Between the two of us, Steve and I have spent about three hours of the past weekend trying to figure out how to get a Matchbox car out from between our sliding glass doors. It took one two- year-old three seconds to find an impossibly thin space and slide it in there. It took me about an hour, surrounded by an upset toddler, demanding the return of the car (afterall, I can get it out from under the couch or the endtable), and a four, soon to be five, year old assistant offering sage advice, to conclude no small fingers, no knife blade, no spatula would retrieve the car.
Now I have a hysterical two-year-old, a disappointed almost five-year-old and a sliding glass door that no longer shuts.
Steve spent at least as long today working on this same problem. To his advantage, the children have lost interest, and frankly, because it is summer, and the door is always open anyway, so have I. But the car is still there. And I heard a cicada yesterday, which, according to local wisdom, means only six weeks until the first frost. In six weeks, the door must close.
No one is all that honest about parenting.
I think we should be. This is hard work. It is not for the faint of heart.
Let me begin this post by stating the obvious. I love my children. They are my life. I find them to be the two most beautiful, most amazing creatures on this earth. I would not trade a minute I spend with them, even the ones I am about to describe.
At the moment, I think the only thing that could truly help me is a week at the Kripula Institute. The cure I need is something like this... solitude. I am lying in final relaxation pose on a yoga mat in complete darkness. After my soothing instructor has advised me for four straight hours to let go of whatever tension I am feeling, I rise and walk to the water garden terrace where I drink water from the Fountain of Life and eat wheatgrass, ginseng, soba, seaweed, and anything else with healing properties - all in their raw form. I speak to no one. No one speaks to me. There is no sound except the rhythm of the falling water and the rustling of the breeze through the lavender. I don't see the lavender, but its smell is carried on the wind. I feel my breath. After I eat, I walk, in the Chinese fashion, with my feet upon the earth. Then I go back to my yoga mat and remain there in silence until it is time for bed. I sleep, a deep, full, dreamless sleep. I open my eyes only when it is morning.
This, I think, would cure me.
I am plagued by guilt. Guilt, it seems, is essential to motherhood. Fathers, at least the one fathering my children, feel twinges of it here and there, but it is not at the core of their being. But most mothers I know are guilty. I feel guilty about writing this. I have no right to complain. I have two healthy, beautiful children. I know that. I will never take them for granted, and the fact that I just explained that is part of the guilt. I feel guilty that I spend too much time doing housework and not enough time reading and doing crafts with my kids. I feel guilty that I spend too much time doing crafts and going on little adventures with them, and not enough time doing house work. Look anywhere. I t looks like I run a disorganized laundry service out of my home. I feel guilty when I leave them (which isn't often). I feel guilty when I feel the time is too short before I have to pick them up. I feel guilty that I don't have enough patience with them. I feel guilty that I may have too much, that I let them get away with too much. I feel guilty about the rotten, nagging voice I feel like I use 90% of the time. I always feel guilty about that... I feel guilty that I am not doing more to make up for all that lost time with Cate. I feel guilty that I am not doing enough to enjoy these last preschool days with Alex. And the list could go on...
To sum this paragraph up, I feel guilty.
I also feel strung out. Lately, there is nearly constant whining in our home. When I jump in the shower, Cate stands outside the door and whines. If I am lucky, it stays at that. If not, her brother joins in, they look at each other just the wrong way, and bang, there is a whining fight outside the door. Am I whining right now? Yes, I guess I am.
But if there is no whining outside the shower door, that means trouble. That means I find a toddler covered from head to toe in lotion, or every item in our nightstands removed and scattered across the upstairs. No whining is a warning.. ."Big Mess Ahead."
I leave the shower with nerve endings already burning. How do all animals know that whining is so unnerving? How do they know how badly you want to make it stop? How badly you want to say, "Here is a two pound bag of M and M's. Please make it last until I get out of the shower. And here is one for your brother too so you don't have to share." But, giving in is bad news. More guilt, and in theory, more whining (although I think it has yet to be proven that ignoring a whine will eventually make it stop).
I decided to start walking with them. Pushing 70 pounds of kids in a double jogger up the hills around here isn't easy, and so I have put it off. But this week I started. Exercise. Adventure. Fresh air. How could we go wrong? Half the trip is pure joy. Half the trip is negotiation about whose foot is on whose side of the stroller. Why an elbow has crossed the line. Who has been given the greatest number of green apples from the ground, or blackberries from the roadside bush.
And my father advised me against becoming a lawyer.
Preparing any meal and then cleaning it up could take an entire day. One chop at the onion. A bang from the living room needing investigation. Another chop. I cry from the same space. A third chop, a little voice from a boy who wants to be a chef, "Mommy, can I help too? But I don't want to cut an onion. It hurts my eyes. Can you find me something else to cut?" Onion abandoned. Apple out. We don't need apple, but I want him to feel involved. And if he is involved, he isn't watching T.V. Guilt removed. Busy supervising apple cutting. Onion ignored. Dinner delayed, but it's okay. Small, black two-year-old eyes appear over the counter. She wants to help too. Okay. Oh no! Fight over the step stool! Where is that other step stool? Oh no. It's upstairs. Can I get it before someone chops a finger off or before someone pushes the other from the stool? What about the onion? It is forgotten. Like dinner... late dinner means late bedtime. Late bedtime means tired kids. Tired kids mean more whining. But if I tell them they can't help, go watch T.V. that means more guilt.
And this is how it goes. If you are my friend or relative and I haven't spoken to you in months, it is not because I don't think of you. I just can't catch my breath. My voice on the phone is like a beacon to a child in need. When I say hello, they need water, or a snack before they collapse, or a Matchbox stuck behind a door or justice to be served. I feel guilty for calling you when I know I can't talk. If, by chance, they are quiet and we have a conversation, I feel guilty for putting them off while I chat.
Today, I put Cate down for her nap. Alex and I sat on the porch. I set him up with a craft, one I had actually spent some time to get together for him, one I was sure he would enjoy. He had spent the morning begging for a craft. I sat next to him, making grass skirts for his upcoming birthday party. It seemed like a nice moment.
"I think it's time for me to look for another family to live with," said my dear boy.
"What?"
"Nothing. I'm bored. Can we just do something else? Something on the computer?"
Like what? Match.com for little boys bored with their current families?
I know I need to carve out a little downtime. I need to exercise or read a book or call a friend. I need to do this for myself, and for my children, for my husband. But I don't know how to do it. I need to see my husband and have a relaxing moment. And I have a hard time figuring that out too, and that inspires its own special brand of guilt.
And so I think I am done with this self-help session. I just needed a small amount of venting. I am trying so, so hard to be a good mother and it is so, so hard to do. Somehow, the greatest validation is when other parents, other mothers, are honest and say how challenging it is for them too. That is why I wish we could all feel free to be more honest and less judged. This is hard. So rewarding, but hard. And while the constant demands of the early years will be all too short, I know this isn't going to get any easier.
Tomorrow I will have a little cheese with my whine, if anyone would like to join me.
3 comments:
Well, you know I get it.
It's these years, I think - the toddler years, the "can't-catch-my-breath-or-look-away
even-for-a-second" years - that are so damned hard. And miraculous. And hard. It's the whining, and the guilt, and the mess, and the guilt, and the loss of self, and the guilt...it's the guilt. Once Spike turned six or seven, these things lightened up for a while. He was in school for six hours a day, he took the schoolbus there and back (and they deliver right to my front door!)he had a social life and a network of friends to keep him busy. Playdates actually became less work for me because the kids entertain themselves instead of more because I have to supervise two kids. I started to feel like myself again. But now, of course, I am right back at square one- feeling tired and guilty and spread too thin - wondering what new mistakes I might make today - what I'm missing, what I've been willfully ignoring. And I think there is a whole new layer to all of this because of adoption. I am constantly trying to sort out what is adoption related and what is just normal two year old stuff. I feel like I somehow OWE more to FF because of what she's been through. You remember all the hullabaloo when Angelina Jolie made a comment about how she felt something more for her adopted kids as compared to her bio child because her adopted kids had gone through so much, were such strong little survivors? I get where she was coming from. Not that we love our kids any more or less than each other- but just that I sometimes feel that the mere act of carrying Spike nine healthy months, nursing him, caring for him from the moment he first breathed this earth's air, was enough to make him whole and healthy and okay in his own skin. That he will always have a certain strength because of the way he was treated as a baby. And somehow, I need to find the same assurance about my daughter - my daughter with her two mysterious years that I know nothing about. I need to figure out a way to make it up to her. So, there's that, too.
And you're right. It's really, really, really hard. And hard to talk about because when you get honest about this stuff, you maybe start to feel inadequate. And that doesn't help a thing.
The best weapons are probably a sense of humor (I mean, come on, the car story is funny!)and a deep sense of optimism. I always think about how incredibly fast my time with Spike has gone. How it seems like just yesterday, I was still carrying him around in my arms. And now his feet are as big as mine! And I try to apply that to FF, as well. These years will be over before we know it, and we'll be worrying about teenagers instead of toddlers.
I have more to say about this. I always have more to say about this, but it's nearly 2 a.m. So rattling on isn't helping anybody. But thank you for this honest post. It's good to read about someone who gets it as well.
First let me just say, you write so beautifully...you ROCK!
From the perspective of one who has been there, my boys are 18 and the oldest will be 21 on Wednesday! It does get better and it will go by so fast your head will be spinning.
I know this guilt you speak of, I laughed out loud reading I feel guilty that I do too much housework...I feel guilty that I don't do enough housework. This is like a mantra of motherhood. As one who leaned a little heavier on the not doing housework end of things, let me assure you that the house won't fall down and it doesn't matter nearly as much as it may seem in your mind. I would also say that if you can let go of a little housework, give YOURSELF that extra time.
While you don't want your kids to fry themselves in front of a tv or computer monitor, a little bit of vegging can be good for everyone!
And as Maia said it gets easier when they go to school.
I know guilt but I also know it's a waste of time. Easy to say, I know. I don't think we do better because of the guilt, though, we just beat the hell out of ourselves because of it. From where I sit, you are doing an outstanding job...just try to remember for every guilty thought, take a minute and pat yourself on the back for something...you deserve some of that positive reinforcement and good mothering too!
amy
What's different? Have mothers always felt this overwhelmed, or are we an unfortunate generation of complainers with immature coping mechanisms? I don't know, but Steven and I were considering a 3rd child, and I can safely say that the deal is off. The shop is closed. The Mother is tired and slightly psychotic lately, and any poor baby added to this mix may just not turn out okay- I'm still hoping to salvage the first two.
I hear you sister.
And, have you tried a stick or string with a magnet on it to gently pursuade the car out of it's hiding spot? Just a thought.
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