Category Archives: motherhood

Identity, Living, motherhood

One Big Blob

The past few weeks have been a little trying. Our family seems to be on the cusp of something big. I can only say that now after these last few weeks. In the midst of running, running, running, it was all I could do to put one foot in the front of the other – or shuffle them along. I knew things were crazy, and was reacting accordingly, but I didn’t know why.

Now I wonder if my elevated stress levels and difficulty in calming them were not a direct result: my subconscious reaction to what my conscious self wasn’t ready to admit was a huge deal.

My five year-old, in her last year of preschool, more and more frequently laments the fact that she cannot ride the bus to big-kid school like the others. She wants to stay at preschool and eat lunch with her friends. She’s ‘reading’ books to me and asking how to spell different words.

My seven year-old is coming into her own, blossoming with independent applications of math reasoning she’s learned at school. She reads books aloud with an expression well beyond her years and worthy of an audio recording. She’s requesting and engaging in social interactions and activities – on her own.

My nine year-old has joined two after school activities, doubling her previous involvement. She is in her last year of elementary school; her last year of recess; her last year of riding the bus with her sisters. She is looking longer and leaner every day.

And me? I am nearing the destination of days full of adult time. All three of them will be in school full-day next year. I will be free to . . . earn the money we’ve sorely been missing since I’ve been at home? Write my way into posterity? Query until they can no longer say no?

I haven’t been gazing longingly at this point in time as the end all and be all. But it hovered like some kind of talisman – a time when, my life would go back to normal? When adult life (ie working, I guess) would resume? When I’d be able to exhale that breath I’ve been holding since the first labor pain of the first child?

And though my mind has set up the first day of the next academic year as the first day of this new life, I’ve finally realized that we’re all in the transition to it now. My five year-old is prepping to be the big girl – already a little too cool for preschool. My seven year-old is branching out in social groups – excited and a little less apprehensive to do so on her own. My nine year-old is claiming activities and beliefs as her own – independent from her parents and sisters.

Friends, acquaintances, and other parents always asked what activities my kids were in. I always thought I saw some semblance of shock when I answered, “None.” We didn’t do adorable dance classes at three years-old. We didn’t do t-ball, and soccer, and gymnastics, oh my. They never expressed an dire interest in any of these things and my husband and I never pushed it. There was plenty of time for that – and they would determine the time.

The time is now.

We may have avoided the cost and inconvenient schedules of such activities up to this point, but now it’s on. I’ve started the taxi-driver lifestyle I’ve avoided thus far.

It hit me like a ton of bricks last week when I rushed to finish an on-line Girl Scout leader training, compile fund raising monies, feed the kids dinner before we rushed to a Girl Scout meeting, dress them in Halloween costumes for a Girl Scout Halloween party, babysit one of their classmates, see my husband, help (nag) the kids to finish their homework, steal Halloween candy they’d acquired before even Trick-or-Treating, talk to my husband, smear their faces and hair with foul chemicals to turn them into unrecognizable ghouls for Halloween and rush late to another party after peeling countless tangelos to make festive pumpkin snacks – all while suffering from a compound case of sleep deprivation and PMS.

Unbelievably, it took me awhile to realize why last week was so hard for me to handle. Any week has the potential to be miserable. But when the everyday congeals into one big blob of ‘life is about to get a whole lot more complicated’, sometimes the blob is so frickin’ big it takes awhile to digest.

My girls are growing up! As wistful as I was watching them walk away from me for the first time, leaving them in the classroom alone for the first time, hearing ‘Mom’ instead of ‘Mama’ for the first time, those were mere speed bumps compared to this swift elevation. I have entered the ‘Mom, could you drop me off at so-and-so’s’ part of motherhood; the ‘Mom, pick me up after school’ part; the ‘We’ll be done at 4:15, Ma’ part; the ‘But I want to eat lunch with my friends, Mom’ part.

In addition to my ambivalent mom underbelly, I also have my own personal fears to fight. I’ve been home exclusively since 2008. The thought of returning to my previous job, even if I could even secure it, makes me want to vomit. Launching the totally exciting, yet daunting new idea I have for employment makes me want to seize. Not only am I being forced out of my old ‘job’ with all these developments, but forced into a totally new one.

All of our times, they are a-changin’. No wonder the woman, mom, worker in me is revolting.

from Blue-Cat00

from Blue-Cat00

Standard
Living, motherhood, parenting

Collectively Conscious

It all started innocently enough.

Moved by an evocative poem by Dennis Ference, I shared it here.

A friend liked it.  She had just lamented on FaceBook that her son participated in his last grandparent day at school since he’ll be entering middle school in the fall.

My aunt emailed a link to a video she’d watched meditating on the fact that it is the everyday moments that make up life with our children – just minutes before reading my reblog.

That afternoon I watched my children ride their bikes to the neighbors’ house – only four doors down – but far enough that they pedaled out of sight.  I fought hard against the pressure building in my chest.  I fought against the desire to reel them back in on an invisible thread to my heart.

I watched the birds alight from treetops across the street and glide across the sky.

We will all honor every moment.

Standard
Living, motherhood

Dirty Laundry

A neighbor came into my house this morning.

Dropping her girls off for their daily trek to the bus stop with mine, she had considerately righted my pot of mums blown over in last night’s storm. The pot had not so considerately slimed her with green goo growing on its side. Ushering her into the bathroom to wash her hands, I thought, oh God – is it clean? Is the hand towel fresh enough? Will she drown in the puddles of water the girls perpetually leave around the sink? Has too much time elapsed since I wiped the scum out of the sink? Lots to think about in the few short minutes it takes for proper hand washing technique.

Then she had to walk back through the dining room to get to the front door. She noticed our retro console radio, one that provided the soundtrack for countless cocktail parties my husband’s great aunt threw in her heyday. Instead of zeroing in the connection she had to it, having had a similar one growing up, I fretted about the piles of paper schmagma she might notice on top it. Or the tiny pebbles of Play-doh scattered about the floor that I made a mental note of last night to sweep up before they came over.

I felt like she’d judge me if I didn’t have a perfectly clean house. I worried the outward appearance of my home would reflect the inner workings of the care of my children, my family, my self. Is the put-together, in-control image a facade? Off-guard, unawares, does this tell the true story?

This feeling, concern, compulsion is not inspired just by this neighbor. It is the panic that ensues whenever someone drops by unannounced. With a constant flow of laundry, dishes, corrected school and artwork, mail and printed matter, any given surface in our house is clean for no longer than an hour. And that’s the clutter. Never mind the dust bunnies, the ring around the toilet, the smears, the crumbs . . .

And then I saw a picture on Facebook. It was of a woman I haven’t spoken to in years reading to her two children in a home I’ve never been to before. The kids nestled in close to her, all three seated on the floor, their backs up against the front part of the couch. The scene, a simple and common occurrence in the life of a family, somehow spoke of the love of a parent and child, of the connection, of the amazing gravity of this stolen moment. The picture was taken at wide range, including the bookcase behind them, the TV stand, the windows – a pile of laundry haphazardly spread across the couch. Yet, all that blends into the background, pulling this trio into sharp focus.

wisegeek.com

wisegeek.com

Truthfully, I was happy to notice that pile of laundry. Because it meant I wasn’t the only one with messy mounds of stuff we’d failed to put away. But what struck me more was that this mother only saw the story in front of her. She wasn’t looking over her shoulder at jobs left undone, chores to do. She hadn’t ‘unshared’ this photo because her house wasn’t perfectly tidy.

When my youngest was maybe eight months old, another mother of three came over to take photos of my girls. I may have worried about not having a good backdrop for her practice shots to build her portfolio, but she was only concerned with their pudgy little faces, their sparkling eyes. In fact, she told me it was refreshing to visit the home of a woman/mother who didn’t feel like she had to make everything perfect before accepting a visitor. She begged my pardon, assuring me she didn’t mean it as a critique of my homemaking skills. I knew she didn’t. But it still gave me pause. First, was my house that nasty, so obviously not cleaned up? Second, I couldn’t claim the freedom from judgment she charged me with. I’d just run out of time and/or energy to make things better before she arrived.

But none of us have the time and/or energy to have show-ready homes at all times (or anytime). So why do we still beat ourselves up for not achieving it? Why do we make excuses when others enter, apologizing for the mess, fibbing that’s it’s not always like this? Why can’t we own that big dust bunny in the corner? Why can’t we see the life around us and not the litter?

Why are we always so ashamed of what’s inside, when it’s usually what makes us the same? If we only aired our dirty laundry, it would become fresh and clean.

Standard
Children, motherhood, parenting

Oh, My Aching Head

We call them Old Wives’ Tales, but there must be some truth to them.  For, why would such a tale transmit through the generations, from place to place, person to person?

One particular teacher, a seasoned veteran, and I used to compare notes on our students’ behavior in relation to the phase of the moon.  In other words, a full moon meant crazy kids.

I extended that prediction to rainy days as well.  A drop in the barometric pressure caused children’s brains to ooze our their ears.

Which is about what is happening to my just-returned-from-school children right now.

Oh, my aching Old Wife’s head.

Found this image on hemiplegicmigrainehope.wordpress.com - thought the info on this site was ironically appropriate for all adults involved.

Found this image on hemiplegicmigrainehope.wordpress.com – thought the info on this site was ironically appropriate for all adults involved.

Standard
motherhood, postpartum depression, Recovery

You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby

A new mother, five week old strapped to her abdomen, stood nearby as I spoke to another returning preschool mother as we all three watched our little ones play.

My anxious hackles were actually down, since my daughter had had a few play dates with this other mother’s daughter between the end of last school year and the beginning of this one. I knew her well enough that conversation seemed to come easily – a small miracle for me with nearly anyone other than family or close friends.

Seeing this new mother navigate a newbie preschooler with infant in tow brought me back to my own first experience with preschool – a time otherwise known as the year that shall not be named.

What a difference between the easy, breezy tenor of today and the hell on earth that nearly every morning was as I unwittingly struggled with postpartum and getting three children out of the house each morning.

Forgive me as I recite the Virginia Slims cigarette commercial catch phrase.

from a t-shirt of the same name

from a t-shirt of the same name

I try to tell myself that as I ease my muscles down from the twitchy edge.

I try to remember that time – only to make any morning issue seem that much easier now.

I try to recall just enough to vindicate my survival – not send me down the path of PTSD.

And I try to share the short version of my story, not to scare young mothers or one up them, but to provide a sympathetic show of support. Even if it’s just a knowing smile to show them they are not alone, that they are not the only one who struggles with such pedestrian endeavors.

And to remind myself that yes, I have come a long way.

Standard
Children, Identity, motherhood, parenting

Good Imagination for a Mother

Dinner at our house can be a little trying.  That is, if you’d like to eat without acquiring indigestion, without running to the kitchen after two bites to refill the glasses of milk the wee ones finished in 2.5 seconds, leaving no room in their tender bellies for the food they wouldn’t eat anyway because it has green stuff on it – but I digress.  (See Dinner with Kids for further clarification)

In an attempt to keep them at the table for longer than the 0.5 seconds they usually last after finishing their milk, I bought packs of cocktail napkins (at the discount store) with conversation starters on them.  We started with the jokes and riddles.  Even funnier than the corny jokes was my middle daughter’s uncanny knack at figuring out the punch lines.  Hmmm . . . perhaps that’s why she wanted to pass out the napkins.  After a few nights of that, we graduated to life’s important questions.  If you could invite any one – living or dead – to dinner, who would it be?  Again, the middle stole the show – and my heart – when she replied, without missing a beat, Grandma Julie, my beloved grandmother and her namesake whom she never met.

from seasonedkitchen.com

from seasonedkitchen.com

Another night, we had to reveal which superpower we would want as a superhero.  I piped up with my response first.  “That’s easy, definitely flying.”  Like with a cape?  Flapping your wings like a bird?  “No, just with my arms out as I floated above the trees.”  My answer came easily because I automatically remembered my most favorite dreams – those where I soar above the tops of the trees and roofs of neighbor’s houses behind my childhood home.  The psychological conclusions one can glean from this dream are fodder for perhaps a whole series of posts, but the upshot today is what my oldest daughter said with a look of impressed surprise on her face.

“You have a good imagination for a mother.”

I think that says perhaps more about my existence right now than my thwarted desires of dreams.  All sorts of high-falutin’, politically feminist, empowering responses came to mind, but I simply said thank you and took it as the compliment I’m sure she meant it as.

What a strange psychological experiment parenting is – for all parties involved.  I suppose mind-expanding conversation – even if they need be started with paper squares we smear across our faces – is one way to navigate the maze and see the different paths available.  If not, there are always our dreams and unbridled imagination – even for moms.

Standard
Children, Living, motherhood, parenting

Good and Awesome like It Is

I’m going to keep a folder of notes from my daughter, notes that are so poignant, so ‘heart-on-the-sleeve’ emotional that I see through the difficult behaviors to the core of our love, the elemental mother-daughter bond at the heart of our relationship.  For the days when she thinks she hates me and I think I hate my life.  When I forget the soft little heart beating in that proud little chest.  When I forget the absolute honor of mothering fragile little beings.

DSC_0027

In the eyes of my daughter, I am loved just because I am.  And simply being makes her life good and awesome like it is.  If only I could live such affirmation every moment of my waking and breathing.

 

 

Standard
Children, Humor, motherhood, parenting

Dinner with Kids: A Play Written in One Act

Setting: dining table; random art projects, crumpled mail, and broken toys strewn about the periphery                        

Time: Witching hour

 

Mom: Time to eat!

Children [from other room in front of TV]:

Dad: Let’s go. Shut that off.

Children [from other room in front of TV]:

Dad: NOW

Oldest child: Okay

Five minutes later

Mom: If you want to eat, get in here now.

Children enter stage right

Dad: So what did you do today?

Mom: Well, I eoifagnioen foin

[Mom’s last words garbled by sounds of the youngest singing ‘Skinnamarinky-dink’]

Dad: I’m sorry, what?

Oldest [in an English accent]: Hello, Governor. How are you today?

Middle Child: erupts in infectious roll of giggles

Dad: Girls, would you –

Youngest Child: AAAAAAAHHHHHH!

Mom: What the hell was that for?

Youngest Child: I got milk on my princess dress.

Dad jumps up to get paper towel as he and mother just noticed milk cascading through crack in table onto floor

Middle: Mom, she’s looking at me.

Youngest: sticks tongue out at both sisters.

Oldest [in English accent]: Would you cut it out, Governor?

Dad: returning from kitchen with wad of paper towels. If you girls aren’t going to eat, leave the table and let your mother and me eat in peace.

All three children: Okay!

Middle: Can we watch TV?

Mom: Fine, go.

All three children tear from the room. Sound of laugh-track mindless teen sitcom comes from off-stage.

Dad: So how was your day?

Oldest [from other room]: Mom, she won’t shove over.

Middle: She keeps kicking me.

Youngest: AAAAAAAHHHH!

Mom: I’ll tell you tomorrow.

Standard
Maternal Health Month, Maternal Health Month 2014, may is maternal mental health month, motherhood, Perspective

Wavelength

There comes a time when you see your mother as a being separate from yourself.  It’s not as an infant when you realize you exist outside her body.  It’s not when, as a toddler, you assert your independence.  The tumultuous teenaged years don’t do it.  Even becoming a full-fledged adult doesn’t do it.

She will always be your number one fan, miracle-worker, therapist, and helpmate.  She will always allow you to be self-centered when you come calling because you are her world.  She is your MOM.  (No Pressure 😉 )

But there are moments when she does something on an even more amazing level of awesome – perhaps even sublime – in which you see in crystalline form what a perfectly human and beautiful individual she is.

The first time this happened was when I was an early teen.  My parents, consummate do-it-yourself-ers, were in the middle of some household project that necessitated the transit of a long ladder through our tiny kitchen.  One inadvertent swing of the ladder swept the decorative items off one of the display shelves surrounding the window.  A crystal-clear unicorn, whose knobs and nodules captured and refracted the sun’s rays into rainbows, shattered against the stainless steel of the sink below.  I heard my mother scream like I never had before: a desperate, anguished wail.  She cried as she gathered the pieces.  This was another thing I rarely – if ever – had experienced with my mother.  These were not the welled-tears of sentimentality; these were big fat gobs of grief.

Being a young person, with no framework within which to place this, I asked my mother what was wrong.  She explained that the unicorn had been a gift from her sister when she had lost a baby.  Four years prior to my birth, my mother had delivered my would-be sister, stillborn.  This was my first encounter with this information, with this grief.  While I now had a framework, it was shaky.  I knew it was tragic.  I knew my mother hurt.  But I had no idea to what extent.

Years later, as a mother myself, now accustomed to grief, but still not of that magnitude, I sat with my mother in the parking lot of a botanical garden.  We stared out the windshield at the glass squares of the greenhouse.  ‘A woman in my writers’ group has written a memoir about her family, Ma,’ I said.  ‘About her journey through love and loss.  She had a stillborn, too.  Much the same circumstances as yours.’  There were some eerily similar details in their stories, though my mother never got the legal vindication that this woman did.  ‘Would you read it?’

I didn’t know if I was overstepping my bounds, if I was being too forward, pushy.  Was I dredging up feelings that my mother had gladly put to rest years ago?

‘I suppose it might be good for me,’ she said.  ‘Therapeutic.’

Months later, I took my mother to the launch party for that book: Breathe: A Memoir of Motherhood, Grief, and Family Conflict by Kelly Kittel.  The day before Mother’s Day, we spent the afternoon of the launch together.  Ironically, though we were celebrating the ubiquitous holiday, I saw my mother as ‘other than mother’.  Hearing her speak to Kelly and share her story, I saw the profoundly deep wellspring of strength my mother’s been drawing from all these years.  I saw her as a woman, fighting a soul-crushing battle and winning.  I saw her as someone – like myself – who has been curled up on the floor crying, but she got up!  She went on.  And gave me the best, most important parts of herself.  All while, unbeknownst to me, she was suffering a tremendous loss.

It was hard for me to not insert comments or explanations as she spoke.  I felt the intermediary between these two women and wanted to help forge the link.  But the link between these two women had nothing to do with me.  It was in their tragedies and victories, their similar experiences with death and inextinguishable life.

I saw my mother as a distinct individual, a woman with her own suitcase of memories and maladies, a human being with a suit of armor and the soft underbelly of a mother.

Image

Photo by John Butler

Standard
Maternal Health Month, Maternal Health Month 2014, may is maternal mental health month, motherhood

No Pressure

Coffee mugs saying, “You probably don’t recognize me without my cape.” T-shirts with a shield standing for Supermom rather than Superman. Photos of gorgeous women receiving hair and beauty treatments while breastfeeding a baby below a smooth decolletage.

These images can be taken one of two ways. We can see the strength of mothers, their uncanny ability to make seeming miracles happen for the little ones who look up to them, the beauty inherent in their life-giving and nurturing ways. We can feel the immense pressure of an ideal to achieve that leaves us primped to within an inch of our skin’s elasticity, our patience pulled out like a piece of taffy, and pissed.

It’s easy to feel completely overwhelmed and fall into the second category. I don’t care about being perfectly coiffed, as my crazy, silver-tinged curls would attest, but I allow the unseen hands of unrealistic expectation to tighten their choke-hold around my neck. I feel I have – and often, try – to be all and do all for everyone. The reason it’s so easy for images like these to inform our mothering decisions is because they appeal to the deep-seated love we have for our families. Naturally, we want to do our best for them, so it’s a seemingly natural progression for that slight tweak toward perfection.

The unconditional love of our children unwittingly feeds into this phenomenon. Take this on-line post, for instance:

hope

 

Unswerving devotion. Disciple-like adoration. Unadulterated trust.

The keeper of socks. Seeker of single ones. Holder of pebbles, lost teeth, lucky pennies.

“Mom, where is my [insert any pertinent object here]!?”

It’s not a God complex. So much happens throughout the day where we are the be all, end all.

Which is fine – if you’re a well-adjusted, level-headed, simpatico kind of person.

Horrific if you overthink things, catatrophize things, can’t cope with things, can’t get yourself out of bed in the morning.

If the thing Mom can’t find is hope, all really is lost.

If you or someone you love falls into this category, please help them get the professional help they need.  Contact an organization or individual like the ones below:

 

 

 

Standard