I am writing this at the suggestion of my late father, who, of course, being totally unbiased, believed I had a knack for writing stuff down in a readable fashion. He didn’t suggest what I should write about; that was a blank that I had to fill in. My life has afforded me a few experiences that have left me with some blanks to be filled in, (not the least of which is what I want to be when I grow up).
My life finds me today as the mother of nine children, ranging in age from 12 to 26, five boys and four girls. Four have ventured out of the nest already, and the years are picking up speed. The second half of the ‘80’s and the entirety of the 90’s have gone past me in a blur of pregnancy, childbearing, feeding, clothing, educating and loving (among other things) these intense bundles of wonder called children. If I am not giving away too much about my age, I will go ahead and quote the Grateful Dead, “What a long, strange trip it’s been”!
It’s been a wild and crazy ride, a roller coaster of highs and lows for which I couldn’t never have been prepared. The blessings awesome, the trials insanely difficult at times…all within the incredibly dynamic drama of every day life. Now I can’t help but wonder if there is anybody else out these who has been thrust into this role of motherhood and needs to be affirmed in what…their…well…, what shall we call it?
I guess it really can’t be called a role, because a role is something that somebody plays; assumes, steps in, acts or pretends for a time, and then just as easily steps out of to resume their regularly scheduled life. It’s not a job, because any job that is 24 hours a day for the rest of your life cannot, by human standards, be considered a job. That’s a sentence, and motherhood is far too wonderful a thing to be called a sentence. It’s not a season, either, because while I have found that it indeed contains seasons, it is not a season in itself. Actually, it’s more like weather: there is 100% chance of weather today, regardless of the season. Neither is it a career, for by implication a career is something that one studies for, for years, or at least for a period of preparation before entering into a time of practice or apprenticeship, and finally climbs, scratches and claws (or merely walks) their way to their desired level of experience or income and gracefully retires from at the appropriate age.
You cannot study for motherhood. Just ask anyone who’s ever tried. If you do, you will inevitably find that everything you ever read or heard or believed dissolved with the first cry of your newborn baby, (or for some, with the first bout of morning sickness) and you are “training” every day, learning something new every day and becoming less and less secure in that knowledge at the infant grows and begins to walk and talk and talk back and think and… And you never retire. You can’t. Just ask my mother.
Mom and Dad raised nine of us, and just as soon as number nine walked out the door, they turned around and counted over 20 grand-children! That number is now resting at a cool 40, and they tell me that they live up to their billing as GRAND children, because they are part time work with full time benefits! And it isn’t just the grand children that keep you in this “career” (which we have already determined it is NOT), because the phone will ring, or the doorbell, (depending on how far from the nest they have landed), with all manner of questions from “Why is the baby crying?” to “When can you baby-sit?”, to “Why won’t he talk to me?” to “Did you really let ME drive the car at that age?”.
And Mom, bless her heart, will give you a very confident, reassuring answer that will have your heart at ease when you hang up the phone! But I’m not fooled anymore. I’ve been there when my sisters have called. After those reassuring words, Mom would hang up the phone, turn to my father and say, “I have no idea how we raised these kids! How did we survive? And how did they?” She’s still learning!
I actually take great comfort in that. Or perhaps I’m the only one who has been intimidated by a “expert” with more initials after their name that a third grader can count (and it takes another PhD to interpret same) and either no children, or perhaps 1.6 children, (who grew up to be a psychotherapist and 1/6) and has informed me through book and article that I have irreparably damaged my child’s ego and personality through crimes like not talking to my belly before they were born, by letting them cry, or not letting them cry, depending on the school of thought the expert comes from; by potty training them too soon/too late/too forcefully/too passively (how about at all??). And the list goes on ad infinitum ad nauseum. Who needs the guilt trip?
I’d rather take my advice and cues from a mother who has a bunch (or so) of kids who were born, who were loved, who grew, who were eventually potty trained, who laughed and played, who were spanked on occasion, (we’ll talk about that later) because they were not perfect, and who’s honest answer to many of your questions is, “You know, I don’t really know, but somehow we managed.”
And I can’t overlook the timeless advice, (I’d rather call is sharing) from mothers whose babies were born, and then left just as quickly. And whose babies were born less than what we have come to define as “perfect”. And those whose children laughed, played and loved and were disciplined and still ended up in jail. The true “experts” in my book are the people who have been humbled enough in life’s experience to see the common denominator in us all…we love our children. We are all trying to do the best we can with what we’ve got. We are all having successes and failures in varying degrees.
But times and society have changed. As I wrote in a song once, “Apron strings are not in vogue”. This is not the place to theorize as to just how or why things have come to be at this place, but suffice to say we are here. And there are those of us, (could it be all of us?) who find ourselves with a babe, (or babes…and for some of us more babes) in arms and a head that says, along with our society, “Get a job!” and a heart that says, “I can’t leave home without him/her?” And no, I’m not addressing the “should I go back to the work force” question. That isn’t even the point. I’ve had my day of dogma: Thou shalt stay home with your children. Only to be confronted by women who have had no choice, no kidding. Only to find myself kissing a sleeping baby good-bye in the wee hours of the morning. Only to find myself leaving a child in the hospital for a business trip I couldn’t cancel. Only to find myself dropping those sleepy little bundles off at daycare, when I became the sole breadwinner for my tribe of nine. As the old Indian Proverb suggest, “Don’t judge a neighbor until you have walked a mile in his moccasins.” I’m still nursing the blisters.
What I see/feel/experience with this battle between heart and head is not where a person’s body spends the day working, (for pay or otherwise), but more or less where we find ourselves mentally, emotionally and spiritually at the end of the day. No, not the feely-goody psychobabble either. Rather I am referring to the questions that run through an exhausted brain that refer directly to one’s self worth, and whether or not they are just spinning their wheels on life’s merry-go-round. Is all this really worth it? Am I really making any meaningful contributions to life on this planet? If the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, how come I feel so out of control? If I’m really raising the next generation how come nobody seems to care? When we hear comments about our pregnant bellies exclaiming that “I’m glad it’s you and not me!” we wonder, is it the physical condition you are referring to? Or the resulting child? When we are praised for our sacrifices on the one hand and then told, “I could/would never want to do what you do!” on the other, what are we to think?
Well, I’ve done some thinking on this. And I can’t write from a position of having answers. But I can write from a position of having questions. And lots of them. And I can write about little discoveries I’ve made to beat the system that isn’t helping me find any peace in society’s answers. And I can write from a day to day existence of caring for the future. And I can tell about the ways I’ve learned to focus on a day that “worked”, and about how I coped, (or didn’t) with the day’s that didn’t. And I can tell you a secret to living through it all that will surprise those who know me best: Laugh a little!
I’m a melancholy, full bore. But when no one is looking, I laugh. I have to. Life IS kind of a joke. The Universe spared no expense to keep us laughing, but we are so busy taking things too seriously. Some things we HAVE to take seriously, so let’s not waste our “serious” on things that really aren’t.
Now I must say, that although I possess a somewhat irreverent attitude, I certainly don’t mean to offend anyone, though I am sure that is inevitable. I am sorry if you fall in with the lot that begs to differ with what are uniquely my thoughts and experiences. I have noticed, though, that mothers are extremely forgiving and tolerant and rather difficult to offend, especially with the nitty-gritty of daily life.
I will also clarify from the beginning, in a sort of reverse political correctness, that as a default setting I tend to address Mothers. I of course understand that for every mother there is some fellow out there who helped achieve that status, and I certainly mean you no disrespect. But I am a mother, and try though I do, I am not a father. I am on the feminine side of the fence, and so that being where this work originates, I address the Moms. I confess it’s also to avoid too much, “Mom-slash-Dad” typing. And if you happen to be one of the ever-increasing numbers of the “Mr. Mom”s out there…well I know you understand.
My hope is to merely be honest about who we are and what we do. We don’t need a pep talk. We don’t need a pat on the head. At least I don’t. I need a friend in the endeavor. I think we all do. And if in reading all of these thoughts and ideas and discoveries on motherhood, you can laugh at least twice and say to yourself, “You too?! I can totally relate to that!” at least once, then this blog will have served its purpose.
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