The hangover

“Parenting is like an extended hangover.  You’re tired.  You’re cranky.  Everything seems too loud and too fast.  The whole day passes before you manage to pull yourself together.  The only difference is that you didn’t have the pleasure of hanging out at the pub with your friends the night before.”

So said an older friend of mine long before I had children, and so I also joke now to those who are considering taking the plunge into parenting.  Or I mostly joke, because there’s a truth in there somewhere.  Parenting often does mean putting up with the crappy bits of life (sometimes all too literally) while doing without the bits you’d rather be doing.  It means having to survive the hangover, so to speak, without getting to drink in the first place.

Which is probably why one of those younger couples about to discover parenthood felt the need to ask me, “Well, why do you bother then?”

The question forced me, for at least the hundredth time, to try and explain why, despite the extended hangover effect, I love being a parent almost more than anything I can imagine.  And also for at least the hundredth time, I’m pretty sure I failed to find the words to express what I feel.

The simple fact is that I wouldn’t trade that hangover for anything, that I look fondly back on the years of hangover past, and that I quietly dread the day when the long hangover of parenting will finally pass.