I bought Bill a return plane ticket to Tasmania so he can spend a week hiking across Cradle Mountain with my brother – they set off in the next couple of weeks. Bill turns 40 at the end of the year and he has spent most of his thirties having two kids. It has been a while since he has had true solitude, it has been a while since he took a holiday without small children and it has been a while since he has been able to tackle something really physically challenging. I thought this trip would be the perfect gift for him.
When you have kids with someone you discover new parts of yourselves together, but man, you close a lot of parts down, too. Whenever you have a child under five years of age I think your relationship is pretty much situated in a high altitude death zone. If you go and have a second child (or more) then you extend this time in the death zone to even longer than five years. What’s your capacity for endurance like? Shutting down part of yourself can become habit. Living on thin air. It’s a problem, because your partner as someone unrestrained and unavailable and with serious passions of their own is likely the stuff you fell in love with. They were not this ragged person with altitude sickness that you now see before you. And you have the sickness, too, and you are not so clear-headed, yourself. The view might be once in a lifetime and you can acclimatize to high altitudes, to a degree, and you can try and train for them, or buy yourself a bit of supplementary oxygen but there really isn’t much relief until you start the descent. With our youngest at three years of age I can feel that Bill and I are climbing back down. Oxygen.
This week I went out to Bill’s parents to borrow a food dehydrator so Bill can start preparing meals for the trek with my brother. When I told Bill’s parents about the gift and how excited Bill was about it I think I saw a little bit of hate in their eyes. I guess the hike is in the snow and in the middle of winter and they think I could have sent him to do something less dangerous.
When I told my sister about the plans for Bill and our brother to go on a climb together she sent me this.
blue milk 
omg that video is hilarious. The perfect anecdote to the tears you made well up. Boy does this ever hit close to home. It helps so much to hear that others (we all?) go through it too. Although it rather terrifies me to realize we are nowhere near the descent from the summit.
I really needed this blog entry today, and that metaphor. Thank you!
And what a fabulous gift to give him! I hope he has a wonderful time.
I love this gorgeous post and I know just exactly precisely what you mean.
I’m sending mine off to a music festival with his brother this weekend, and the look on his face when I suggested it, like, “CAN I?” Like it hasn’t occurred to him to do something just for his own sake that took more than an hour or so Forever.
Having babies is blissful and lucky and also so wretchedly horrible, it’s really something you have to get through, hopefully with some of your best stuff in tact, and I’m not talking about home furnishings.
Also, I’ve looked up camping and weather in Tasmanian winter, just out of curiosity, and I giggle at your definition of “winter” and “cold.” being a Canadian, I don’t know a single human being, babies and all, who hasn’t happily frolicked about in worse weather. It’s all about the socks, really. Wool is the thing.
I’d be worried about poisonous spiders and snakes.
Nice post. Mine are 5, 3, and just-turned-1, so yeah, I think my husband could use a hike, too. Plus, “THE” Atlantic article and the many responses I’ve read have me worried that puberty may put us back into the death zone, just 2 or 3 years after we’ve left it.
This is a great metaphor. It is why we have decided not to have a 3rd child. With the second about to turn 3 I am looking forward to the descent. Also, see my comment on your previous post. Sick child = no oxygen for anyone.
I think we came down off the mountain straight onto a rollercoaster :), but yeah getting them to school really turns a corner.
Thanks for this. We’re actually too exhausted to even have a second (perhaps that makes us pathetic, but MAN, are we oxygen-deprived, to use your great metaphor). I have to wonder if the “high-altitude” effect can be worse depending upon how much you have to change your life when you become a parent; for us, it was pretty big, and some of that was good, but some of that was a bit traumatic. Our son is only two, and we’re about to get our second child-free weekend since he was born. The first was a revelation and did more for our relationship (and our sanity) than anything else we’ve tried in the past two years. Well, three years, because pregnancy was no picnic, either.
It’s nice to know that other people who adore and enjoy their children also struggle with this and that we’re not bad people because of these feelings.
I think it depends on so many things, including natural energy levels, family support etc. We are only human!
I think this is why I have noticed that, when the kids are around 6 or 7, quite a few relationships break up. I always felt that they had got through the hard part together and it seemed strange to break up just when things were getting easier. But I think on the struggle to the summit, there is no oxygen or energy available to actually break up. Coming down, you can look around, and contemplate the future.
I love this post. Altitude sickness and survival mode are exactly what it feels like to have a young child. The relentlessness of the responsibility and the physical nature of the work were an extraordinary shock to me as was the need to be social to cope with the experience, as a natural hermit, this totally floored me. I needed to speak about it, to make sure that barely coping meant I wasn’t doing it badly. Motherhood took my breath away but it also woke me up. Living like that is hard, unsustainably hard, but it’s very real.
Five years in and I am starting the descent now, and as Julie says, with the oxygen and energy returning great changes can finally be made to my life, our lives. For me, it is not a break-up with my partner, rather a discarding of a now unsatisfying career. Having spent the past five years with a heart divided between motherhood and my professional world I have found myself in a very strange place. Without the drama and visceral needs of early childhood as a distraction I realise I am really over my career. Two degrees and 15 years experience are alot to let go of, it almost feels like a marriage break-up. But the extremes of early parenting have changed me forever and I am no longer able to do something I do not love. It’s big.
As someone who has come through to the other side (son 23), I can recommend that this is a great thing to do. You do lose yourself and it hard to get yourself back. In fact it feels so long ago that you barely remember who you used to be. This is not all bad, but I do wish I had maintained bits of myself – given myself permission to do this throughout the years. So both parents NEED this and should have it. xxx
I love, LOVE, this metaphor – and it explains why I struggle so much with getting my own partner out of the house and off doing his own thing: he’s still in it, and while I technically am too, I push more frequently for downtime. I have a feeling that once we’re able to really come down, for good, he’ll be more open to letting loose and doing something like this.
I can’t say we’ve ever got to the other side. Oldest son (now 21)fell into a hell of illness just as youngest son started school a few years ago. I am really struggling with this. Apart from the horror of illness, I had been so looking forward to breathing space in our long childrearing journey. Husband and I do have regular scheduled downtime but it is just such a marathon, as it is for anyone with sick or disabled offspring.
This an awesome, generous present.
I’m turning 40 at the end of the year and my partner was going to send me on this hike too.
But then I realized that I don’t trust my body to be physically capable of the hike. Sometimes we make it back down but bits of us never work the same again – the parenting equivalent of frostbite, I guess.
This is a wonderful post – the metaphor is powerful and I think works for more than parenting of small children too. I’m reminded of the spacemaking stuff that I talk about sometimes, that it can be difficult and important and we can succeed and fail, all when things are often challenging and hard. Thanks for sharing so much that is so unbelievably awesome. *appreciation*
Argh…. my youngest is nearly two… but then again I am pregnant with no. 3!
The metaphor is a very good one. Another I’ve heard is ”the tunnel” which you’re in while they’re under 3. That also resonated with me. It’s hard because there is much to be joyful about with tiny babies and small children. And yet so much of it is repetitive and mind-numbing and hard work and boring. So it’s hard not to wish it away.
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great metaphor. so jealous of Bill.
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