Short End of the Stick

I have read quite a few books lately--some fiction, some non.  Most of them have mentioned, if not centred around, the idea of motherhood from the child's perspective.  These books include: Glitter and Glue, Orphan Train, and the letter Lift, as well as parts of My Name is Memory.  Here are two passages  from Glitter and Glue, by Kelly Corrigan, that really got me.

• I'd tell her [her mother] that I know now that there are no daughters who never embarrass harass, dismiss, discount, deceive, neglect, baffle, appal, incite, or insult their mothers...I don't long for other mothers anymore; i don't even wonder about them.  I was meant to be her daughter, and I consider it a damn good thing that she, of all people, was the principal agent in my development. I want to tell my mom that I admire her...the way she marched head-on into each uncertain moment, changing as the circumstances demanded.
• This strikes me as  a key to the story of my mother and me. She often said that I was a different person for my father, that I'd do anything for him, without an ounce of backtalk...She also said, Lemme tell you something Kelly, you changed me a lot more than I changed you. I didn't know adults could be changed, I thought they were finished pieces, baked through and kilndried.  I never understood that when we fought my mother was having actual emotionl reations.  I assumed her behavior was a front...designed to yield the best and safest possible kid...I see that, sturdy though my mother was, she must have been gutted by the sound  and sight and sheer vibration of her rabid daughter raoging, I HATE YOU! I HATE YOUR GUTS! I HATE YOU FOREVER! I had thought a good mother would not elicit such comments, but now I see that a good mother is required to somehow absorb all this ugliness and find a way to fall back in love with her child the next day.

Sometimes I wonder if we mothers don't get the short end of the parenting stick.  For the most part, we women are the ones that grow up thinking about whether we want kids or not, and how that will work, and what kind of mothers we will be. We think about our mothers, and whether we want to be like them or not, and often whine about how, what, when, where, and why our mothers do what they do.  We agonise over conceiving, pregnancy, and delivery.  Then we feel the first whiff of fear for this little being we bring into the world, and realise we have just unleashed a tidal wave of anxiety over how they will turn out, and their survival in this universe.  We research and re-research and change our minds and analyse statistics over how we should raise them. And we beat ourselves over the head for minor mistakes, never letting go of the notion that we will ultimately fail them somehow...And then they grow up and we spend the first 20 years of their lives trying to convince them to like us, and understand how much we love them, and teaching them what that means.

 It does seem they will always favour their father over us--and how much does that suck sometimes?!  And yet we want them to have a great relationship with their father, and appreciate they have one who cares and plays with them and is in existence on their radar.  I hate looking back and seeing what I put my mother through--realising the difficult person I was as a teenager and beyond.  I did idolise my father, still do, but now I realise how much of the hard stuff mom had to do on a daily basis that dad didn't, and I blamed her having to be the hard-ass.  

My dad is an amazing man, I'm not trying to discredit that.  But my mom is an amazing woman.  The bluster can blow you back from time to time, and I have inherited the bluster, but I'm trying to somehow contain the rage that sometimes pops out as a mother---the rage mentioned below in this excerpt from letter Lift, also by Corrigan:

•  I see how that happens now...coming unhinged over all manner of spilt milk--wet towels, unflushed toilets, lost brand-new! whatevers...Almost every day I yell at one of you so loudly that my throat hurts afterward...I hold it together and hold it together and then, when the bickering picks up again, I just detonate...I leaned down into your faces and ranted at you through set teeth, like the heartless tyrannical caretakers in movies about orphans.  I was so disgusted with both of you; your impatient overreactions, your loss of self-control--then I turned right around and disgusted myself.  If John Lennon was right that life is what happens when you're making other plans, parenthood is what happens when everything is flipped over and spilling everywhere and you can't find a towel or a sponge or your "inside" voice.

And yet, though we need to step up to our growth, dig into our development as "non-ragers," there is a point where we have to give ourselves some grace.  Another passage from Lift helps me see the truth of this.

• I am your mother, the first mile of your road.  Me and all my obvious and hidden limitations.  That means that in addition to possibly wrecking you, I have the chance to give to you what was given to me: a decent childhood, more good memories than bad, some values, a sense of tribe, a run at happiness.  You can't imagine how seriously I take that--even as I fail you.  Mothering you is the first thing of consequence that I have ever done.

Motherhood is effing unfair sometimes.  It's so stinking hard if you are trying at all--it blindingly bruising on the hard days.  But it is a precious gift.  I do know that.  I know that in the moments my two year old looks up at me through those thin strands of blond hair she pulled out of her hair band for the dozenth time that day and smiles, giggles rising up and out of her throat just because.  I know that as I proudly listen to her tell her daddy about what she did that day, or repeat a difficult phrase someone is asking her to say perfectly.  I know that when I watch her take a hard fall from running flat out towards something she wants, getting up, brushing off, and saying, "I ok Mommy."  I know that when I kiss her goodnight and she cries for one more kiss, cuddle, and snuggle.  I know that.  But I know the hard days too, and I pray that God gives me grace to overflow to her, more and more each year, to teach her not just who she doesn't want to be, but who she does.