Today is a phenomenon of time and space — Leap Year. A day is conjured out of thin air and all agree to acknowledge it and accept that, sure, okay, today can happen. We’ll agree to say it is February 29 instead of March 1. Everybody good with that? Okay!
This got me thinking about the idea of finding time and what happens with that time, passing time and where it goes. And on that note, this whole process of accepting and acknowledging things that simply don’t make sense. Deep thoughts for a tired, working mom, I know.
Over on the Mary Tyler Mom facebook page, I decreed it WILD CARD WEDNESDAY. That is blogger code for, “Damn. I need another post to fulfill my contract and I am plum out of clever things to say.” As always, my pals at facebook do not disappoint. The offer was simple: make a suggestion about what I should write and I will be committed to the most popular suggestion, with the stipulation that I can only use the lunch hour to write it. Well, a bunch of moms got on the sex after kids bandwagon (more accurately, the lack of sex after kids bandwagon), but a strong second was this timely topic of Leap Year.
Huh.
Leap Year and sex after kids. Yes. There’s something to that. Both are rare, generally anti-climactic, and create a lot of cliche buzz. YES! So that’s the cheap shot, the easy score (pun intended), if you will. Ha ha! Sex after kids is as scarce as leftover beer at a frathouse party. Another one is that my Mary Tyler Mom facebook page sees tons more action than Mary Tyler Dad (insert rim shot here).
More interesting, I think, is why that happens. Why Leap Year? Who decided that was the way our calendar would work? And why does sex become more of a chore, an obligation, a holiday event after the little ones arrive? The truth is that I don’t know. I don’t know how or why Leap Year exists and how or why we all agree to create an extra day only to poke fun at it. I also don’t know how or why sex after kids loses its luster. Or how and why many couples with children (given my extremely unscientific facebook thread) stop having sex after kids. Well, not stop having sex, but start having less frequent sex.
Perhaps the common denominator is this human capacity to simply accept the things we do not understand or that do not make sense to us. There is a shrug of the shoulders and a sort of disinterested, “Okay.” I know I’m stretching here, and there is my aforementioned fatigue, but I think there is something to this theory of mine. Time passes, dictums emerge (you see what I did there?) and before you know it we agree to add an extra day to our year and we agree to remember sex rather than engage in sex.
We’re tired. We’re stressed. Our time is valuable and our curiosity is waning. Just like our husband’s dictums.
Mary Tyler Mom 