition. They’re in the big leagues now.
By the time school was about to start, I was ready. I felt guilty at how ready I was. I was ready to drop them off at school and have other people spend time with them and feed them and keep them occupied. I was ready to have my time back. I was ready to sit in silence and answer emails in a timely manner instead of prefacing every response with a meek “sorry for the delay.”
I had put them in daytime camps throughout the summer, but once those camps ended, with my husband at work, it was just the two of them and me. Surely, I could hang out with my own little tornadoes and get things done, right? In my mind, they would be preoccupied with Lego bricks or Magna-Tiles or Zoobs while I would be tidying things up around the house and getting a few work-related tasks done.
No. That did not happen. None of that happened. Nothing of the sort happened.
My kids wanted me as close to them as humanly possible. They wanted to play but only if I was playing too. If I had the audacity to hop on the computer, they interpreted my stagnant position as an invitation for them to climb me like a jungle gym. My head and shoulders became leverage for them to get as much height as possible. Elbows were liberally used, heads collided and personal boundaries ceased to exist. I wasn’t a human being to my children — I was a play apparatus. I went to bed bruised, beaten, with 10,000 unread emails and gleefully happy.
Of course, the chaos of the day would be more digestible if our sleep at night was guaranteed, but sleep hasn’t been guaranteed since July 1, 2021. Coincidentally, that’s also the day my boys were born.
My son Mikey normally strolls into our bed in the middle of the night. Mikey likes to sleep perpendicular to my husband and me, in the middle of the bed, so my husband will eventually leave to sleep in Mikey’s bed. Sometimes, Charlie will come to our bed in the middle of the night too, meaning I also get pushed out. Some mornings we wake up with the two adults crammed in their toddler beds and the two sleep terrorists comfy as can be in our California king.
And so this summer, I would wake up every morning and think of activities that would center on tiring my kids out. We live in Pasadena, and our favorite summer day trips are to Kidspace, or to the Huntington Library in San Marino, or to watch a movie at Paseo or go to the Shops at Santa Anita. We’d sometimes drive to the beach or have a pool day. I brought them into the office on the one day I had to commute in.
I work on a popular podcast with comedy sweetheart and my real-life tormentor Conan O’Brien. I’m in the process of rebuilding the home we lost in the Eaton fire. I’m finishing my second book before its September release date. I have THINGS TO DO. I have a career and responsibilities and deadlines. But my children don’t care. In their world, Mom is just their best friend and my only job is to hang out with them.
But something unexpected happened when I dropped them off for that first day of school — I missed them. Terribly. I came back to an empty house and I didn’t know what to do with myself. When I was with them, the list of items I had to check off my list was vast. But now, standing in an empty house each day with time and opportunity, I don’t want to do anything.
I want to hang out with my besties. I’ve managed to tidy everything up, but I miss the mess. I miss the chaos. I even miss them fighting and ignoring me while I ask them to do something 45 times. I miss them climbing on me while I try to work. I even miss feigning astonishment when they would do something mundane like spin on one foot after yelling “Mom, look!”
I realize now that I miss the things we did together more than I miss what I used to do before we had them. Who needs day-drinking, or concerts, or movies rated higher than PG when you have Legoland? Mikey and Charlie look at everything in awe, forcing my jaded eyes not to take it all for granted. Their perspective and enthusiasm bring back a dormant wonder in me. They took their 5-year-old astonishment with them when they went back to school.
I know it’s not novel to realize how much you as a parent enjoy being around your kids. Parents should always want to spend as much time with them as possible. Parents should always appreciate the years they have with them before phones, friends and hormones take over. And I try to. But there were moments when I felt overwhelmed and tired and anxious and guilty about ignoring everything else in my life.
One day the balance will come, but until then, I’ll just patiently wait until 3 p.m. when my two besties are done with school. And because I’m human, I’ll go right back to awaiting another school day as soon as they start fighting with each other.
Being a parent is hard, but I’ve learned that two things can be true — you can love being a parent and also acknowledge how difficult it is. You can poke fun at your children while also knowing that they are the most perfect humans to have ever existed.
Sona Movsesian is cohost of the podcast “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” and author of the New York Times bestseller “The World’s Worst Assistant” and “The World’s Worst Mom.”
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