My mother was a bystander in my childhood. Pat was bipolar, and the childish scuffles and failings of my brother and me often got under her skin, and a fight would erupt. Mom would leave, wordlessly storming out. It was okay, Mom explained, because Pat always knew where to find her if things got really bad. It was also okay that my brother and I didn’t know where she was or when she was coming home, I guess. I’d learn later she always went to the movies when the rest of us were fighting. As soon as she left we’d all shape up, though. We kids would get quiet and scared, and Pat would calm down like a switch had been flipped.
My mother had repeated surgeries during my childhood, and never wavered in refusing to show us her fear. My mother’s back held up the world, but I wanted her to sit down, turn that back to the wall, and give me her arms instead. I didn’t know I was standing on her back while I was stamping my feet in anger about not being the center of her world. I thought she should give up everything. She should have kept my dad’s name after the divorce, so I wouldn’t feel different. She should not have spent time on charity work that took her away from us even more. She should have moved to Alaska when my father did, even though he was remarried, so we could have had a more stable life. She should have dyed her hair. She had no business going on a date night with Pat once a week.
When I had my first son, I spent an entire year mad at my mother for not loving me enough. I knew how much I loved my baby—why had she not loved me as much as I loved my own son? If she had, how had she been such a non-involved parent? Why had she repeatedly chosen Pat over us? “I believe in the parenting theory of benign neglect,” she used to explain. In college I learned that was something she had made up entirely. Neglect was neglect. All I knew was my mother was never there. Hanging out with us seemed to bore her, and if she had any free time, she spent it reading a book. She should have given up everything, like I did for my baby.
I didn’t care that my baby nursed every two hours for nearly two years. I didn’t mind putting away all my hobbies so that he wouldn’t choke on a bead or get pricked by a needle. I stopped watching all my favorite TV shows and banished the news from my house. I only listened to children’s music in my car. I was a Mother with a capital M, and that was all I ever wanted to be and all I ever needed to be happy. Nothing I gave up was a sacrifice; it was a gift to my child. Why did my mother not feel that way about me?
I just did not understand my mother at all until I had my second child and I was a single parent like she had been. When I had my second son, I learned that everything I gave up for my kids left them with a hollow shell for a mother. I realized that mothers no longer exist as people. That staying home with children consists of hours and hours of mind-numbing boredom interrupted only by irritation and housework. I learned that by putting their needs above everything else in my life, I was risking running out of me, leaving them with no mother at all.
I realized that you have to have passion and drive and something of your own or your children might eat the very things that are good and arty and intrinsic to your soul. I could not see that when I was the one who was trying to eat my mother’s soul.
I learned that our need for great love is as powerful as the need to create life. I did not know that before. I didn’t realize that children grow up so fast, that in the scheme of a woman’s lifetime, the part devoted to raising children is a small piece of your whole existence. In the blink of an eye the children are grown and gone and you have only your spouse (maybe) to keep away the great tides of loneliness washing through your kitchen. Before my mom was thirty-five she had lost both parents, her only sibling, and was exiled from her extended family. Oh, and did I mention she was divorced, too? I came to understand how all of that loss made her needy and afraid to be alone, and that choosing a spouse who was chronically ill and dependent gave her much-needed security.
I didn’t realize that parenting often feels like a great battle waged between adults and children, that keeping them safe and fed and delivered to school on time often takes every little bit of gumption you have, and when there is no adult to lean back on, you have to use every last bit of strength just keeping chaos at bay. When all you do is diaper and feed and dress and cook and wash and drive and worry and teach and love these children all by yourself, you are often too exhausted to enjoy it. Having another adult evens the balance. I didn’t know that when you are the only responsible adult, you still need someone to soak with your tears and tell you that you are okay. You need that very badly. You also need to know you are pretty and smart and funny and all the things that used to
