Doing, Take #2

I wrote a post recently titled "Doing" that I managed to leave out there live on the internets for about 6 hours. Then I deleted it. Then, a very good friend contacted me questioning where it had gone because she had wanted to comment on it - and identify with it - but when she went looking for it, it had been removed. By me. Because I'm apparently only able to permanently post items that don't actually expose any sort of ongoing strife or struggle. And for those of you who weren't privy to the 6 hour post of "Doing" most of the struggle had to do with mom and dad, not the tot.

See, I'm ok with exposing my inperfections. But in the adoption blogging world (these days) it seems as though you'd be hard pressed to find a blog post that does anything but praise the significant other over and over and over again. In some cases bloggers will be so bold as to describe the difficulties over the bonding and attachment proccess with thier children, but nothing along the lines of "we now suck at being husband and wife" has made it's way to the blog stream, at least not lately - or not to my knowledge.

So I posted something that exposed the fact that we are currently sucking majorly at being husband and wife but absolutely loving and rocking at being mom and dad. And then I deleted it because I couldn't think of one single other blog post that I had read that expressed even the faintest notion that that "the marriage part" had become tough. And then my friend sent me a note, saying that she gets it, and identifies with it, and now I think I'm ok with it being out there permanently.

As previously posted on 8/21:

There's nothing you can do that can't be done.
There's nothing you can sing that can't be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It's easy.

Sometimes keeping your thoughts to yourself is tough. Sometimes it's the right thing to do, and other times it's the only way out of a mind bobbling conundrum. So... as of late it feels like we have no idea what we're doing. Apparently upon first glance we do "a lot" but more often than not we're overwhelmed with feelings of not doing anywhere near enough. We're busy, we work, we travel, we have high aspirations of what life could hold - but more often than not those feelings make me feel selfish for being so self centered as to assume that moving my own life forward equals a good thing. I know it doesn't, but I also don't want to stop moving the "my" part of my life forward, and I also really don't want to stop the "doing" part of my life - the part that puts me 2nd and everyone else way up there at the top. And apparently, I suck at a small thing called balance that would just solve this dilemma and all of a sudden grant me a solid 5 hours of non-thought interrupted sleep for just one night.

Doing.

Work (and a play date for mommy sans child) kept me in our Brooklyn home with the boys left to entertain themselves upstate. While I was off working obscene hours and grabbing a very delicious meal with a girlfriend I've seen way too little of lately, daddy was taking our son rock climbing. He was doing something with him while I was chatting and strutting in my city heels and ordering another glass of wine. He was doing and I was just, well, not doing.

Doing.

Now it was my turn. Daddy had a multi-day gig in the city and I took my turn upstate with the tot. We had one of those nights where I felt like I was a good mom, which is a pretty big freaking deal for me seeing as "good mom" is pretty much close to never self-described.

Doing.

When will it be OUR turn? I can't quite figure out the right string of words to put together that just simply shouts "we want to feel like we're being a good husband and wife and not just a good mommy and daddy".

So there. I said it. We constantly question our mommy/daddy capabilities but at least we seem to be holding down the fort on that front just fine - after all, the boy is a complete genius. Yet, we're kind of failing at the whole being husband and wife thing right now, we don't seem to know how to do the "doing" part of that while sustaining the "doing" part of parenting.

And what sucks the most is that most Googleable answers are ridiculously fake. Give us some credit, we can fake it like no other - we just don't want to. And finding the "real" is turning out to be a bit harder than we had hoped. We want to be great parents and we need to be really connected as husband and wife and we want to go about this by DOING. No theoretical BS roll playing and use feeling words and talk with your heart kind of crap - just the real YOU and ME and DO.

And yet, we don't. But we know we can. We just need that swift elephant kick to the ass that clears the clouds and allows the shooting stars to take the stage. AKA, we need control, and for some reason I don't see that arriving anytime soon. Control left the building the day we became first time parents to a 13 month old. Control was completely out of the question the moment we sent our son off to school after having parented him for a mere 2 1/2 months. Control, my friends, is fiction in our little storybook right now. And if we're going to DO anything it's going to require one helluva shift in the alignment of the stars. Which, I'll admit, feels not so probable but must be a little bit possible. And even a little bit of possible equals just enough control to at least get things started. Or at least start doing something.

There's nothing you can make that can't be made.
No one you can save that can't be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you
in time - It's easy.

All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.

Yeah, not so much...