Not for the faint of heart
A couple of weeks ago, the boys and I had an epic sleepover in the basement while M was away. We inflated the air mattress, draping bedsheets over it to make a fort from one side of the room to the other. We brought down blankets and sweet and salty popcorn and a bowl of jelly beans and sour peaches. Then, we watched a cheesy Will Ferrell musical and sang karaoke, belting our songs out at full volume, the Apple TV remote our microphone.
The boys are 13 and 11 now. They are fairly independent when it comes to the hard work of keeping them alive. We get the groceries, but they make their own breakfast. We double check that their homework is in their backpack. That they’ve packed a hat in case it gets cold. Still, those heady days of heavy lifting are over, at least physically.
There are no car seats to lug from the back seat into the house. No strollers to fold and open one handed. No babies hanging on hips.
Nine years ago, M was away for two weeks in July. This was the stage of our life when summer was choreographed down to the day, with scheduling and coordination starting in March. Daycare spots booked. Day camps reserved. Vacation requested. The boys were 4 and 1.
I gave M my blessing and booked off work for the same two weeks he’d be traveling. My mind, my delusional mind, imagined regular sleepovers with my sisters and the niblings. There would be no need for day camp, because the kids would be in a camp of sorts with their cousins, my sisters and I the counselors. I saw late night shenanigans. I saw my own idyllic childhood, replayed.
No so.
Letters from a Muslim Woman Demystifying the Western Muslim Experience
Somehow the date approached and I found myself alone with a toddler and a kindergartner for two straight weeks. No childcare. No camp. No sisters or cousins to entertain us. Grandparents dispatched to another country, to the aid of another mother, her hands full with another set of grandkids.
What I remember most was the oppressive heat of that July. The air still. The windows and backdoor opened in the desperate hopes of a breeze that never came.
Without my sisters’ company, I didn’t have the energy for the city pools. Instead, I would muster my strength and gather the big blue Ikea bag of sand and water toys, loading it onto the back of the stroller. Then I would wrestle A in and buckle the harness, keeping an eye on D to make sure he hadn’t followed a rolling ball into the road.
In this way, we would make our way to the water playground, where I would pray for them to get into a groove. To find wonder in the water splashing and gathering in their buckets. In the way an older kid might spray them with a soaker. In the way their feet left a trail of little wet prints as they ran to me in anger or delight.
Sometimes, we’d last 3 hours at the park. Sometimes 30 minutes. And then we’d come home and the whole rest of the day would yawn ahead of us. Endless meals and snacks and dishes and diapers and baths and tantrums, and I would kick myself for my poor summer planning.
Once the boys were asleep, I would reach for the remote, craving the voice of an adult, even one who would only talk at me, rather than to me. One night, I clicked on The Walking Dead. Even though I despised Zombies, even though M had asked me again and again if I wanted to watch it and I had said no, again and again, afraid of the gore and the nightmares.
Still, it was hours of plot and character and stakes. And I needed stakes after negotiating between two small children all day. By the time each episode ended, I would find myself sucked all the way in. Too invested to stop, but also too afraid to be alone with my thoughts in the dark. My husband, my parents, my sisters all hours away, and me alone in the night. The adult in charge.
The next day, D would wake me bright and early. His chubby little hand shaking my heavy shoulder, his thick little voice repeating, “Mama, mama, is-hee”. Or A would demand release from the crib across the hall by screaming with all his might. And we would start all over again.
I have long felt guilty about being a working mother, a mother whose children spent hours each day being fed and cared for by another adult. More than once in those early years, I would Google “homeschooling” and find myself scrolling a fantasy on Pinterest. Idyllic images of women in flower print dresses baking in sun-drenched white kitchens. Their children gathered around enormous quartz islands. The youngest finger-painting. The oldest midway through a baking soda - vinegar volcano.
The problem with all of this, of course, was that I hate finger paint, I hate crafts, and I am a terrible teacher. But the guilt? The guilt was real.
That summer, two warring ideas became abundantly clear to me. The first was that I would have made a terrible homeschooling mother. That my children were definitely better off at school and camp, where educators would tend to their learning. The second was that I felt like a horrible mother. A mother who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) conjure art projects out of thin air. A mother whose pancakes and cookies did not take the shape of beloved Disney characters.
The boys and I would bake and run and play with Duplo. But the house was a mess. And I never cut the crust off their bread. And I had kept a baby book for maybe one week before the whole charade of tracking memories in anything other than a hard drive had collapsed in on itself.
I love to play with babies. To tickle their little bellies and watch them howl with laughter. To hide my face and hear them cackle when it is revealed again. I love to chat with 3 year-olds. To watch their delight as they find the shape of a sentence, to discover their ability to make magic.
My niece, Rania, called me her second mom when she was still a toddler. “Khalto Noosa!” she would shriek at the sight of me, running over to be scooped up and cuddled and loved.
And yet, for all the precious joy of babies and small children. For the miracle of having them melt into your arms for a nap. For their impossibly chubby cheeks and pudgy fingers, I am more at home in motherhood now than I have ever been.
The boys are little humans now, which isn’t to say they weren’t always humans. But before, their babyhood trumped their personalities.
Now, I can see them more clearly. Their curiosities and their habits. Their favourite books. Their favourite games.
Not so long after that summer where I momentarily experienced single parenthood, I read an article online that soothed my guilt, called This stage of life? It’s hard.
“In this stage of life, you are bombarded daily with a whole host of decisions. Some of them life-changing, some of them not. None of them with clear cut answers… Do I send (my kids) to public school? Homeschool? Charter school? Do I continue to breastfeed? Do I blow the budget so that I can buy all organic? Do I force my child to apologize, even though the apology will be insincere? You don’t know the answers to ANYTHING, but you feel constant pressure to figure out EVERYTHING.”
Reading that article, something finally clicked for me. Nobody doing that early parenting had it together. Not me. Not my friends whose houses were always clean when I went over. Not the moms in the photos on Pinterest.
It’s supposed to be hard, I realized. I’m not failing because it’s hard.
The nigh of our sleepover, when we finally went to bed it was nearly 1 a.m.
The next day I woke up cranky and a little annoyed with everything, and of course, the guilt kept trying to resurface.
Cue the inner voices shouting over each other: ‘Don’t undo all the bonding by snapping at them’ versus, ‘You spoil them so much! You’re doing it all wrong.’
This time though, I recognized the turmoil for what it was. Parenting is not for the faint of heart. If you’re lucky, you walk a never-ending tightrope of struggle and reward.
And the guilt? The guilt will never go away. We just learn to recognize it. Soothe it, lull it to sleep the way we used to lull them, when they needed us simply for survival.
Let’s chat in the comments:
* Are you a parent? Do you have a lot of mom guilt/dad guilt?
* Are there other things you feel “not enough” on?
* How do you quiet the “I’m not doing enough” voice in your head (yes I’m looking for advice)
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