Is Parenting Harder on Introverts?
My longitudinal study of one yields inconclusive results
Alone time. That’s the one thing I miss most fiercely. In my pre-parenting life, I used to walk to my favorite café on weekend afternoons — first in Providence, Rhode Island, then in Washington, D.C. I’d set up my laptop in a quiet corner and splurge on an overpriced coffee to buy me a few hours of time.
I wrote two novels that way, one published and one that exists somewhere in the cloud (I’m not sure exactly where) and also on hundreds of sheets of loose paper, gathering dust in the back of our storage closet. Not long after I finished my final draft, I gave birth to my first child.
I didn’t know then how precious those weekend afternoons were, how much I relied on them to gather energy for the coming workweek. I enjoyed writing, of course, but I also enjoyed staring out the window, chuckling at the complicated caffeinated beverages requested by the clientele, and wandering to and from the café, lost in the rhythms of my own thoughts.
During my early days of motherhood, I was rarely alone, but I managed to snatch moments to myself while my daughter slept or sucked on her pacifier, content in the humming of her stroller wheels. They were tenuous moments, always in danger of being plucked out from under me.
