The Thing They Don't Tell You
By Danielle Cotter Griggs
@agaggleofgriggses
“Your total today is $247.94,” the Trader Joe’s cashier tells me as she lifts the last of my bags into a second cart.
“Oh! Um. Great, thanks,” I mumble, sticker shock hitting me as I stick my card into the reader. We should be fine, I think, because we just got paid. Yet my fingers itch to check our bank account, just in case.
Twenty seconds later the screen still says, “Authorizing …”
The three dots appear and disappear in an ominous loop, and the pierced and tattooed teenager behind the register smiles encouragingly at me.
My 4-year-old hangs onto my leg while the toddler on my hip tries to grab every candy bar in reach, but I still can’t help but slip my phone out of my back pocket to discreetly sneak a peek at our balance under the counter. Of course, the bank app is being slow, and now I’m starting to sweat.
I’m about to apologize and offer a credit card that may or may not do any better when the card reader screen flashes a friendly: “Approved.” I sigh with relief.
Later, I unload a mountain of groceries into our brand new fridge—the fancy kind with doors on both sides and the freezer below—that somehow never seems to be completely full the way the old fridge did. This grocery order, which is solidly twice our weekly budget, looks bountiful on its shining shelves now, but I know we’ll be down to a few smushy strawberries in short order. Our grocery bill has doubled since the appetites of my younger two daughters caught up to my oldest’s, and the food it buys disappears as fast as you can say, “the toddler wants second breakfast.”
“You know, people always warn you kids are expensive,” I tell my husband that night, “but I assumed they meant college and weddings and that kind of thing.”
When we thought about starting a family, it never occurred to me we’d be spending a small fortune on yogurt and bananas someday. While I somewhat anticipated a big shopping trip at the beginning of each season to make sure my rapidly growing 8-year-old doesn’t show up to school in accidental capris, I didn’t expect requests for a new shirt for “purple day” (whatever that is), a changing dress code for dance class, sneakers worn out a few months too early that have to be replaced, Halloween costumes, or spirit week themed outfits.
That’s the thing they don’t tell you. They don’t tell you that the expense is an every day, every week, every year thing. It’s not just the momentous occasions. It’s here, now, immediate and often inescapable. It’s an eruption of expenses for the big days, but also a slow drip of needs for the ordinary ones.
It hits me, though, as the girls tumble like a tornado into the kitchen for dinner: it’s the immediate, the now, the slow, ordinary drip that can also be the most beautiful.
They clamber three in a row onto counter stools left in our house by the previous owner; that have seen better days and wobble worryingly when a dinner dance party breaks out. The candy-sweet tones of KidzBop Kids fill the kitchen, and our oldest starts to whip her head around like a metalhead (and like her daddy). Our middle has more of a whimsical, Cyndi Lauper-esque vibe, which matches her perpetually disheveled blonde hair and hot pink tutu perfectly. And the little one alternates between bobbing her dark curls enthusiastically and simply laughing and clapping for her sisters.
No one is eating their food (I won’t remind them what it cost right now), but this moment bursts with joy so palpable I want to freeze it, frame it, pin its wings in place so I never forget its beauty.
I expected the big occasions to be the most rewarding part of parenting. Their first steps and days of school. Dance recitals. Sports wins. Picture perfect holidays. I imagined graduations, weddings, and first homes, and, eventually, baby showers and grandchildren.
But the thing they don’t tell you is: it’s the little moments that make it all worth it. It’s those extravagant baby stretches in the splotchy morning light as you unwrap last night’s swaddle. It’s the toddler words that are so perfectly imperfect—”rainbrella” for umbrella, “ringbell” for doorbell, and, my favorite, “color” for popsicle—you hope they never correct themselves. It’s watching them get invested in a Disney movie for the first time, or hearing them sing their hearts out all alone in the bathroom. It’s a sticky hand-squeeze on the way into the doctor’s office, or hearing what they think about a book they’re reading. It’s the way my girls greet each other after school and the made up games they play. The way they cheer each other on, fight in consistent patterns, and always land on the couch in the same order at night no matter what battles were waged that day.
Maybe they don’t tell you these things because who would choose to have their bank account bled dry by berries and bagel pizzas in the shopping cart every week? Maybe they don’t tell you because it’s impossible to tell someone who doesn’t already know. Maybe they don’t tell you because naming those small, immediate rewards is like telling someone the birthday wish you made on blown out candles—a little magic lost in the telling.
Or maybe they don’t tell you, because they can’t tell you. You have to see it for yourself to believe it.
Guest essay written by Danielle Cotter Griggs. Danielle is a writer, musician, and actor. She's a rookie in the stay-at-home mom game but is working on perfecting her new role as Arbiter of Turns and Provisioner of Snacks. She lives in Central Massachusetts with two cats, three daughters, and one very patient, unusual husband. You can follow her adventures on her website.