The Dilemma that is Mother’s Day
From a mom of 8 (4 biological and 4 step)
“I want to get you that Blasteroids machine for Mother’s Day,” my husband says.
There is a 1989 off-brand stand-up arcade game that my dad had in my garage the entire time I was growing up, and I want the exactly one for my garage, for my children. I have only been able to find one in Maryland, so we are scheming, trying to find a way to get this arcade game as old as we are here to our garage.
I never want anything, so he never knows what to get me. This is further complicated by the fact that gifts are lowest on my love language, although my husband does tend to give me these flowers for Valentine’s Day, and they did sit on the table for over a week, and they bring me an irrational amount of joy.
But the expectations surrounding holidays and gifts. Gross.
The kids will give me some kind of absolutely adorable craft, and I will think it’s very cute.
But I will also feel a pang of guilt that some of my best friends are not receiving anything, that these people haven’t been able to have children, and that they would be excellent parents. These are incredible people.
And meanwhile, there are people in the world who just can’t stop getting pregnant, who are going to be the cause of so many wounds in their children. Who are just teeing their kids up for the mother wound, for years and years of therapy, for years of accepting unacceptable behavior, or for searching far and long for genuine authentic love, so disoriented in the search that it just goes on and on and on.
I am, of course, forever grateful for my kids — but historically, I haven’t really cared for this day.
It’s not fair, sometimes, and there’s not really any rhyme or reason to why kids happens for some and is a challenge for others.
I see it in my boys’ eyes. I remember picking up my sons from daycare when they were just a few months old — I would walk in the room and they would hear my voice, and they would look for me. At taekwondo, this still happens with both my twins and my stepsons, when they catch my eye.
I understand the powers that the mother wields.
I can tell. They are so happy that I’m there and they are so proud that I am watching. And I’m so glad that I put my phone down and watch.
I also lucked out to have an amazing mom. This Mother’s Day, she is making homemade ice cream and we are taking my boys and my nieces to go strawberry picking to put fresh strawberries on top of the ice cream.
Those are the kinds of wholesome, sweet, thoughtful ideas she has. And if I didn’t feel like doing that, she would undoubtedly have come up with something else. On a day that is also about her.
She has been watching my daughter every Tuesday. When we pull into her driveway, my daughter, at 14 months old, starts kicking her feet, excited. And when she sees Grammy, her entire face lights up. She lunges for Grammy out of my arms.
Yesterday, when we were leaving a snow cone place, which Grammy just happily met us at to see all 8 kids, Grammy moved to hand Abigail back to me, and Abby started screaming. Everyone. Loves. Grammy. And for good reason : she is honest, and hard working, and works to accommodate everyone else.
So, the Mother Wound is not one I have had to focus on in this lifetime, a thing for which I am eternally grateful, and a joke I often make (“I had the best mom in the world and I still went out into the brave wide world and found myself a whole heap of issues”).
I make a lot of mistakes (and I try to own up to all of them), but there are three things that I know I do well as a mother:
I read my kids a bedtime story every night. They can quote the Berenstain Bears to me. When one of them gets in trouble, they will ask each other : Do we need to read [insert Berenstain Bear book with specific moral lesson here]?
My children know I love them, and that I love them for their authentic selves, exactly as they are (as my parenting icon Mr. Rogers says)
I protect my kids fiercely.
The last one, protecting them —this is where my sobriety story comes into play.
When I was trying to get sober, I remember my sons looking in my eyes: they trusted me so, so much, so thoroughly, so completely.
What was happening in those moments when I would wake up on the couch, one of them curled on top of me, a beer spilled? Surely muscle memory took over and I had hugged them, held them. But were they scared?
They were too little to say anything back then, at least not to articulate it in a way that I recall. Could they have recognized the inherent danger of the situation? They were just 3 and 4 when I got sober.
The idea that I was not fully there gutted me.
I had to get sober — not for them, but for me.
They were the reason I got sober, but : the reason was so I could look at myself in the mirror and not fucking hate myself.
So I could look at myself in the mirror and know I did right by them — so that I could look at myself in the mirror and not be devastated for what they missed out on, for the wounds I inflicted on them.
That’s not to say I’m not inflicting wounds. I surely am. But, dammit, I know those three things : I read to them, I love them exactly as they are, and I will always, always protect them with all I have.
Even if sometimes I think I’m going to pull all the hair out of my head if I step on another effing Goldfish cracker.
So, this Mother’s Day, I want to say : I see you friends. I see you, those of you struggling with a shitty mother. I see you, if your mother has recently passed. I see you if you want to be a mother. I see you if you are a mother, and if you’re like, holy shit this is so much harder than I thought it would be, I don’t know if I can do this.
Our DNA changes when we have babies. We are physically never the same, and our babies have a piece of us that can never be changed. That is part of the power a mother wields, even if the healthiest option for you is not to speak to your mother, to make peace, on your own — to mother yourself.
There are so many ways to mother, and just because you gave birth, it doesn’t mean you should or are capable of mother-ing.
I am trying to be right-sized in this : I have children I love. I am very lucky. They can also be a huge pain in the ass and so, so, so much work. I know how lucky I am to have them. I also know how hard I work for them. If I am to believe it is all happening exactly as it is meant to happen, that means that it is all happening exactly as it is meant to happen.
My heart is meant to swell with love and pride when I see my babies jump off the bus, when I see them running toward me, open arms, when we push the baby back home, and my mind is meant to feel like it might just fucking explode when I follow them inside to see them dropping them backpacks and kicking off all their shoes (there are 6 elementary age children — it is TWELVE shoes) and me almost tripping over them holding the baby, shouting up the stairs, “BOOOOYSS! MOVE YOUR SHOES!”
In essence, I just hope this holiday doesn’t make you feel like shit, whoever is out there feeling like shit on this holiday — whether it’s because you had kids, didn’t have kids, have kids and they hate you, have kids and they annoy the shit out of you, had a shitty mom, had a great mom and she passed, or any variation on the theme.