Give in, and enjoy it

The woman who said it to me was a friend of a friend, and she was passing it on as something she’d heard and found useful, so perhaps part of its magic for me is that, unlike so much of the other information and opinion and instruction about parenthood that clatters around in my head, it is entirely unfreighted by the emotional weight of my relationship with the person who said it. It’s not from some respected national authority, or from an intimidatingly more experienced fellow parent (such as, for example, my own dear sister), or from a doctor or therapist or, heaven forfend, my own parents.

No, this is just a single word, uttered and unbelabored, from someone I barely knew. And yet it’s what I think of at the most difficult moments and what I’m most tempted to pass on to the other parents I know. Surrender.

What the friend of my friend meant - or at least what her voice in my head has come to mean - is not to surrender to whatever your child demands, regardless of judgment or common sense. Rather, it means simply this: Surrender to the fact that you are now a parent, that your life has irrevocably changed, and surrender to the reality that while you are in charge of your children, you are not, now or ever, in control of who they are, what they feel, or what kind of adults they will become.

The notion of surrendering to parenthood was most useful to me in the early weeks and months with our son C.J., when I had to confront the new and daunting realities of life with an infant. No, I soon learned to tell myself, you cannot any longer sit and enjoy your coffee and newspaper in peace, and you and the baby will both be happier faster if you give up trying. Play peekaboo as you sneak a glimpse at the headlines, wait for bedtime to catch up on this or any other reading, and just resign yourself to reading a whole lot less than you used to for the next few years.

The same goes, I still must sometimes remind myself, for the other activities of my pre-child life: daylong bike rides, ambitious cooking projects, spontaneous travel, long telephone chats with friends. I still bike, cook, travel, and keep up with friends (though I find, sadly, that that’s the hardest of all to fit in between work and family life), but the way I do all these things is fundamentally altered by having children.

For one thing, I rarely do anything alone anymore. My husband and I bought a bike seat and helmet as soon as C.J. could sit up, and we look forward to using them for his little sister, T.T., this spring - while C.J., now 12, happily races ahead on a bike of his own. Because that’s the good news about my having surrendered to riding with him instead of faster and farther by myself: He loves to bike now, and he’s great company. Same with cooking and traveling. In exchange for a bit (OK, a lot) of extra patience in the early stages, I now have a kid who enthusiastically joins in many of my favorite pursuits.

I was reminded of this last weekend, when I took C.J. skiing. I hadn’t been on skis in 15 years, largely because I couldn’t imagine enjoying myself while skiing with a toddler, and I felt quite guilty about having delayed his introduction to the sport for so long. But the guilt is gone: C.J. took to it instantly, grumbled a bit about taking a lesson with me but then paid careful attention to the instructor, and by the end of the first day was whizzing gleefully past me on the slopes.

Meanwhile, we saw a few terrified toddlers sliding faster than they should have been, and more than a few kicking at their skis and crying about the cold as their parents urged them to take just one more run.

“Surrender,’’ I wanted to whisper. Take the kid in for hot cocoa, ski less than you planned, and know that you’ll all be the happier for it.

And, by the way, get yourself a hot cocoa, too. If you’re going to surrender to life with children, you might as well enjoy the perks.