When I was pregnant with my first daughter, I came back to the office after a doctor’s appointment and burst into tears at the desk of one of my co-workers. Completely distraught at my distress, she asked what had happened at the appointment. In all sincerity, I choked back a few tears and said, “I gained 12 pounds since my last appointment!”
“Oooooh,” she said, sitting back down.
“In TWO WEEKS!” I clarified. And she nodded, sagely sympathetic.
And a week later, I had my first baby, at 33 weeks and 4 days. Far earlier than we had anticipated. And I was grateful that my body had known to prepare, even if my mind had not. What pediatrician have you chosen?, the NICU staff asked. We looked back vacantly. We were supposed to have had more time. We were told there would be more time. Were there no rules to this new game?
And that seems like a microcosm of parenting to me. Somehow, even 11 years later, I still find myself getting completely worked up about things that worry me that are temporary – transitory fears – and then being completely surprised by the big stuff. Always thinking, But I thought we had more time!
“To have a child is to forever have your heart walking around outside your body,” author Elizabeth Stone once said. Erma Bombeck said, “All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.”
They are both right. Parenting is years of spilled milk dripping through the slats of the kitchen table and wondering why the couch is wet. It’s tag team flu and red marker on eggshell walls. It’s watching 5 years of ballet create a graceful, beautiful ballerina, and it’s being able to talk about favorite childhood books together. It’s seeing your child stop their playtime to include another child, and delighting in the fact that your child not only fills a spot in your heart because they once occupied a spot underneath it, but because they are people you would like to meet out in the world, regardless of their last name.
Now, my oldest daughter yells from my room, already in my closet, “Can I borrow a t-shirt? The one I wanted is dirty!” She wears my shoes (which means I can wear hers). My youngest can explain to me the lifecycle of a salamander and show me the bibliography slide of her Google doc about the same, when I ask where she learned all this.
I’m incredibly proud of both my daughters, totally enamored with who they are: funny, creative, empathetic, motivated children who often give me as many lessons as I give them. But more and more, I realize that they aren’t so much children as they are segueing into young adults, and I realize — once again — I thought I had more time, that I’ve been focused on all the wrong things!
As their mother, I obviously want the world for my children. As a mother of daughters, I want to teach them how to navigate a world that still isn’t completely egalitarian. I want them to never feel compelled to use the word “just” when talking about their ideas. I want to eliminate “Sorry” from their reflexive response list. I do both of these things. Maybe I can learn from them. Last week in a discussion at the school lunch table about favorite tv shows, my youngest named a couple of shows that are, legitimately, a little young for her at this point. I’ve even expressed a little concern, not to her, that she’s still watching them. “Everyone laughed at me, and that hurt my feelings a little, but that’s what I like to watch,” she said, and shrugged. And again, I can learn from her.
Every day there are moments of clarity intermingled with moments of routine. But there’s often a little pin prick of happy pain when I realize that they are more and more ready to chose their own battles, their own paths. I’d like to think that their father and I have had at least something to do with that. But I could be doing more, I know. I could be packing lunches that don’t involve frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, crimped closed and ready to defrost by lunch. I lose sleep over the things that I should be modeling for them. Do I exercise too little? Do I drink too much? Do they know I have no idea what they have been talking about for the last 6 minutes? Please, please let there not be a quiz or a request for follow-up questions.
At 3:20am, it’s not the precocious wisdom of my 9-year-old that I am mulling, or even the lifecycles of salamanders. It’s whether I am failing them on a daily basis in little ways. In big ways. In ways that won’t be apparent for another couple decades. It’s whether I am balancing their best life and mine, giving them a childhood that they remember with laughter and joy, filled with security and comfort, while also figuring out who I am at this stage of their lives, of my life, and what that looks like for all of us.
When I was in elementary school, Bobby McFarrin’s song, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” ruled the airwaves for a little while. Every life will have some trouble. When you worry you make it double. As an adult, I wonder who was buying this song in 1988. Was it all 12-to-16 year olds? Because when I think about it now, I think, “WTF, Bobby. What kind of crap advice is that?”
Happiness is a double-edged sword, I think. We’ve been raised to think of it as an inalienable right. And yet it’s such a game of managed expectations. Courage and optimism layered with responsibility layered with short-term-long-term risk and reward. Happiness is a gamble, but one that I want my children to take. Too often, I think we shy away from risk. I want them to be confident enough to know what they want. And bold enough to go after it. I want them to own Sofia the First and Mickey Mouse Club, even when everyone else around them has moved on to scripted teen drama. I want them, not to be fearless, but to be undaunted.
It was beautiful today, after a week of rain and colder weather, hail and flooding. I went for a hike, and was feeling, in a literal sense, hot and sweaty, but also – as English majors are prone to do – translating the literal into the metaphorical as I went. It’s not really a fun-at-parties personality trait, but it sometimes helps us to put our own thoughts in order.
And so, if as a mother, the only thing that I ultimately impart on my children is not to shy away from the hard stuff, I think that’s a good start. I’ve used the phrase peaks and valleys a lot lately. So much as to over-use it, actually. And my phone once auto-corrected it to peaks and valets, which at least made it a little more amusing to use its hackneyed cliché thereafter.
But the thing about making it from valley to peak is that often times, the view is worth it. And if your legs are burning a little, and there’s a little sweat in your eyes, it means more. Much like motherhood, it’s not that you forget the adorable little bowling ball who sat on your bladder for months, or labor pains, or that that used to be your favorite cashmere scarf before it became the luxury bed of the feral neighborhood cat. But the pain points pale in comparison to the reward.
And this Mother’s Day, my goal for the next trip around the sun is to best the valleys, to have faith in the view ahead, to show my daughters that there is no “just” in the life they are creating for themselves.
May they take the road that leads them to themselves, and be grateful for the journey even in the valleys (and may they always remember water, sunscreen and where they parked the car.)
