One of the aspects of being a Mom I find most confusing is the ability to have many competing and bickering voices in my head, all at once. I don’t think this indicates a multiple personality disorder, but more the capacity to feel such a vast variety of feelings, at the same time.
It seemed simpler prior to giving birth. Is the actual act of birth, and the related personality and brain function fallout, or the morphing into the mother, or a blend of both? I am not alone anymore. In a way different than when it was just me and my friend, working out which way the toilet paper should be placed on the roll (paper flowing down, not up), and which side of the bed to sleep on, and who had to walk the dog in the rain. I always thought about where he was and what he was doing when we were apart, but I didn’t feel responsible for him. He could handle that himself.
My mother-in-law told me at our oldest’s birth this. She said for the rest of my life, I would be somehow restless to get away when I was with him, and restless to be with him when I wasn’t. As a Mom, I would need, crave time alone, and then not fully be able to be alone, for my mind’s inabilty to completely shut out the fact that my child was somewhere, and I wasn’t there. The child would always be with me, no matter what miles were between us. I didn’t understand.
And then, I did. Weeks of sleeplessness, postpartum hysteria, bleeding and cracked nipples, the inability to poo without him on my chest in a snuggli led to a night when he was sometime between 2 and 3 months old. My most wonderful mother, pleaded with me to keep him one night, just one night, with a storehouse of breastmilk, so that he wouldn’t be contaminated by anything other than the evil plastic nipple of a bottle, and I could sleep. Really sleep, and maybe, begin to be civil again. I couldn’t do it. During the day and I was miserably exhausted and unbathed, and at night I was sure we’d made a dreadful mistake by bring this thing home with us, but I couldn’t give him over. And then I finally broke.
She came by to get him after his last evening nursing, took gallons of breastmilk and a couple of the most breast-like bottles I could find, and took him to her home. I cried, and cried. Then paced and looked for something to do. And then I went to bed. But that night, I awoke 3 times, somewhat anxious and at loose ends, with full, leaking breasts, and didn’t feel very relieved to be alone at all. Because I wasn’t. It didn’t matter that he was over there, snuggled in a crib she put up just for him, he was still with me, in me. In the most frustrating way. I couldn’t be with him, or without him, in any real measure of peace.
I called over as soon as I knew she would be up, and asked her what times he had awakened to eat. He had yet to do anything regularly, no nursing routine, sleeping routine, or pooping routine. Every day that first 4 months was a freeform torture of trying to anticipate his needs, and then meet them. There was no pattern to when he woke each long, restless night. He just did when he did. So when she reported dutifully to me each move he’d made, bowel, and otherwise, I realized, that I had awakened precisely each time he did, 1o miles away. I wasn’t alone, at all. And in that season, as much as I dreaded repositioning the mantel of care-taking when she brought him home, I was nearly manic to have him back.
3 children later, I’ve certainly learned to relax. I don’t feel quite the intensity of separation anxiety that I did those early months of my first initiation into Motherhood. But I’ve never really gotten over that tugging of desires, to get away and get back to them, either. That exhausting, unpredictable baby boy will be 10 next month, and I still feel the sting of tears when he gets in a car to go off somewhere for several days, as he did yesterday. I watched them all three, as they pulled out of the standard Chick-Fil-A meeting place, waving and grinning, and giggling with the prospect of complete grandparent indulgences, and big ol’chunks of me went with them. I go over the clothes I sent, do they have their toothbrushes, do they have a warm enough sweater, and convince myself that this is OK, they are OK. I’ll be OK.
So this morning, I awake to a quiet house. Stetch and smile at the sheer pleasure of getting to do only what I want to do today, and tomorrow, and get up to fix the coffee. I think about getting to drink it all, while it’s still hot. And as I pass their rooms, I feel it. The tug, the little pang of emptiness, not completely unlike the time the nurses took my first boy from me, to weigh, clean and measure him. The silence truly is deafening, even while it is exquisite. Their rooms look frozen, the books and Legos a bit lonely. It’s odd to see it all so still.
I laugh at people who tell me “you’ll miss all this one day” when I’m fighting to get through the grocery with them, or get each the books they need from the library, or the youngest melts down for his need of a nap. In those moments, I’m the Mom who can’t wait to get a break. I dream of it, weep for it. And can’t imagine they’ll ever really grow up. But they do, and they will, with God’s grace, and I really will have hushed rooms one day. I’ll be able to drink all the hot coffee I want, and not have to pick up those Legos, over and over and over. But I don’t believe I’ll ever be alone, really alone, again. And while the depth of that realization, and the breadth of the love I never knew I could experience is so sweet to my soul, I know it exacts a price. When I somehow fused with each of them, with that powerful love, I accepted the pain that happens, and will continue to happen, as they step towards independence. A terribly bittersweet pain, made of pride, angst, confidence, doubt, celebration, and grief.
I’ve been given them to let them go. But in order to do my best by them, for them, I have to give my all. No holding back, no a little bit in love with them, keeping some reserve to save myself from the full gamut of emotion that comes with this privilege. To save myself from what I may feel when my intital task is done, and they go off into the world on their own. I cannot say what I will feel when I walk our rooms, just me and my friend again in residence. But I can say, that whether or not they ever realize it, they will be in me, and I in them, and if they are around the world from me, I will not be alone. And I hope they’ll know, they will not be, either.
I’ve loved you, my dear
from the first of time.
Long before
I ever knew your sweet smile
You can never go anywhere
that my love will not go too,
For longer than all time
I’ve loved you.
(a little lullabye for our first, created on the fly, one of those long, early nights, to the tune of John Denver’s Christmas song, with the Muppets. I like the Muppets Christmas Album.)
