So I don’t know about you, but I feel like parenthood is something that you are thrown into once that sweet baby of yours arrives. That final nurse sends you away from the hospital saying, “Good luck!” Well, thank you…we will need a lot of that luck. And maybe more than luck. Like the parenting manual that doesn’t exist. I read a lot of baby books before our baby came, but when we left the hospital I still felt a little like someone threw me to a pack of hungry bears and said “RUN!”
As you are snapping your baby’s car seat into the car (thinking ‘Am I even doing this right?’) , you are almost unable to grasp that they are REALLY letting you take this little human home. Because once you take that 4 session baby class and watch a few videos at the hospital, you are ready to be parents…right?!? You are now the expert on your little human. On your mark, get set, be a parent!
Fear not. It hit me the other day that I was once called an “expert” at something…that I actually knew nothing about. Now I’m pretty knowledgeable about it. This thing that I’m now an “expert” in is melons. (Stick with me. This will come back to parenting.)
When I was in college, I worked at a grocery store. I normally worked the customer service desk, but sometimes being the friendly, outgoing person that I am, I would find myself working random jobs outside of my normal duties. Our store had an annual “Melon Fest” during which customers could sample various seasonal melons that we were selling.
There was an advertisement at the sampling table that I was to work at that said “Melon Expert on hand to answer your questions.” As someone from the produce department was helping get me the melons that I would be cutting up, I asked who the melon expert was. He replied that it was me. I laughed, but I was handed some information cards about eight different melons and told that the information would be helpful.
So, there I was…a table full of melons to sample, and I was the expert. Seriously?! I quickly read the little cards, but kept them handy so that I could have some clue as to what to tell people. I felt a bit annoyed that I was the melon “expert,” feeling like I was a fraud. I didn’t know which melons were the sweetest, or how to tell if they were ripe or not. At least I had my melon playing cards.
But as I went about my shift, cutting up the various melons (I am now a master melon cutter after all those hours of cutting melons), chatting with customers, and sampling along with them…I actually started to figure out a thing or two about them. By the time I had done a couple shifts as the “melon expert,” I actually felt like I knew what I was talking about. Was I an expert? Of course not. But I felt pretty darn comfortable helping people figure out what melons to try and buy.
At this point, you might be thinking “What does this have to do with parenting?” Well, as I was cutting up a cantaloupe the other day…it hit me that parenthood was A LOT like my experience as the melon expert. I had no idea what I was doing at the start, and was taken by surprise that I was supposed to know what to do. This sounds like parenting.
I was hesitant at first, but quickly gained confidence as I cut up more melons and helped more people figure out what was what. This sounds like parenting as well. By the time I was done with my shifts as the melon expert, I certainly wasn’t an expert but I really did know what I was talking about and what I was doing. Call this my cantaloupe conclusion if you want: being a parent was just like my melon “expert” experience!
I am guessing that there are more than a few situations in life that transpire like this: someone is thrown into the deep end of a situation not knowing how to “swim,” but somehow he or she makes it anyways. Don’t know about you, but this melon moment that I had made me feel better about being a parent. Realizing that even though I may not have known what I was doing at the beginning, I’m doing okay now. The first time I tried to give my kid a bath, I’m not sure he even came out of the situation clean but I was somehow soaked. Now I’m pretty sure my kids are clean after I bathe them. The first time I tried to feed my kids baby food, I bet they didn’t ingest a complete tablespoon of it. Now I can trick my kids into eating veggies (mwah-ha-ha…insert evil laugh) that they don’t even know are in their dinners!
I could come up with a hundred examples of times when I didn’t know what I was doing at first, but where I came out unharmed and relatively successful in the end. So I think we’ll all be fine. The next time something happens, whether as a parent or in life, where you think that you can’t do it, remember: You will survive. You will figure it out. And you will probably come out looking pretty good at the end of it all. Maybe you’ll even be an expert.
Feel free to share your “I didn’t know what I was doing, but now I totally got this!” moment in the comments section!
Love this! It was “my pleasure” to read it.
Hahaha…and it was “my pleasure” to write! Glad you enjoyed it!