Motherhood: The Title of Guilt

The doctor came in and time changed.  You know, the kind of change that happens when you're cutting a tomato and one second you realize that you're about to cut your finger and it seems like it is happening in slow motion while at the same time being too fast for you to stop it?  She didn't want to tell me what she was about to open her mouth to say.  "There's a mass..."  She went on to say words that no parent ever wants to hear in association with their child.  Words you never dream you will hear.

In that moment, my brain went from panic, to grief, to planning.  It landed to planning quickly.  I'm a mother.  I had taken my daughter to her pediatrician for a possible stomach virus.  At worse, it was appendicitis.  We ended up at ER, and now we'd take an ambulance ride three hours away from home to the closest children's hospital.

Our family gathered to wait with us.  It was snowing, and all the local buses were on calls.  Our drivers came from Elkorn City to Prestonsburg to pick us up.  We waited over two hours after getting the news.  I had time to explain to Ivy about surgery.  How most of the people she is close with have had surgery.  How she was born and alive because of surgery.  How she's strong, and I won't leave her side.  I would never leave her side.

She slept on the ambulance ride.  I texted with some of my mama friends and family a little, but I mostly watched her sleep.  It was hard to reach her where I was belted in, but we had the kindest EMTs with us, and the man in the back also had three daughters.  He'd reach over and run his fingers through her hair every now and again.  He won't know how much I appreciated that he wasn't afraid to touch her for me.

Like I said, I planned.  What would this look like?  I had only been with my job since October 2015.  I guess they'd just have to let me go.  I had been a stay at home mom for 10 years and nothing like this had every happened to us then.  Now, I had made the decision to change our entire lifestyle so I could find fulfillment and a purpose beyond parenting, and this happens.  As my mind is always analyzing, I asked - What is Universe trying to tell me?  Have I become a neglectful parent in my pursuit of engaging work?  Am I a selfish mother in even considering how this all will affect me?

Thank God, it wasn't cancer!  Ivy is on the mend.  University of Kentucky Children's Hospital and her surgical team were amazing.  She had a 6cm vascular abonormality that was a total bizarre fluke.  They removed it all, and now, almost two weeks later, you can only tell that she was operated on because she has four little incisions covered with surgical tape.

We got home on a Monday evening late.  I went directly back to work the next morning.  I didn't want to go.  I wanted to stay, but now, we are dependent upon my income.  My income pays for all the new things in our life.  A house that meets our spacial and privacy needs, tuition for cottage school, babysitting, food, insurance and my medical bills, my supplements and medicine, and gas money.  I can't not work.  

Again,because we can't do without this income, I thought, what have I done?  I had to think on it awhile.  I came to a conclusion that I had come to months ago as I was making the decision to go back into the workforce.  It doesn't matter if I am a stay at home mom or a working mom, I'm going to have guilt placed upon my shoulders by myself and by society for all the things I'm expected to be and cannot.  We cannot be everything - even to our children.  Becoming a parent shouldn't mean we are expected to.  Then, I realized, being at work was a kind of relief.  I wanted to be both places, actually.  At work, I could breathe.  I could focus on something a little less heavy for awhile.  I could see something through from beginning to end.

I remembered an essay in _Brain Child Magazine, online that I had read back in September before I knew I had gotten my current public affairs position.  Aubrey Hirsch writes:

I’m learning a lot, too. The big revelation for me came the first time he woke up on a Saturday morning and, as we were lazily playing in our pajamas, said, “I want to go to Melissa’s!” Movies and mom blogs had prepared me for this moment to be heartbreaking, but it wasn’t. It was totally fine.
After all, isn’t this movement away from us and toward independence the central goal of parenting? Isn’t this what sets parenting apart from gardening and cat ownership? That we want our children to leave us? That we don’t want to be number one in their lives forever?

Before she ends the essay this way, she wrote, "Watching another woman cuddle and comfort my son didn’t feel bad; it felt great. I knew he would be fine and that Melissa would take good care of him."  With those lines, I was reminded how I'm not a natural nurturer.  When my own mother was caring for my dying grandmother, she broke down in her stress and grief and said, "I'm not good at this stuff.  If I had wanted to be a nurse, I would have went to school and become one!"  I realized so much watching my mother caring for my grandmother, and when she spoke those words so much acknowledgement poured through my soul.  Hugging, rubbing, touching, holding... it all wore her out too.  She too had to make an effort to do it in an extended way.  I realized it wasn't that she didn't want to hug me growing up, but she got tapped out quickly.  It didn't mean anything was lacking in her care of me or her love for me.  It just meant she would show it in different ways that aren't typically associated with the act of mothering, and she did.

I hadn't thought I would be a mother up until a few months before I began trying to become pregnant with my first child.  My plan was to be a writer.  For various reasons, plans change.  In this season of my life, I'm revisiting the dreams of my early twenties.  Some would call that a mid-life crisis.  Others might say I'm finally accepting myself.  The biggest point is that I don't have to feel guilty for it.  In fact, I have come to understand the huge contribution working mothers make, and how it actually is more difficult in many ways than being a stay at home mom.  Mentally and emotionally, being a stay at home mom almost devastated me.  It brought me to a very dark place after years of denying to myself that I really felt the way I did about not pursuing my interests.  

You DO NOT have to be a martyr to be a mother.  I wish for the life of me that society would help us convey to our daughters that you DO NOT have to be a martyr to be a woman.  For if you find yourself a mother with a career or job, you may also find yourself holding the brunt of household chores, cooking, bill paying, errands, and outside family commitments.  Going out and finding yourself is just another thing to add to the plate that is already spilling over the edge.  Yet, it might be the most important piece in being not simply a caregiver, but a role model for your children.  Being a role model can be achieved in the home and outside of it and will be particular to any given woman.

I'm still trying to find the balance of being both in the home and out of it.  The truth is, I'm going to give up most of the yoga classes I teach so I can be home a few more hours in the evening.  Mothers need rest and cuddles too.  Even mothers who get tapped out quickly.  We all need self care, but from what I see, especially women.  Pursuing the interests and hobbies that help us nurture ourselves so that we can nurture our children and loved ones.  

Hillary Clinton, back when I was younger was known for saying, "It takes a village to raise a child."  She is right.  Back in the day, the whole holler watched after your kids while they ran from house to house and hill to hill.  Only since we have become nuclear families and neighbors with closed doors have we lost the village mentality.  That doesn't mean that it still doesn't take a village.

Things happen, and I will be the mother who deals with them as they come.  I will be the mother who seeks and finds herself.  I will be the mother who shows her daughters that a woman can be whatever she wants without the permission of anyone.  I will be the mother who knows and understands that we are each unique and being a good mother simply means providing an environment where your child is nurtured, safe, fed, warm, and loved however that may appear.