Step by Step Parenting

For several years now, I have wished that I was thirty years old.

I found out I was pregnant when I was only nineteen. I had been married for approximately four months, to someone I had only started dating two months before that. I’m sure it’s a shocker to absolutely no one that teenagers don’t make the best decisions, and marrying someone I had known for roughly two seconds is definitely near the top of my list titled, “dumb things I did during my teen years.”

But that second pink line was not dumb. That faint heartbeat at the ten-week ultrasound was not dumb.

Those little fingers, those tiny toes, and that precious girl became my everything. Every month I carried her, I felt as though I aged another year. I envied all of the older pregnant moms, how sure of themselves they seemed, how together their life looked from the outside. Meanwhile, I had customers at work ask if I was in high school.

I was twenty by the time I had her, alone in almost every way. I embarked on a journey none of my friends knew anything about, and most didn’t bother to learn.

Nothing could have prepared me for the shock that was motherhood. I transitioned into my new role about as gracefully as a hippopotamus on roller skates.

While my daughter learned to crawl, I learned how to walk the path of parenting. By the time she was walking, I was running. I grew alongside her, albeit in different ways, step by step.

By the time she was one, I felt at least twenty-four, and by the time she turned two, I felt even older.

Then came the divorce.

In a way, I had something in common with many of my friends again: I was single in my twenties.

But while they were bar hopping downtown at midnight, I was shushing my toddler back to sleep for the third time that night.

While they were meeting for brunch and mimosas, I was try to cut spinach small enough that my daughter wouldn’t spot them in her scrambled eggs.

While they were driving to the beach for a girls’ weekend, I was flipping through divorce papers, bank statements, and bills, wondering how on Earth I was supposed to provide for me and my little girl, alone. Those little fingers, those tiny toes, and that precious girl were counting on me.

By the time my divorce was finalized, I couldn’t believe I was just shy of twenty-three.

Then I met Kevin.

He had a smile that gave me butterflies, a hug that made me feel like I was home, and two kids — one just older than mine, and one just younger.

Over several years, we fell deeper in love, got married, and blended our families.

There were custody schedules. Separation agreements. Group chats with co-parents.

Every aspect of my life was planned around when we had kids, and when we didn’t have kids. While my classmates were free to study around the clock, I had to lug my textbooks to dance practices, soccer games, playground visits.

Being a mom of three made it hard to fit in with friends my age, but my age made it hard to fit in with other moms of three.

Instead, I lived in the in between, never quite the right fit anywhere I went. Even my husband was eleven years my senior, and I was jealous of his age, the experience that came with it, the way he seemed so content with who he was. I wondered if I would feel like that by the time I turned thirty. 

Then I found out I was pregnant with twins, and if I felt lonely before, I felt like an outcast now. The rift between me and other twenty-five-year-olds widened into an uncrossable chasm. Having one kid made me different, three kids, unrelatable, but five kids? A different species entirely.

Again, I found myself wishing I was thirty, yearning to be older. No one batted an eye when my husband, now thirty-seven, announced we were having twins. Meanwhile, at school I felt like a pariah.

Every day that I went, I wanted to crawl into a hole, to avoid all the imploring eyes aimed in my direction. But there was no hiding a belly that was carrying twins. My motherhood was now on display every day, no longer a fun fact I shared at my own discretion.

Today, the twins are here. In a way, I almost feel my age. I am no longer the only person in any of my circles to have kids. I no longer feel the need to keep my eyes downcast when I sit in the waiting room at the OB/GYN. I almost feel like anyone else my age… almost.

But I still find myself looking forward to thirty. Wondering if then, I’ll finally feel my age. Yearning to put my twenties behind me for good. Ready to leave a decade of divorce and heartbreak and rebirth and growing pains behind.

My thirties will be no different, of course. There is nothing magical about an age that starts with a three versus a two. But unlike everyone else my age, dreading their thirties, I cannot wait.

I spent my twenties living life the way I thought I was supposed, but in my thirties, I get to live life the way I want to. It will be everything I’ve dreamed of and nothing like I’ve planned, and I know that with every bend and twist in my story, I’ll grow that much closer to a better version of myself. 

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