MOTHERHOOD

I didn’t know that having children would cause such a dramatic change in me. Somehow I thought that kids would just blend into the background and my life would continue as before. I would take walks. I would write books. I had this soft focus lens idea of what motherhood entailed and it was a cross between a Pampers commercial and a Christmas card.

I didn’t know that after having a child I would be constantly focused on others needs. That my life would be so circumscribed by their lives that it would be two decades until I regained my balance.

I didn’t know how little regard there would be for mothering in the ‘70’s. I was amazed that women at home were considered not very bright or lacking somehow because they took this commitment so seriously. Gloria Steinham scolded me about wasting my talents and Hilary Clinton denigrated “making cookies” as if that was all that was involved in this career.

I didn’t know that I would become so angry and defensive when I was asked, “what else do you do?” at every cocktail party as my husband climbed up the corporate ladder.

I didn’t know how my confidence would ebb away after children. I was someone’s mother and someone’s wife and someone’s daughter serving everyone and losing the essence of who I was.

I didn’t know there could be such spectacular joy in watching a child perform a skill. As I sat in the middle school auditorium on a steamy May night, I was breathless with pride and emotion as my eleven-year-old son took the stage to perform a solo on the alto saxophone. He stood confidently in the spotlight facing classmates and teachers and played a song I had never heard him attempt. It was Barbara Streisand’s tune, Evergreen. It was my Mother’s Day gift, my favorite song, and a moment I will always keep in my heart.

I didn’t know the depth of sadness I could feel when someone hurt my children’s feelings until my older daughter was cut from the basketball team and she ached with defeat and inadequacy. I can see her sitting at the kitchen table physically spent, wrestling with the defeat. “I tried as hard as I could. I worked as hard as I ever have at anything, Mom,” she cried, “but the truth is I just wasn’t good enough. There were others who were just better than me.”

I didn’t know how defeated I would feel when the adolescents I had nurtured slammed doors in my face, and wailed against what they saw as my injustice. “You’re ruining my life!” they claimed. “You are the only mother in town who insists on curfews!” they whined. Their relentless challenge of the rules exhausted me even though I knew my boundaries would provide a safer passage into adulthood for them.

I didn’t know I was capable of such anger until my younger daughter was held up at gunpoint on her urban campus. Sitting in a courtroom watching her assailant ask for bail and release made me realize I was quite capable of violence and revenge. I was frightened by the range of emotions that came to me when my children were hurt or threatened. I became a grisly bear, irrational and combative to anyone who would threaten their well being.

I didn’t know I had such an ability to give, and I wouldn’t have know if it weren’t for the ear infections, the stitches, the tears and the sleepless nights when their problems were far more profound than mine.

I didn’t know the pride I would feel when I looked at three adults and could say. “I like these people, they are good people, and some of the reason for their goodness is me.”

I didn’t know how the career of mothering would turn out when I started, and of course it isn’t over yet, and I am so very grateful that I didn’t know, because I wouldn’t have had the courage to do it.