On Becoming "Comfortably Numb"

NORTH CONWAY, NH - I'm blogging on location here, a first for me (I don't get out much), although I suppose I've had the opportunity. Toting the laptop around while staying overnight hasn't been necessary, and even if it were, I wouldn't have the time, anyway.

This time, however, I knew we'd have wireless access, and so the laptop came along.

Anyway, traveling is not the theme of this post, although traveling has helped me to characterize my thoughts. I think travel can do that. If you stay in one place, it limits your perspective about a lot of things.

Today, being here, in North Conway, NH, I was able to articulate something about being a parent that I hadn't previously.

So we're at a park. Actually, let me backtrack. We're here to go to Storyland, a kiddie amusement park. We arrived in North Conway today, after a five-plus hour ride. We found a hotel and after checking in, went right out to the main street where there are assorted tourist trap shops selling tshirts, hats, copper plated antiques, and a "five and dime" store.

We eventually got to the park in the center of town, where there are two playscapes and a water fountain feature that kids run through. By default, I'm with my daughter, who is almost 2, and my wife is with our son, who is 4. While they're sliding down slides and running around the place at a speed that's excessively dangerous to themselves and others, I notice a guy holding a stuffed animal. He was holding it for his daughter, presumably, and he looked kind of funny, being an adult and holding this stuffed animal in public.

Then I thought how truly ridiculous this was. What's happened to this guy? At one time, he may have been independent and had something going for him. Now, he's been reduced to a stuffed animal carrier.

Just when I'm thinking I'm on to something here, about to articulate a theory about dads who become losers, my mind shifts back to 15 minutes earlier, when I was holding my daughter's stuffed dog in a store. For some reason, when I saw another guy doing that, I got all judgmental. But along the same street, I did the same thing.

Move forward a half hour and my daughter needs a diaper change. Without thinking very much about it, I tell her to lay on the grass where I proceed to change her diaper. I had not decided whether I'd do this. It was out of habit.

What has happened to me?

To borrow the title from a Pink Floyd song, I've become comfortably numb.

Before kids, I would have resisted the idea of carrying their stuffed animals, changing them in public, etc. But now these things happen automatically. I'm their parent. There isn't an option. I may look really stupid, sometimes, and a lot of other parents do, too. But this is how parents look. And when you begin to adopt this mentality, you grow, in effect, comfortably numb.

The change from single person to married person is significant. But the change to parenthood is even greater. Sleeping uninterruptedly, going out to a leisurely dinner, and relaxing are part of history.

You can resist this and fight it, or pretend it's not happening. But I guess another option is to be comfortably numb - being aware of it, but not overthinking it. Because if you do, things could turn ugly. I know. From time to time, this has happened. This is why it becomes necessary to put the kids in front of the TV, at least for a little while, to give yourself a break. It is unrealistic to not use the TV for this purpose when kids are between 2 and 4.

Being comfortably numb toward the challenges and responsibilities of parenthood is not a bad thing. It's an acknowledgment of a parent's limitations. Adults and toddlers and adults and 4 year olds don't think or act the same way. They don't speak the same language, so to speak. Nor should they.

This is why it's best, when a parent feels as if they are more or less losing it, to adopt a more loose mentality, and become comfortably numb.