Remind Me Why We Do This?

Z, Harper and I went to the pumpkin patch today. We went last year and had a really fantastic time. This year didn't live up to my expectations, to say the least. Z was whiney. Harper wouldn't smile for pictures or eat her lunch. It was hotter than I expected and I think my face got a sunburn. Z was a typical bipolar two-year-old, wanting to go on a ride and then crying to get off as soon as I got him buckled in. We went through that routine four or five times. He even did it with the choo choo that he LOVED last year. And last year I remember feeling a calm acceptance to his interactions with farm animals in the petting zoo. This year all I could think about was the fecal matter strewn through the hay that he persisted in picking up and playing with.

And then, for the grand finale, when I finally decided we needed to leave because both kids were starting to meltdown and it appeared we would popcorn between rides and Z's indecision indefinitely, Z had a gigantic tantrum. At several points I had to pick him up and carry him while steering the stroller with one hand. At one point I was dragging him on gravel parking lot hoping the knees in his new jeans wouldn't get a hole. At one point I lost my temper. Okay, at several points. Somewhere between the knee dragging and an angry spanking between parked cars, one of the friends who we met at the pumpkin patch drove by and rolled down her window. She said, "Remind me why we do this?"

Why do we do this? Why? That question has been rolling around in my head for a long, long time. It comes up almost every Sunday when the disruption to schedule seem an insurmountable stumbling block. It comes up almost every week when we go to my Mom's house for dinner and don't get home until after bedtime. It comes up every time I've ever gone to Disneyland. The thing is, the question usually doesn't come up until you're on your way home. When you're there, wherever there is, there are moments of joy. Sometimes it's just the moment of boredom we avoided by getting out of the house. Sometimes it's a surprisingly delightful story I'll write down in my journal of motherhood memory-keeping. And, true, there are times that the outing is a complete disaster. But I still pack up all my bags and forget the wipes (again) just for the chance that a wonderful moment will be had. Without some risk there is no gain.

It's like with surfing. There are lots of times (not so many recently for me) the getting up early, going into the cold water, fighting the crowds and so on really doesn't pan out. Maybe I'll catch one wave and I'll spend the rest of the time pissed about the wave-hog nearby. But when it does work, and I have caught that really nice wave, it makes me want to spend the rest of my life trying to get it again. There's no guarantee that this time will be the best, but hope springs eternal, right?

I guess my answer to the question my friend asked is this: we hope. We hope it will be fun. We hope we'll see our kids' smiles. We hope we'll have an interesting story to tell our husbands or a friend. We hope we'll catch a photo that will live framed in our house when our grandkids come over one day. We hope our kids will learn and grow by experiencing new things. We hope that at some point we'll forget the tantrum on the way home and we'll just remember the special time in a new, or perhaps our favorite, place. (And the photo we got will help with the selective amnesia because, don't know about you, but I don't ever get a picture of the tantrum after the event.)

So to all my fellow mothers who trudge out into the experiment of life with your little random behavior generators, here's to the hope that the next time will be better than the last.