some notes on endurance

The moment passes. You're at the end of a race, and feel like your lungs might explode, your muscles might burn right off your legs if you don't stop-- but you push through, and moments after your body has slowed, and you've crumpled over your thighs, things start to feel normal again. You're in the throes of brain-searing birth labor pain, your very bones pushed to their limits, but there's absolutely no going back. And so you barrel forward, and, in the end, you have a real live small person on your hands that spares no time in knitting your heart perilously close to his. You're getting ready to address a crowd, and your tongue is thick in your throat, your stomach a riot of flopping fish. You float onstage and speak to the wavy sea of eyes, and then you find that you are leaving the bright lights and have survived somehow. It feels so dramatic to say that many average days of parenting include a type of tension and release just like these. But they do! In retrospect-- even minutes after a crisis or a confrontation or a sharp irritation-- I can feel normal and peaceful, tenderhearted toward my little guys. But this is only after a type of psychological muscling that is precisely endurance because for some moments, I feel like I might not make it through. I've been thinking lately that this is a mental conditioning that could not be achieved by any other method that I could impose on myself. In the world-famous wedding-y love verse, the first in the list is "love is patient." Holy Cannoli. No matter who you're in the business of loving, patience is essential, but for the day-to-day rigor of raising small children, its importance is utmost. In the same cocktail, mix in some well-timed laughter and equilibrium-restoring bed-time singing and you and your kids just might come out on the other side intact and with some good stories to tell.

P.S. Have to admit I feel like I'm channeling Anne Lamott a bit here, but she always helps me understand that I'm not alone in these parenting warp worlds, and I deeply appreciate her for that.
P.P.S. Doesn't a cannoli sound awesome right now?