Cheating at Candy Land

Posted Apr 16, 2009 by Donna Koehn

Updated Apr 16, 2009 at 09:17 AM

Maybe it’s because my daughter is about to graduate high school and my son is turning 16 this week. But lately I’ve been thinking about what I would do differently if I were to start back at square one in this motherhood game.

First off, I wouldn’t feel guilty about cheating at Candy Land. Not cheating to win—cheating to lose. That game can go on for an eternity, and it’s pretty easy to palm the Plumpy card in front of unsuspecting preschoolers and get sent back to the start. It was often the only way I could ensure that one of the kids would win and I could start dinner. Yes, children, you really weren’t that good at Candy Land. Deal.

A word about guilt. I would have tried to feel less of it. Guilt when I took my kid to the doctor when I didn’t need to. Guilt when I didn’t take my kid to the doctor and should have. I did the best I could and made the best judgment calls I knew how.

I attended almost every one of my kids’ school events, sometimes more than once. But the one that sticks out is the one I couldn’t attend because I had to work. It really wasn’t much of a performance; in fifth grade my son went shirtless as an Aborigine and jumped from a chair pretending to stab a plastic fish. That was pretty much it. But when I came to pick him up from school that day, his teacher expressed her surprise that I hadn’t been there, sending me into paroxysms of guilt.

Enough with the guilt.

Money was tight, but I wanted nice photos of the kids, better than I could shoot with my cheapie camera. So I took advantage of the specials by Sears, Penney’s, Wal-Mart, etc. Usually, I stuck to the specials, not succumbing to the photographer’s pressure to buy all the other photos that are taken. But if I had it to do over, I would try to buy more poses, even as broke as we often were. When I did, it often happened that the also-ran poses were some of the best—but only in retrospect. I almost didn’t buy any of a package taken of my daughter in preschool, and finally bought just one. But that has become my favorite photo of her as a child and still is in a frame in my living room. How I wish I had the other poses!

I bought the whole Sears package once of my son, then about 1. The main shot was really nice. But the one I now adore shows him slumping spraddle-legged in a chair, his arm thrown over the back of the seat, looking as if he has no bones at all, a funny grin on his face. It’s him!

Speaking of photos, I would have kept up with putting them in photo albums. I haven’t done that since my daughter was 3. I have multiple shoe boxes full of jumbled photos and I have yet to do anything with them. Shame on me!

I also would have tried harder to find the time to write in the second child’s baby book. As the second of four, I figured that my mother’s neglect of the baby books came about because she was less fascinated as time went on by every baby burp. With my older sister, she recorded how many ounces of formula she drank every day. I think the fourth kid got his birth weight recorded. Now I know that with each successive kid, spare time gets eaten away.

I would have tried to find more alone time for me. I needed to come back at parenting fresh sometimes. I’m not sure how I would have done that, as we were new to Brandon and I had no family or friends here. But I should have worked harder at it, somehow.

The main thing I wish I could undo is a familiar lament by parents of young adults. Even though people told me (a lot) that this time would fly by, I sometimes got bogged down in the day-to-day of raising kids. Boy, were they right. It may not feel that way when one kid is finally asleep at 2 a.m. and the other one wakes up wailing. Or when one kid is throwing up and the other one gets that look that tells you you’re going to need two buckets (and maybe three, with one for you).

Or when the kid snags the Plumpy card before you do.

But here I am, with that child-rearing clock about to strike midnight—done—and I’m wondering where all the time went. Such a cliche. And so doggone true.