Posts Tagged Motherhood

Isaiah and the Gift of Today

Posted by Lisa in Isaiah, Parenthood on January 27, 2012

It’s Friday and there’s no better picture to accurately depict the Friday relief and excitement than this cartoony picture of Isaiah.

A few nights ago, we were playing with the different features of my Christmas gift – our new computer – and Isaiah got pretty excited over the different scenes and tones the pictures can be set in.  This overly exposed scene was his favorite.  He looks how I feel inside: YES!  I got through another week of work, parenting, surviving another week of winter, and listening to the Republican debates!  I DID IT!  GO ME!

Watching Isaiah grow into his own person is such a paradoxical experience.  He is most certainly his own self, that is clear.  And he says things like, “Isaiah do it.” Meaning, “HANDS OFF MOM.  I CAN BRUSH MY OWN TEETH.” Or “Forget your hand, Dad, I know what a railing is!”

But the majority of things he says are mimicking what’s around him, especially language.  Just yesterday, he asked to watch a Muppet video on YouTube and when the link was a little slow, I fussed around with the mouse and before the electricity from my brain sent the message to move my tongue to say the words, Isaiah sighs, “Come on, come on, COME ON!” I looked at him strangely.  Yeah, I guess I say that a lot when the internet takes forever.  (Forever: 39 seconds)

Toddlers are walking mirrors and sponges and it FREAKS ME OUT that they learn instantaneously when and how to repeat something in an appropriate situation.  They can read the emotional situation and deliver the comment they heard, just like it was originally spoken.  So, yeah, he’s his own person – he’s got his organs, preferences, room – but everything he DOES reflects me or Nick to some extent.  Now that’s some scary shit right there.  Seeing myself in a 2 year old?  S-C-A-R-Y.

But it’s a joy.  JOY.  And that’s an unexpected part of parenting that I wasn’t counting on: the joy!  The little things.  I was changing him after a nap and I asked how his day was going thus far at 5pm and he goes, “Oh, I just love it.”  A few hours later, he picked up an empty gatorade bottle and says, “Recycle.”  And then he wore my high heels for 15 minutes while I cooked dinner.

JOY.

*D my therapist says to look into our current moment with as much passion and intensity as we look to the past and future.  If we all did this, we would relinquish control over the things we do not have power over or cannot change.  Be present, she says, to only what you can presently know and see.

What I know and see is how fast 2 years of my life has gone with Isaiah.  In the blink of an eye and in the swift move of parenting amnesia (I can’t remember what it was like to breastfeed or put him in a carrier), he’s a little human asking for juice and crackers at night, wailing when I turn off the radio because it’s time to say goodnight.  Just like that (snap of the fingers) his onuses are too tight, his pants are too short, and he’s feeding himself with a fork and spoon.

Nick took the opportunity to clean out the basement this week (what a great guy, I’d never think to do that on my day off), and I was admiring his work, I saw all these baby toys, bottles, and paraphernalia were outgrew.  No more boppy pillow, no crib bumper, no walker.  Being a parent is so reactionary and immediate that it’s hard to retain any memory of what you did before.  All you really know is how to do NOW.  And given D*’s advice about staying in the present, that relationship seems perfectly complimentary.

Be present.  In the blink of an eye, it’ll be ten years from now with no memory of today.

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The Shhhh World of Doubtful Mamas

Posted by Lisa in Uncategorized on January 6, 2011

What is the ideal family?

I took a short walk with a neighbor – a mother of two girls – and we started talking about the “reality” of motherhood.  Not too far into the walk, I felt like we were using each other as priests: confessing our shortcomings as mothers, the moments that we feel like we are failing our children, disappointing our partners, half-assing our work, shaming ourselves in grocery stores by our appearances, and all the while carry the motherload (no pun intended) of all emotional baggage: GUILT.

As informal as the conversation was, I felt monumentally renewed.  We walked briefly but stood outside her house longer, not ever completely finished with our sentences before the other person started a new topic of complexity: letting your kids be exposed to germs and bacteria to build up their immune system, feeding them ready made toddler food instead of homecooked table food, not child proofing every last inch of your house, and, finally, talking to other mothers about your shadows and imperfections.  “It’s isolating,” she repeated more than once, “this whole mom-n-kid thing, it’s isolating.  And I don’t care what anyone says – I love my kids.  I’d walk through fire for them, they’re my life, but a lot of this just sucks.  There.  I said it.”

She said it alright: (a lot of times) IT SUCKS.

I’ve got all kinds of data to support any decision I make regarding work vs. staying at home.  I’ve got attachment parenting on one hand which allows me to heave one big sigh of relief when I feel all I want to do is comfort and be close to my child.  On the other hand, I’ve got the modern whistleblowers to the domestic dream when all I want to do is feel a sense of personal and professional fulfillment which diapers and lullaby songs cannot offer.

The problem with being an independent thinker and cowboy/girl of rebellion is that you often find yourself alone; on the other side of the tracks, walking the opposite direction of mainstream.  Some think it’s a lovely walk.  Some think confident women make confident mothers.  Let me just clarify those misconceptions: NO.  It’s not true.  It’s confusing and upsetting.  I think people assume that once you give birth, you have the knowledge of veteran mothers.  Not true.  My identity as a mother is still forming and, perhaps even moreso now, I’m uncertain which paths are best for me and even more uncertain about which paths are best for my family.

In my previous life, before I knew the glory of sleeping in a rocker with my arms protectively and instinctively flexed around a child, confidence was my best friend.  And now, there’s a perpetual haze of doubt surrounding both my cerebral cortex and ventricular arteries.  I cannot walk down a grocery aisle without stopping to rethink what I just picked out for Isaiah.  I can’t envision what my professional dreams are without wondering if my dream resides in a good school district.

In this early new year, in a year of unprecedented uncertainty, I have found that the best way to move forward is to abandon, as best as I can, expectation.  Comparisons.  Measurements.  Milestones and charts.  Supposed to-s and Shoulds.  All of these are poisonous to the healthy mind of motherhood.  It’s critical to spend more time narrowing down one’s true desires and formulating a plan to accomplish it than to read one more God awful opinion on what worked for Nancy Jane, Wonder Mom in Jeans, who taught Billy to swim at 18 months and Johnny 23 words in sign language by the time he was 8 months.

Nope.  I’m spent on opinion.  And while I can never entirely wipe my memory of all that I’ve ingested, a daily reminder that just a few houses down, there is another mother allowing her kid to eat an unearthed cheerio or forgetting for the umpteenth time to dry the wet laundry, gives me a small space of company.  Of much needed company.

And the isolation is that much less.

That’s my plan: Run.  Run as far away from other people’s experiences as I can.  Run.

Then find someone real and talk about what I think.  What I’m finding.  And then formulate my own rules.

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