You Need Only To Survive

Setting realistic expectations in confined spaces (with kids)

My eldest daughter was not an easy baby. Her infancy was a struggle, and saying I haven’t slept since the day she was born is barely an exaggeration. With a serious case of eczema and what seemed to be baby FOMO, she was up at all hours, and I was constantly running on fumes. That whole phase was a blur. 

When she was only four months old, we made plans to take a trip to Baguio. That’s where my mom lives, and we wanted to be there for her birthday. It was going to be a good 5-6 hour drive, and we had absolutely no idea what we were getting ourselves into.

All Set, Let’s Go

Only fifteen minutes into the ride, my daughter woke up and immediately began to scream. Her fretful cries, at such high decibels, in an enclosed space, combined with my over-exhaustion felt like it was enough to break me into a meltdown of biblical proportions. We were trying to establish the car-seat rule, and I didn’t want to give up. As her soggy face turned a slight shade of purple, and the wailing continued to render us all deaf… I caved. After an hour and a half, with over four hours of the ride left.

(Disclaimer: Technically, it wasn’t/isn’t a law here, so it’s considered very normal to travel sans car-seat, but i am very aware of the imposed danger of not using one. I don’t recommend it.)  

We managed with increments of silence, thanks to breastfeeding. I didn’t just cave. I waved the white flag entirely. Upon our arrival, my own mother laughed at my appearance as she walked towards me (to take the now peaceful baby). She said that I looked like I had spent the ride with my head stuck out of our car window (maybe I should have). I told her the story of the never-ending shrills and the suffering I endured. She looked at me with pity and said, “It’s okay. Whatever you need to do to survive”.
Her simple statement was all I needed to ease the guilt of my disgraceful failure. 

In 200 Meters, Turn Left

I consider myself to be somewhat of an experienced traveler, but it’s not the same when you add a child to the equation. There’s no reading, resting your eyes, sitting quietly with coffee, or messaging in group chats. None of that. Your priority is to get the traveling done peacefully, and keep everyone as calm and comfortable as you possibly can. That’s it. 

All of that being said, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it can’t be fun. But you learn to manage your expectations and prioritize appropriately. If you keep your checklist to a bare minimum, there’s a much smaller bracket for defeat. I like those odds.

Hazard Reported Ahead

It’s been eleven weeks since the start of lock down, and we’re all being pushed to the boundaries of our mental threshold. As we launched this website and became more active on social media, i couldn’t help but notice the amount of content encouraging everyone to use this ECQ as a chance to level up- do something remarkable with your lives, they said. But in group pages and personal accounts, a lot of us shook our heads in disagreement. There’s just no room for any of that right now.

In this clusterfuck of a joy ride that is 2020, all roads are closed. Our trip is most definitely delayed- indefinitely. We’ll charge it to poor travel conditions and elements beyond our control, and the only thing you need to concern yourself with is that you need only to survive. 

Rerouting…

We are living in transition to a new reality. It’s been suggested that the metrics by which we evaluate our success has to change too. A lot of what we are allowed to experience is out of our control, and we need to understand that our expectations need to be realistic.

Expect off days. Expect tantrums. Expect to be left in the shadows of the government’s plans (or lack thereof). Expect carmageddon, in a car with a busted air conditioner in the middle of summer, wondering if you will really make it to your destination on Waze’s calculated time. The drive-thru will run out of fries, your kids will throw up all over themselves, and as we all know- the restrooms won’t have any toilet paper.

All that matters is that you stay sane, and be healthy. Keeping a realistic approach to what you can, and cannot take on, will keep you from unraveling completely. Your neighbors will become assholes. The media will continue to feed into the possibility of the end of days and a looming zombie apocalypse. Emotions will get to everyone.

Time Spent in Traffic- 109,440 minutes

Be wary of sancti-mommy accounts; with their perfectly planned outfits and beautiful backdrops. The ones who insist that you carpe that diem and use this time to become your ideal self, achieve the perfect MILF bod, write a book, learn to bake sourdough croissants, or stage a play in your living room. I’m sure there are a very rare few that could perform minor surgery in a moving jeepney, or tattoo a masterpiece in the dark… but for the rest of us, i’d say that’s kind of out of the question.

Right now is quite possibly the worst time to burden ourselves with the pressure of irrational goals. When you’re trying to figure out how to pay for next month’s rent, while homeschooling kids, keeping toddlers fully stimulated, and taking care of your elderly parents on top of your own family, you’ve got to realize that you’re already functioning at an extremely high level.

You’ve Arrived At Your Destination

There are extraordinary heroes on the front lines right now; doctors, nurses, clerks, and workers who are doing everything within their means to keep the world as we know it from being absolutely fucked. All the rest of us can do is get through this in one piece. We are fighting a different battle at home. You don’t have to beat yourself up over not “living your best life”.

When you finally get to Mom’s house, nobody is going to care that no one got the fries they wanted or that you spent the entire 5 hours with a baby latched onto your boob. All anyone ever really cares about is that they were comfortable. There’s no need to equate self worth with productivity. Nobody is gonna call you out for what you were or were not able to accomplish during this time of crisis. This is hard for everybody. Anything that you do accomplish beyond survival is whipped cream on your already-cream-blended frappucino. 

Damn, I really miss joy rides and cafe-concocted coffee runs.

*Featured Image By: Camila Storgaard Photography