Tuesday, August 25, 2015

I Just Forgot.

Hi Friends,

"I forgot".

I must utter this little phrase 50 times a week. However, for every 50 times I hear those 2 little words slip ever so sweetly across my caffeine-scented lips, I might really mean it two or three times.

While parenthood may make your previously razor-sharp friends/family seem utterly clueless and completely scatter-brained, I would hazard a guess that that is simply not the case. Why? You may ask. Parents do not have the luxury of being forgetful.

It only takes one outing, with one change of clothes,  2 crappy blowouts, and an unfortunately low supply of baby wipes. to never, ever leave the house without a back-up everything on your person (and a stockpile in the car). I've found parenting to be full of extremes. You either remember, or find yourself 50km from home on the shitty side of an otherwise sunny Sunday.

As a mum, it's my job to remember. In fact, my memory is relied on so heavily by my favourite humans, that I would like to propose a slight modification to the term used to describe its function... remembering to remumbering. To illustrate:

Where did K leave his orange hotwheel ("no not the red one mummy") three days ago?
In the green Tupperware container, inside your backpack, shoved inside the large yellow mixing bowl under the sink.

Remumbered.

D goes to change the baby while we're out for dinner, "oh shoot, I forgot to bring in the diaper bag".
Present diaper bag he said he'd grab.

Remumbered.

What was the random something that D said he needed me to "pick up sometime if I'm thinking about it..."
A piece of foam to practice his suturing on.

Remumbered (also, why would I ever be "thinking" about that).

Birthdays, Anniversaries, Social events (although they tend to be few and far between these days), D's call schedule...

Re-effing mumbered.

I'm pretty sure life as we know it would fall to ruins if I wasn't so damn good at remumbering. 

Which brings me back to my "forgetfulness". Allow me to illustrate what a simple "I forgot" can encompass. Take the act of buying laundry detergent, that magically formulated, dirt and poop blasting concoction created for the sole purpose of creating hours and hours of laundering fun for its purchaser. There are many reasons why I may "forget" to pick up laundry detergent:

1) I don't want to carry it up from the car: As if juggling $200 worth of groceries, a passed out 30lb, 2 year old and a screaming, wobbly-necked 2 month old (who has decided she can't be in the car seat for another moment) isn't challenging enough, let's add 10 more lbs (What's that? Take two trips? Haha. No freaking way, ain't nobody got time for that.)

2) The baby had a meltdown before getting to the inner aisles of the grocery store: It took every ounce of strength and stamina (along with a very deliberate deafness) to randomly pluck the non-perishables I did from the shelves. There's only so much awkward contortion of the soother around K's head into G's mouth while pushing the 200lb cart full of delicately selected produce (now beaten to a pulp) a girl can take. There's no way in hell I'm adding another aisle to this escapade.

3) They didn't have the usual brand I buy: There's no way I was going to risk an epic meltdown (see #2) in order to find an acceptable alternative.

4) I actually did buy it, but forgot it under the cart while loading the groceries into the car: No explanation required. There's no way I'm admitting to this one.

5) I didn't want to do laundry that day (or the next): Not only do I have 3 loads waiting to be washed, but there is one clean in a basket, and one currently occupying the dryer that I don't feel like evicting (doesn't everyone scuttle naked to the dryer to retrieve a clean pair of underwear each morning?). Buying laundry detergent is like one big, make-work project that some days I just don't feel like participating in.

6) I really did forget: Ok, ok. Sometimes I do just forget.

Surviving mummyhood, or better yet thriving in mummyhood (at least at this stage of the game) is all about energy conservation. Tell me, what's the better use of energy? Explaining why I didn't pick up laundry detergent, fielding a bunch of follow-up questions, potentially entering into a whole discussion about the laundry and finally coming to the resolution of putting it back on the shopping list to pick up next time? Or simply stating, that "I forgot" the effing detergent, and will put it back on the list for next week? The second option frees up that time to change and feed the baby, locate a missing shoe and pack the bag for a fun evening stroll by the water, so, in my humble opinion, it's the better one.

While this technique has been extremely effective, I noticed D becoming increasingly concerned with the frequency of my apparent memory lapses. While part of me wanted to let him in on my charade, part of me hesitated for fear of losing out on the quality time it afforded me. Thankfully, a family grocery shop last weekend took care of any guilt/mixed feelings I had toward my "forgetfulness".

The 4 of us started out the shop, G and I ducked out about 1/2 way through for an unscheduled but preemptive nursing session. I don't know what happened in the 15 minutes I sat sipping my coffee and nursing my little lady into a milk coma of bliss, but the frazzled look on poor D's face as he came barrelling from the checkout indicated that it wasn't pretty. I followed the pair of them out to the car, where I,  ever so gently, reminded D that we had to fit the stroller into the trunk he just finished hastily filling with grocery bags.

"Ugh, this is so hard and I'm not even by myself" he said (kind of) to me, but mostly to himself.

Music to my ears, I thought to myself, only an "I don't know how you do it" could've made it sweeter.

When I asked him if he remembered the laundry detergent, he opened his mouth as if to explain himself, then stopped. "Oh shoot, I forgot", he stated. And in his brief moment of hesitation I knew he realized, I'm not forgetful at all.

Until next time my friends!

-A

Sometimes it's better to "forget" a few things
than to miss a moment with these two!