the mother list
When people say I’m a good mother, my stomach sinks. I have a physical reaction like I’m being lied to. My insides rail against it. But then again, I suppose if they said I was a terrible mother that wouldn’t feel true either.
Since the days my kids, now 16, 14, and 10, were tiny, I have mistrusted myself but also knew I was doing some things, maybe just a few things, okay-ish. I wasn’t terrible, just…average and at times below average, in my mind. Looking back over the years, I see how young I was, though my first baby didn’t come until I was thirty years old. There was still so much that remained childish about me, and that continued to be true for years. Perhaps it’s still true. This immaturity painted things and left me selfish a lot. I wanted all the things I could not have as a mother, like sleep and time to myself. Like an uninterrupted meal or shower. I wanted. I did not easily accept that life with kids does not allow that. I did not quickly surrender and roll with the messes and piles of laundry and sleep deprivation. I clawed at it all.
I could make a long list of all my wrongs, but it has been done to death in my ruminating mind and does nothing but to keep me stuck in shame, stuck in time, when I go there.
It is easy to default to shame, especially if you’ve known shame well since you were small. Especially as a mother, when I have desperately wanted to get it right, the stakes have been so high, the pressure so intense, the failings too pronounced. I have written my motherhood mistakes in the grooves of the gray matter inside my head and sunk it all deep into my memory, my very soul. All the impatience, reactionary responses, the wrong words said. All the times I have not shown up for them in the realest ways like I could have because of selfishness or fatigue or anxiety and depression. The years I drank away the pressures and left myself disconnected. How I asked their father for a divorce and took their steady home life apart. How much I could not stand a messy house and set the tone, the uptight tone, again and again.
This all may be true. And this could also be true: I am not intentionally thwarting any kind of peace they have in this life. I am not calling the shots. I am not single-handedly forming every moment and every feeling they have. The problem with me is that I too often think I am the center and they are not their own people. It’s like I’m trying to stand by a belief that if I created them in my body, therefore I will continue to make them with every little thing I do that relates to them, forever and ever amen. This is not true. Of course it’s not true. I have a role, but I am not the only one that does. I have influence, but it’s probably less impactful than I would like to believe.
Yes, I have a responsibility in shaping my children, how they think, how they deal with emotions, and if they are headed toward being good citizens of the world. And also, NO, I do not have control of any of it, really. I’m trying, and trying, but I keep learning it isn’t all about me.
And then there is the truth that we are all doing it wrong. In all the minutes, hours, days and years they are under our care, we will fail too many times to count. Of course we’re doing it wrong. We’re humans, raising humans. It’s a messy business. We are exhausted and imperfect and being pulled in every direction by all the hands and minds and hearts around us. Mommy, Mama, Mom, Mom, Mom…
I’ve been working on letting go, maybe mostly since I got sober in 2010. I’ve been trying to take it easier on myself, and finding again and again that I’m not really great at that. I try. I try to be okay with my okayness. I try to believe what I’m telling you here. I try to believe that I believe that I believe that I am more than okay-ish, and so are my kids. Or they will be, I am hoping they will be.
Shaming myself is taking self-reflection straight to fear’s doorstep for a romp in the hay with insecurity and shame. And then I just feel dirty. Dirty, dirty mother. Bad. Bad mother.
One way I have to pull myself out of this is to occasionally make lists. Not lists of what I need to get done in order to keep my kids’ lives in order, or lists of what it means to me to be a Good Mother. No, the lists I’m talking about are more like short stories to tell myself about the beautiful hard and true entanglement I have with my kids. Stories of moments; our fleeting connections in the midst of pandemic life and school and my parents being sick with me as their caregiver, living right next door. Stories where I see my kids, I really see them. I do this a lot and I only know that if I take the time to reflect on it. These triumphs are happening all the time, maybe even more often than the failures. And if I tell these short stories I will survive my brain’s attempts to head straight for negativity like a Beagle after his nose.
It goes like this:
Asher is 14 years old and I trimmed his freaking toenails the other night. It just sort of happened. I told him his toenails were getting so long, gross. He said they were just fine. I said no. He said, You can cut them, like it was a gift to me and it felt like a gift in that moment. I remember so carefully cutting his tiny toenails for all those years. I remember when he couldn’t do it himself. I tell him he’s capable most of the time when he asks me to do what he can do for himself, but on this night, I trimmed his toenails. We laughed. I handed him the pinky toenail to show him how damn long that thing was. He threw it on the floor. Hey, I just vacuumed, I said. He giggled and went back to watching Psych on his tablet.
I had been to three doctor appointments in one day. One for my dad, one for Elsie, my ten year old, and one for me. I remembered to put something in the crockpot before that day started. We got home tired and done and there was food done, too. The meat was a little tough, like the day had been, but I didn’t have to cook and we ate, like some magic had been performed. By me.
Elsie hadn’t been feeling well. She was next to me in my bed while we watched Ink Master. I turned to look at the color in her face, she had seemed pale all day. She caught me staring and turned to look back at me and our eyes locked and her face crumpled. What is it, I asked, reaching for her. She scooted over and put her head on my chest. I just don’t feel good, she said. I know, honey. I know, I’m sorry. We will get this figured out. I love you.
