Sleepless in Cincinnati
Hidy, Kathleen McGarvey
THE LAST WORD Sleepless in Cincinnati KATHLEEN McGARVEY HIDY y car seems to glide effortlessly and of its own volition through the church parking lot. Sleepless in Cincinnati some seven...
...Fulfilling our Sunday obligation has taken on heroic proportions since our arrival in baby land...
...parenting is not an activity, task, or scheduled event...
...This particular morning I am off to 7:45 a.m...
...The expert, touting her new book on "making time for your children," advised the caller and every other parent in radio land to try to begin to involve their children in their daily lives...
...We are better for his intrusion, and blessed by his insistence that we are indeed his parents...every minute of every day, seven months and counting...
...That's when I pulled the plug, turning off the car engine and wishing I lived on a desert island, far away from radio gurus...
...Sleepless in Cincinnati some seven months since the birth of our first child, I too am gliding through the new world of parenthood...
...As with most expectant parents, these notions started to crumble as the birth of our son approached and then disintegrated into dust with the reality of his arrival...
...Ten furious minutes of play, then gurgling at the pew ahead of us, squirming, a slowly building howl hovers on the horizon, quick fumbling, retrieval, a swift snatch of the bottle by our greedy little songbird, belch, and the Second Reading is not yet underway...
...Fuzzy still from the night and the early morning rigors with the baby, at first I cannot focus on the topic of the show, although it appears to be parenting...
...Though theoretical, my notions were nonetheless extensive and quite formed...
...To me, parenting was like...being an aunt, a Big Sister, a baby-sitter...
...Sounds wrong...
...Often I find myself semiconscious from lack of sleep, caused not so much by a wakeful baby as by my own dreams and those noises from the nursery which puncture the night and make us wonder what bidding will follow...
...A caller asked the show's self-described "parenting expert" how to make more time in an already overcrowded schedule for his eleven-yearold son...
...When we arrive at Mass, exhausted from our preparations, our adorable son proceeds to settle into church with a vengeance...
...I had opinions on everything from attending Mass with your child (I believed in it), to breastfeeding (better for baby), to working outside the home (part-time was clearly the best alternative...
...Rather, the expert remarked in a measured tone, parenting must become a scheduled part of our already busy-beyond-belief days...
...You get the picture...
...While I am new at this thing called parenting and clearly walking where giants have tread, I have learned this much: Children are not boxes to be wrapped or unwrapped when time or interest permits...
...When we do bring the baby and attend en famille (as we have done on occasion), it resembles the Exodus...
...for her advice, saying he thought it "might work...
...Convinced that parenting is an "activity" that can be "scheduled" into a daily routine, the experts assure us that squeezing time out of our adult day for our children nourishes their craving for parental attention while preserving our craving for adult independence...
...The radio now silent and Mass already begun, I walk slowly through the parking lot toward the church, grateful for the son who waits at home...
...Our son, all 8 pounds, 2 ounces of him, arrived into our lives completely ready to take over our adult world, imprint it with his presence, and, in the process, allow us, his parents, our own birth of sorts...
...Often we tag-team attendance at Sunday Masses: me at 7:45, my husband at 10:30...
...Kathleen McGarvey Hidy is also a lawyer...
...Experience, the mother of all talk shows, is by far the best teacher and we soon discovered that it was wiser to build our new life with its durable lumber...
...In my previous life, parenting was a purely theoretical construct, an idea naked of any experience and clothed only in analogies...
...Packaged and pureed, their wisdom simply mirrors the society it seeks to satiate...
...The caller seemed impressed...
...Pencil your children in if you want to develop those bonds which last a lifetime...
...We scour the house grabbing all essentials in sight—bottles, diapers, pacifiers, and toys (emphasis on plural)— and, of course, the ubiquitous car seat/infant carrier...
...The talk show heated up just as I angled my car into a parking slot...
...On the Sunday morning in question, I am grateful for the relative quiet of the radio talk show I have tuned into...
...he enthusiastically thanked the Ph.D...
...If child restraint had been a concern in thirteenth century B.C., no one would have fled the Egyptians in time...
...Mass...
...Parenting was not to be regarded (gasp) as a chore or a burden, lest our children catch wind of our annoyance and rebel against us and our well-laid plans for their future successes...
Vol. 121 • July 1994 • No. 13
