When the Bough Breaks: Forcing

Today is Hallmark cards' biggest day ever. It's mother's day. 


I am glad to be a mother. I do not think, however, that my being a mother makes me better than other women who are not either by choice, circumstance or biology (or quite honestly, at times I believe: sheer brilliance). Happy women day. 


Let's move on. You're welcome. 


Well, no, back up but just for a second or two. OK, a minute. My husband Dan and I have three boys: Thing 1 (14), Thing 2 (11), and Thing 3 (8). The timing is exquisite for their birth spacing, wouldn't you say? Well, it's all about pharmaceuticals. For me, being a mother is about knowing my limitations and having three kids under 5 in four years would have landed me in the looney bin. Being a mom is exhaustingly enriching. It's all the stuff you would imagine and more. 


I was lamenting Friday to my husband that I don't have a paying job: when you have one of those, you have performance reviews and feedback and assessments and teamwork. When you're a mother, a sign of success (or luck) is going months without a call from school, or the fact that your kids don't really beat the crap out of each other and that screaming is occasional rather than a symptom of existence. 


It's the little surprises however that make it even more exciting than say, sitting on your own with a ball of yarn and knitting it. Or maybe, it's the coming out of the shower to a screaming child holding his head and scrying (omigawd, that's a word -- "scrying" is a word, I was just blending "screaming" and "crying" -- it means "foretell the future using a crystal ball or other reflective object or surface." - who knew? gypsies, that's who... I digress, completely), "hedidthistomehehit meintheFACE witha witha witha aa BLAD OOIH BFS and then he AATAWAGATROW. . . . mama mama mama mmmm maaaa aaaaMMomm mmyyyy. Fix it...Kiss the boo-boo..." 


Get back to the title. Back to the title. "When the Bough Breaks" - "bough" is a branch, a main branch of a tree.


Ok. So, we have a weeping cherry tree. I am like the Lorax, I do speak for the trees. I'm not a tree-hugger, I don't camp out in them, but I completely admire those who do. I appreciate their love and respect for our planet. I don't let burly men in spike boots climb my majestic oak tree to take off a few limbs here and there. We throw the big money at the Big Tree because she deserves it. She's probably as old as my own mom, who's 78.

  This weeping cherry is lovely. In the spring, oh, it blooms just beautifully.  

Thing 2 is a human spider monkey. He loves to climb and run and leap and pretend he is any number of Marvel Comics-inspired superheroes. I love that about him. 

This is Thing 2; he is a font of funny, the master of mirth. Note that he's sitting under the umbrella and the sprinkler is spraying into it. That's how he is. Just a nut.

He has tried to climb this cherry tree a number of times. This morning, he and I estimated that at least 60 times out of my view and maybe a dozen within my view that I would consistently say, "GET OFF THAT TREE. It is a tree, not a playset. The playset is in the yard. Swing off that. Do not climb that branch, ANYmore. Get Out Of The Tree." 

"Yes, mom." 

I told him many times that the tree is innocent. That when we force things to become something they're not, something gives, something suffers, something breaks, something dies. 

You don't need a scrying session (nice, see how I worked that in? I'm not a gypsy, yet) to figure out where this is going. 

Last night, after I did some quiet yoga and centering in my room to prepare for guests (who are lovely, but I'm just not in the guest mood right now) Thing 2 invited over (and he is SO lucky he did invite them over), I went downstairs, all in my Zen state to see the sitting Thing 2 waiting for me at the bottom of the steps looking out our storm door. As a team, we had enjoyed a beautiful day, the sky was cloudless and perfectly blue. Temps in the upper 70s no humidity, we had gone to soccer games and I lost my voice cheering for my boys. 

He looked so wee; he's fairly compact to begin with, so when he is low, it's obvious. He was sitting "criss-cross applesauce" on the bare wood floor, his chin in his right hand whose elbow was resting on the fold of his right knee. Quiet. Just sort of being and feeling. 

"Hi, Mom."

"Hey bud, what's up? Why are you sitting all little like that? Whatsa matta?"

"I have something to tell you." 

>shit!quick, do a millisecond instinctual mental inventory, scan outside for ambulances or police cruisers. are there any tools on the floor? any broken glass? listen for crying. where's the dog?< 

"Oh, ok. I can tell it's probably not good news. What happened?"

"Um. You know how you . . .  >sigh< . . . I didn't mean to. OK, everyone is fine. But I um . . . I broke the tree." 

"What? Come again?" 

"I uh . . .  I Broke the Tree. I broke a branch off the tree. The tree near the cars. The . . . your . . . our, >sigh< Our Cherry Tree. I did that."

"Oh. You broke The Branch that I told you to stop climbing? >suppress anger this is not about me< The One, The Branch that I said all of those times when you were on to get off of? That Branch?" 

"yeah. I'm sorry. I am really sorry."     

">bristle; what have I tried to teach about constant apologies< Thank you for apologizing. What have I been saying to you About Apologies for the past month?"

"Stop apologizing. Change my behavior. I get it now." 

">Oh! Well, good.<  Show me. Show me >suppress returning feelings of invisibility and primitive feelings of being unheard and unimportant<  what You grabitzfragin frackdigrabin  Did, show me The Branch." 

"Ok. >sniffle<"

So we go out the front door and walk the 30' to the driveway, slowly and I'm keeping it together, man. This tree is the first thing we planted when we moved to this home in almost 12 years ago. It is our Symbolic Tree. I get it. It's only a tree. And to a kid, it is eminently alluring as a climbing tree. It's just that anything over 50 pounds is too much. Thing 2 weighs about 75 and it's mostly incredibly flexible and active muscle. When he was born, a dear friend called him, "Fling" as a nickname. 

I don't have a picture of the damage. I just went to check if it were still there, the carnage. But it's not. And that's a good thing; living in the past, or constantly re-examining things that hurt us doesn't help us. It only wells up those feelings again and well, who needs that shit? Move on. 

Part of our discipline strategy for this situation has been for Thing 2 to make reparations and clean up his mess. So he sawed off the 12" jagged branch remains this morning with his dad. The Branch and its abrupt ending will all be a memory after the Waste Management company comes by next week at its appointed time to remove our "yard clippings."  Now the tree boasts a clean cut, almost as if a storm took down the branch, and she's ready to sap herself.    

This morning, when I was woken out of a great dream by three young minstrels and their fantastic dad for my annual "You're The Best Mom" ritual, I had a chat with Thing 2 about the tree. 


Life has this completely WONDERFUL way of showing us how to make lemonade out of lemons. We just have to be willing to do some squeezing because the juice is what makes it tasty; sugar can sweeten tobacco, but that doesn't mean I want to drink it.  And lemons are good for our liver!


As we spoke about the tree, it dawned on me that it presented a great parable about forcing and breaking rules, what happens to the innocent when we do, and how our seemingly small or self-important choices (good or bad) can affect the world, or in this case, an ecosystem. 


1) Thing 2 forced that tree to be something it's not: he forced it to be a playground. A perch for his "Wolverine" character development. It's not supposed to be his Wolverine perch, it's a tree. Forcing it to be something else broke it. Forcing anything will break it. This is a law of physics. 


2) Breaking the rules a few times and getting away with it will falsely empower us to think it's OK to continue to break the rules; it emboldens us. That because it we get away with it once, say drinking and driving, then we think we can do it again. We can't because . . . 


3) Innocent people or objects get broken in the process. Our vanity, our drive to be something more, different than others, better or something other than What We Are hurts innocents. I'm all about play and imagination and Wolverine, as long as we play by the rules and don't break them. Because when we break them, we break a part of us too. 


4) The ecosystem has been changed because of his actions. The bird family who used that tree to live in, now have less cover from predators. Our pleasure at witnessing about 500-1,000 of its blossoms on That Branch every spring has been altered. The CO2 provided by that 20' branch has been eliminated. I'm not dwelling on it, I'm just mentioning it.


The things we do, the forcing, affect everyone. 


It was a good talk. He seemed to really get it and he wept for a moment, heaving big to him, wee to me, 75# sighs and flubbers of remorse and squeaky words expressing regret. 


It was a good talk for me too. It helped me to be a better mother. Because we had company last night, I had to dial back my reaction and my sadness over the incident. I realized that my ego was playing a bigger part than it (ever) should. Instead of feeling bad about the tree, I felt selfish about my son not listening to me, about his flagrant disobedience. This is not about me, this is not about him. This is about us. We are a team.


Looking back with 18-hour vision I appreciate it. Honestly, if this is the worst thing he does, we are very fortunate.


I have the bestest dude: he just returned from an errand with a bouquet of tulips and a no-whip green tea frappucino. My Drink of Glee.


Thank you.    

Elusive Equanimity

Equanimity means being OK with What Is. For me, it's pretty elusive. Not an hour goes by where I don't have some opinion on something. 


Being OK with What Is, is a tenet of yoga. 


I have a yoga class twice a week from one of the best yoga people I know. I met her when she subbed for one of the other best teachers I've ever had. I know, I hit the lottery. Guess what? I still manage to feel guilty for not going back to the first teacher. My reasons are excellent reasons and if I were my own best friend, I'd tell me to just let the guilt go. . .

When I don't go to class for yoga, I'm practicing a little at home in the morning or at the end of the day to wind up or wind down for the day. 

Practicing yoga. Practicing ... that sort of implies imperfection and acceptance with the process. That we are constantly evolving. 

The irony is not lost on me that I practice something that actively reminds me to be OK with What Is. 

Things that take time do well with equanimous spirits, people who are Zen. Thus, I do not deign to own an equanimous spirit, so I fake it.  I can feel my back molars grind into each other actually as I type this. I hate denial. 

Release. Breathe. Let it go. 

OK. So, while I said that Equanimity means being OK with What Is; that's sorta the tip of the iceberg. It's not just being OK with What Is, but being OK with What Is at all times, the easy times and the hard times.  

How many of you are OK with What Is at all times? 

Webster's says this: 

equanimity |ˌēkwəˈnimitē; ˌekwə-|

noun

mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, esp. in a difficult situation : she accepted both the good and the bad with equanimity.

DERIVATIVES

equanimous |iˈkwänəməs| adjective

ORIGIN early 17th cent. (also in the sense ‘fairness, impartiality’ ): from Latin aequanimitas, from aequus ‘equal’ + animus ‘mind.’

I realize, as I've matured (clearly I'm not equanimous about age) that I've selected pastimes that are far from immediately satisfying. 

I've given birth to three boys. BREATHE. 


I've recently taken up knitting. Again. Breathe. 


I have a fish tank, two cats and one beloved dog who truly, is my bestest bud on four feet. 


I have decided to write a book. Several actually, they're all in different stages of maturity. One's about motherhood; another is about a woman named Miriam and her transformation through illusion with the aide of therapy and a patient husband (sound familiar?); and another is about a pretty lost dude, its inspiration came after a long afternoon with my beloved cousins last summer. Which one do you want to hear about most? Really! Tell me and I'll get cracking. 


I garden. Anyone who gardens must be the equanimous type, right? 'Cause gardening takes time, patience and totally being OK with What Is.


I think my parents and brothers and anyone who knew me in a professional capacity would never describe me as being equanimous at my essence and I agree with them. I like results. I am detail oriented. I have an extremely driven personality. If you ever hired me to get your whatever done, you know it's gotten done. My work reviews were mostly "Consistently Exceeded Expectations" because I was like a dog on a hunt: motivated and insanely focused. I often remember my MCI corporate communications days when I'd relish hearing executives saying, "Don't tell me about BCDEFandG and all the rest; it doesn't matter... I want to hear about XYZ. Now." I'd be the one in the background "woof-woof"-ing (a lá Arsenio Hall) "That's right! She wants the reSULTS! y'all! Get going!"  In short, I don't let people down. 


Back to equanimity. Back to What Is.


As I said, another pastime is my garden. OMIGAWD I love my garden. Don't ask me any of the latin names, or the botanical breakdowns. I couldn't care less about phyla or kingdoms or whatever. Just show me what's annual, what works in shade, in acidic soil and I'm there. I like their street names: hosta "blue elephant's ear" (LOVE IT!), stripey, variegated this and that, daylily and the rest.  


Similar to just about everyone but the dead-for-a-long-time Dorothy Parker, I come alive in springtime. I love the leaves, with their translucent newness. The smell of dirt that wafts from under the leaves broken by fern and forest perennials is better than any fresh-brewed coffee.  I come alive with gardening in the spring. This particular hobby, fancy, interest, obsession, is one that takes practice, timing and being OK with the fact that you might not know what the heck you're doing. I've killed a ton of plants by placing them in the wrong places or overwatering. It is a hobby that completely demands equanimity. 


"Demands equanimity." There's an irony. 


It demands equanimity because as a farmer, a true farmer, knows: mother nature is the ultimate decider. She says when it's gonna rain, when it's gonna shine, or frost; when it's gonna be dry or cloudy. She says so. As farmers, they know: there is no guarantee and there are no promises. So we must be OK with What Is. 


Even if What Is means no crops. Even if What Is means too much rain. 


Even if What Is means everything's OK, because if you're anything like me: even when everything's OK, you wonder when it won't be anymore. That's a painful reminder of life: even though everything's OK, we humans have a tendency to screw it all up by considering that somewhere, something's not OK and then therefore, we should do something about it.  


*pause*

Therein lies the equanimity. We must **MUST** be OK with What Is. Even if it's hideous or awful (as I hear sirens joined by other sirens in the distance, quick, say a prayer). Because you know why? It will be OK. One way or another: peace will come. Possibly in a way we might not prefer, but peace will come. 


Here's another way of looking at it: if whatever is happening is happening and you aren't OK with it... is being not OK with it going to change it? Chances are: no. If it's something like a tablecloth off center or a song being just not right, pause and think. If you're doing that all the time? It's you. It's not the circumstances. So let it go. Be equanimous.

 . . .

It's Sunday night and I've blissfully spent almost every possible free moment in my gardens this weekend. Friday I went with my neighbor/bff/buddy to the local nursery and dropped little over a hundy on some annuals and vegetable (eggplant, beans, burpless cukes, and beans) plants for our actual vegetable garden that my husband Dan tends with Thing 3 who is 8. The rest was flowers in those little 4-packs. About 78 of those single guys. 


I planted them all that afternoon. I couldn't stop myself. It rained. I dug. It poured. I planted. It thundered. I counted. It lightening-ed. I went inside. 


Waiting.... Waiting... checking the sky. 


Is it clear?  Clouds. 


Did it stop? No coronas pinging off the pavement.  

Can I go? It's quiet. 


Ok. Let's try...


I have tennis elbow again. This time in my left (dominant) arm.  Equanimity raises her head. It's hard to be a gardener with this condition. Tennis elbow afflicts the motion for dishwasher unloading (tragic, I know) but more importantly, it affects weed plucking and dirt combing and plant moving. Equanimity has sort of lost her fashionability right now. I have decided that because I love gardening more than I love unloading the dishwasher, that I will save the pain for the appliance and wince through the gardening.  I am OK with What Is and I'm defiant.


Gardening for me is a passion, a vice that I find hard to resist. I love splitting hostas, dividing peonies, liriope, ferns, bugloss (are you still with me?), lilies, irises, forget-me-nots, astilbe, lily-of-the-valley, bleeding hearts, nandina and wild violets. Yes, if you're still with me, you can probably figure out by now that I have a shade garden for the most part. 

the fiddlerhead of an unfurling fern

As I've said, "I love plants that make their own babies!" 

bleeding hearts, aren't they wonderful? 

we are not in this gig, life, alone: even this peony needs an ant to help him / her along. and it takes TIME... about 3 weeks from first ant sighting to bloom: there's a lot of trust required. 

When we moved into this house almost 12 years ago, the back yard was nothing like it is now. It had 18 tree stumps, almost no grass, a white, plastic, scalloped border around every tree and in the corners. That was awful: I wanted the trees to be like a parkland: in the grass, part of the experience. Setting them off? That was just weird. The yard also had very compacted soil and a single bed of shade-loving annuals along the back fence and a ton of random planters placed upside-down to cover the tree stumps. 


Since 2000, we have upgraded the backyard to be a very nice, lush and cozy place. Of the last two years, the Field Family botanical campaign of has been: Operation Decorum, Screen Shirtless Mike. We have endeavored through non-deciduous means to build an evergreen screen along the fence-line that separates us from our neighbor, "Shirtless Mike." 


The neighbor, "Shirtless Mike" has been our backyard guy for the whole time. We call him "SM" because well, he doesn't wear a shirt. Ever. He's in pretty good shape, but c'mon, it's sorta ridiculous. He just had a bypass last December. My Australian neighbor who moved away, used to call him "Mr. Big'n'Chesty." While he's a pretty decent guy and he's nice to my kids, I'll never forget what he said to me the first time we met when I was seven months pregnant with Thing 2. Thing 1 was doing his best drunken sailor / toddler routine through the new yard. We were taking a break from unpacking and our dog, Maggie, was relieving herself, trotting and sniffing.  Shirtless Mike said as he gestured his arm to shake over the fence and into our domain, "Hello. Nice to meet you. She [the former owner] kept it real clean." 



I felt like saying, "What clean? This backyard? This wasteland? This dustbowl of dead grass and holes, her rusting swing set (that we replaced with a wooden one), the 70-year-old double-leader red oak in the driveway that's got a hole the size of my husband's jelly cupboard in it, or that decomposing red wagon she left behind that's covering three tree stumps? Or could it be that you're referring to her complete lack of the botanic aesthetic? No problem. I'll just let my golden retriever shit all over the dirt and maybe something will come up." What I said instead was, "Oh, yes. Well, I'm pregnant, we've just moved in and we have a boy and a dog. We will do what we can cough*asshole*cough."   

our well-loved swingset

I've been known to appropriately cough*asshole*cough at just about any asshole deserving of it. Just ask my friends.


I should have considered the source. This guy has all of his gardens, excuse me, hosta of one variety only behind retaining walls. Which of course makes sense if you're on a slope, but we're not. In fact, everything is behind a retaining wall. Even his shirts, I'm guessing. He clearly likes things Just So. Especially that stack of mulch bags that he keeps in his yard for six months and the dying crabapple tree in his front yard.  His retaining walls have retaining walls. I've heard he works for the CIA. So if I'm silent for a really long time, I'm either finally committing to my book(s) or I'm in one of his gardens, behind a retaining wall, likely the one nearest the mulch bags under the brick landing he has beneath his bird feeder to keep seeds from germinating. 


So much for equanimity. It is elusive. 


Who was it? Frost who said "Good fencing makes for good neighbors."? He was brilliant. My natural screen fencing will take years to grow, but that is part of its charm; it is teaching me to be equanimous. 


So here I am (actually truly on my deck) overlooking over my .23 acre domain with my buddy neighbor at 1 o'clock and I know that when I have her and my other friend, that Crazy Broad from Queens around, I'm equanimous because they force me to be so. They remind me to my face: This Is What It Is. Deal. 


And when I have my garden around, I have no choice. When I have my kids around, I must be OK with what is or if I'm not, take a pulse from the Team and friends to see what we need to do to bring any one of them back. I'm learning, from my garden to be equanimous because I have no choice. 


Equanimity eventually wins. Right?!


Which begs the question then: who's elusive? Is it equanimity? Or is it me? Cough*shutup*cough. I know. It's me.  


I can hear a neighbor mowing their lawn in the dark. It's 8:50 now. The sun set an hour ago. 

The garden beds will turn out OK or they won't. They tomatoes, basil, cukes, eggplant (I know! Come over and we'll nosh!) will grow or they won't. I think they might. I've never grown eggplant before; I'll let you know.  As for the kids, we've got plenty of >fleeting!< time. They will behave or they won't. The bottom line is that I have to be OK with it and work when it doesn't. 

The thing is: it's spring! It's time for renewal so everyone gets a pass, a mulligan. It's what we do with this renewal, this mulligan, that matters. Do we squander and repeat? Or do we truly grow, with the luscious breaths of equanimity, and move on? 

But I've figured part of this out: I'm elusive; equanimity is right here like she always has been. 


Thank you. 

perfect mother? no. not even close.

Yesterday in yoga, I got a gift. I didn't ask for it; it came to me. The preceding evening, I posted on my facebook walls (GrassOil and my personal wall) that day's events: 

"So it has been a long day. Thing 3 bumped his head hard enough today in P.E. to warrant an ambulance ride to Inova Peds Unit, which I will happily leave all my money when I die, for multiple tests, including CT scan, xray and EKG. He was released around 1pm with a favorable & cautious prognosis: no sign of concussion, but no stunts either. An hour ago, I was hugging him, gratefully, and he said, in his dry way, "Mom, it's late. You need to go now. Turn out my light and close my door." I guess he's better already."

The gift in yoga came from my teacher, who is also a fb friend and a physical, touchable friend offline, on the actual planet we share (I can't go there: "IRL / in real life" - to me, this is all real life).  She openly asked me how I was doing because she had read my status about Thing 3. Her knowing eyes bore through my façade of panache and I said, "OK, now." She explained to the other yoginis (this class is awesome, populated with all manner of women in all walks of life) my status and then paused, with a knowing and loving glance at me to close with, "Molly is the mother of three boys. It's a busy job." 

The women collectively, "ohhhh"d at my experience. Lovingly and without the fruitlessly competitive and dismissive, "been there done that" patronizing tone. They all visually hugged me and graced me with gentle smiles.  With a small smile, I hugged them back and said, "Yes, I am a mom of three boys. I'm a lucky girl" and I meant every freaking syllable of it. 

RANT: Being a word freak, I hate that "been there done that" and "it's all good" response that people make automatically toward other peoples' circumstances. It's so dismissive and isolating. I want to say and believe that people mean no harm, but I have also say, that most people mean absolutely nothing when they say it. In fact, they're saying, "I don't care. Don't tell me your freaking problems because they're not my problem."  In my personally invested mind I say, "No, actually, you haven't 'been there or done that' because you're not me. Your child is not my child. You are not in my shoes and it's not 'all good.' The fear or sadness I felt then, even though things are OK now, have stripped a layer from my confidence; have stolen minutes from the restful sleep I will have in years to come. That my son had to experience a CT-scan which apparently can create conditions where 1:1,200 children can develop some form of cancer is not really... 'been there done that' for you unless you're me and he's yours. Granted the sun can TV can do the same thing, but that's part of a regular existence.  And that 'it's all good' because he didn't have a concussion is really not 'all good.' The kid was terrified of this gigantic machine, so don't go dismissing me with your been there done that it's all good  bullshit. RANT OVER.

The gift was that my yoga teacher Saw Me. She gets me. She Knows What It's Like. 

That same day, I met with my therapist and she heard me recount this yoga experience and what happened with Thing 3.  She wrote down something.  I hate it when she does that. This post is the closest I'm likely going to come to a public indictment of my mother for her parenting style (which was very unique): she was a mix of Augusten Burrough's mother in "Running with Scissors"; "All in the Family's" Edith Bunker and "Roseanne"'s Roseanne.  My mother (who is still with us) suffered from some pretty heavy mental disorders (which were unknown about in the 1960s and 1970s) and her own screwed-up mom. While those disorders and her history do not absolve her of her special brand of caregiving because many of her flaws were avoidable, they help me recognize that her particular style of childrearing was not because of anything I did (this is something that I've only recently begun to accept).  As a result, my style of mothering has been to sorta wing it in reverse from what she did. While I made it and am here, there are parts of my person that are woefully undernurtured and as such, I am tuned to feel exquisitely inadequate, perfectionistic, insecure, snarky and defensive about any error, real or imaginary, I manifest.  To fight those urges requires vigilance.  What's even more ironic is that I am both at times gullible and distrustful, go figure. 

So, when someone Gets Me or Gets You, regardless of your maternal status, it's no small gift. They Get Us because they Too Have Lived Like We Have.  They know how hard we've worked to Just. Get. By.  

What my therapist ended up writing down was this: "She fears turning into her mother."  And that's why she earns the big bucks. That concept is nothing new: I'm sure many women reading this very word right now are guilty of desperately hoping they are not like their mothers. I feel I've cornered the market on that sentiment, but I know in some ways I am very very similar to my mother. It's the anger; anger from neglect as a child.   

this is my mom and me in 2008

Then, what my therapist said to me was this: "You Are Not Your Mother." I've suspected that but it doesn't mean I've quit trying.  Reversing the "be your mother" trend has been tantamount to a crusade for me; an all-out war against myself and my femininity. I am the only daughter in my family, and thus I am the most similar to my mother in my family.  For me to win this war, I became my anti-mother: tough, hard, self-neglectful, realistic, honest and true, stable, openly self-critical and vigilant.  Y'know what? It has been exhausting! 

We're all overcompensating for something... 

My war meant that I'm totally interested in health, exercise, laundry, cooking, playing with my kids and sorta neglecting mySelf.  I don't do the aforementioned with the intention that it pleases me, I do so in the spirit of service to my family because it was so lacking in the world where I grew up. It doesn't mean I don't enjoy the efforts, it's just that the motivation is skewed.  When I exercise, it's to stay fit for my family because my mother never did.  When I run myself ragged running errands it's because my mother didn't.  When I show up somewhere 15 minutes early to pick-up my kids, it's because my mother didn't and sometimes she didn't even show. Or when she did, she was altered.  When I am self-reliant it's because my mother wasn't.  The good news is that I'm finally am OK with what I've become despite it all.  And since beginning therapy, I've learned to loosen up a bit on myself and allow myself to be OK with just being OK.  I'm reading a book, The Emotionally Absent Mother: A Guide to Self-Healing and Getting the Love You Missed by Jasmin Lee Cori, which has been very helpful. 

In keeping with the inadequacy theme, I posted someone else's blog on my fb wall last night, "9 Quick Tips for Keeping Your Home Feeling Serene and Organized." It wasn't fiction.  A friend from high school, a great gal whose two younger children are close in age to mine commented, "I need to work on #9" (making your bed). She and I went back and forth for a couple rounds because I sense we both share the same space of trying to figure this stuff out: that a mess in the house means the kids are having fun (really? that's ok?); that dishes on the table mean the family has been fed (doesn't it also mean lazy?); that an unmade bed means someone had somewhere safe to sleep (not that they're getting back in it real soon?); that a dining room table covered with homework means minds are being challenged (not irresponsible from not cleaning up?)... OK whatever you say. (My inner anti-my-mother mother is cringing.) I've got to prepare for the cleaning ladies ...

I grew up with a fair amount of chaos -- our house was forever disheveled but for entirely different reasons than those cited above.  My mother seldom cleaned the house, our cleaning lady, Betty Sortino, did.  She was awesome.  She had tobaccoffee breath, jiggled her leg to rock me to sleep on my bed, shared her Hershey's bars with me, read me bedtime stories and taught me lyrics to "I Shot the Sheriff."  So, the optimistic proposal of a messy home being a happy home leaves me twisting my neck like a confused labrador retriever unless Hershey bar wrappers and Clapton are part of the picture.

Like me, my friend is a Stay At Home Mother (SAHM), which is a misnomer if I ever heard one. I am not a stay at home mother. We are a collective runerrandskeeptheenginerunningdashinforasecondtodropsomethingoffgoingtothemarketthekidsforgottheirhomeworkcanicallyoubackinanhourgottatakethekidstochesstennissoccerbasketballguitarorthodontistfillthetankdogneedsshotssodothecatsgethimtotutoringgottagotothedoctor --oh yeah, what about lunch and a potty break for me?-- mother. 

On the FB thread, my friend said someone she knows suggested that we SAHMs treat our SAHM-ness as a job: that we shower, dress as though for work, do our hair and apply make-up and all the rest, so that we will see our domestic experiences as ... Oh God, what is this the frigging 1950s?! Someone finish this sentence! I am stumped! Can this be true - a female recommended this?! I guess we're supposed to do even more to somehow bring more vapid value in what we're doing to look good when we're doing it even though we may be miserable or lost or battling the feeling that what we're doing is not good enough.  Hey, ladies, if you're gonna go to war with yourself, don'tcha wanna look great?! So the take-away is to lie: to look like we've been at the office all day even though we're not bringing in any extra money because clearly staying in our yoga pants with crazy hair in a ponytail is unacceptable. People can get fired for that.  My friend, like me, also tries to get her exercise in so any attempt at that means the hair and make-up has to wait and exercise for me happens when I make it because I'm not totally organized (in that way, I'm a carbon copy of my mom). 

I said to my friend, "I don't garden, clean, fold laundry, drive all over and workout in pleated khakis and pearls and a double-breasted jacket or workout in Anne Taylor" so, um, her friend's well-intentioned (and completely unrealistic) advice made me feel even more inadequate. I can't imagine a bigger waste of emotional energy, time and effort than to dress for success when you're just gonna go to the grocery store (although living in Fairfax County, I must admit I've seen it).  Maybe I'm wrong. 

  

I added that there are those of us who like to be with kids and are super domestic and eagerly play "tea party" or "army men" under the dining room table with the kiddos. As much as I love those -moments- I'll be honest: I never aspired to engage in them.  Does that make me a bad mother? I don't know.  I'm a big believer in a child's need to develop "independent play" as well as group play and by golly, if I'm gonna be playing, it better involve dice, cards and tokens and cash not tea cups, teddy bears or army men and sandboxes. 

A couple years ago I clipped a Daily OM meditation for the day called "Tending the Hearth."  It quells my nerves and helps me remember that what I'm doing --even if the house is a mess and the clothes are clean but not always put away-- is of value. It puts the brakes on my inner argument that I'm inadequate for the five minutes after I read it until something breaks or crashes and snaps me back to first-responder reality. 

A joke my friend once told me: "I was a great parent before I had children." 

Motherhood, parenthood, whateverhood is tough, regardless of your circumstances. Granted, I'm not a mother in Africa suffering from famine or disease, but stress is stress is stress. I'm not diminishing my stress if I honor the stress of my sisters in Africa. Even though I like my first-world existence, I'm not so sure an African mother would want my problems. Wayne Dyer once said, "you can never make anyone richer by making yourself poorer." I dig that; that's why I haven't given everything away. 

When you are a parent, your unrivaled unbridled love for your brood can only be equalled by the same degree of protection of your sanity and your precious wisftul recollections of the life you had Before Children. Nothing makes a mother or father crave the life they had Before Children than the screaming fights and unrelenting repetitive verbal waterboarding of an insistent 11-year-old child feigning illness and fever who wants to stay home from school because a test is on that day's docket. Nothing will make you second guess your decision to not put whiskey in your morning coffee sooner.

So am I a perfect mother? Hell no. But I'm trying to be less-than perfect. I'm figuring out that I'm doing OK and that book I mentioned above is telling me where I'm screwing up because I see where I'm repeating patterns I learned and observed.  I've also learned to appreciate the parts of my mom that are good because if I don't figure out some good things about her, I'm sorta screwing myself because I am 50% her.... I've become better about liking pink but I'm not a girly-girl and that's totally OK. 

No one's asking for advice, so I'll tell you what works for me: tend the sadness and sorrow from your childhood, allow it because it can't get better unless you honor it; don't dwell, but don't bury it. But if you're a parent, stay aware.  Read books, blogs (here's a blog, sorta sad, but it's clinical about unattentive parents) and learn.  Your kids will forgive you if you ask and honor on your commitment to them to make it up to them.  They won't however, ever trust you if you lie to them about it. Remember: their big brains have a ton of bandwidth and they've got memories like little elephants.  Do the best you can and be the best you can be. Put aside your fears of your inadequacies and remember you can learn a lot from your kids if you let yourself hear them. 

Kids didn't ask to be born into our baggage, our inner wrestlings and inner battles. They didn't say to God (or whatever you believe in), "Hey, gimme that really awesome person down there. Yeah, the one in the Porsche.  She looks like she's had no troubles or sadness. Oh, a person without disappointment, sadness or troubles doesn't exist? Oh. Well, how about that one? She looks soft." So by virtue of that, we must do our utter best by our children.  We must put down the phone, step away from the computer, be patient, be clear, be honest, express our needs, put down the drink, slow down the car, get out of bed, smile when we speak to them and be that person they know we can be.  Be that person they need us to be.  

this is my mom, me and my gramma in 1969.

If your person wasn't there for you to begin with, become the person You've Been Waiting For. 

Thank you.