When I was in college my sculpture teacher taught us how to weld, not particularly well, it was as finnacky as her teaching. One student asked jokingly “Do you ever wish you had a third arm?” Our teacher turned and explained with more seriousness than I believe she brought to anything else that semester, that yes, she did...every single day.
I don’t share the vehemence of her wish, but it’d sure be nice.
Trying to put cream cheese on a bagel while holding a baby’ll give you a newfound respect for the one-handed in a hurry. It’s a matter of leverage. The cream cheese does not want to come up with the knife, it wants to wiggle around and slide across the counter. It doesn’t want to come away in the clean, discrete little sections destined to be spread across your Montréal style bagel. It wishes to remain cream cheese in a tub.
It’s not the most frustrating thing in the world, it’s like badly connected bluetooth, or noticing that your shoe isn’t untied, but on its way to being untied.
Much of the parenting of a newborn feels like spreading cream cheese with one hand. It’s as though the comfort and ease and logic of your previous life is now being done one handed.
It’s not so bad, really.