Welcome to the Mommy Jungle

Where Mothers Compete for the Gold

It is a widely held belief that men are more competitive than their female counterparts. And I guess this is true in many arenas, such as sports or the corporate workforce, where masculine competitiveness seems to give them a certain edge. But I have found that women can be competitive too, especially when it comes to motherhood. I call this competition the "Mommy Jungle."

Actually, my sister, Gemma, coined the term Mommy Jungle. She is an experienced mom of four, who began her family several years ahead of me. And for years she regaled me with stories of backbiting, intrigue, and the maternal pettiness of the Mommy Jungle. Since becoming a mother myself, I have learned some secrets of the legendary Mommy Jungle.

THE RULES OF THE GAME:

The Mommy Jungle competition begins even before one fully becomes a mother. It begins when your first child is in utero. And this is the Number One Rule: "No matter how difficult your pregnancy, there will always be another mommy who has it worse than you."

Yes, it is true, some women equate suffering with great mothering. This is where the real martyrs of motherhood prevail. There are those who believe that their suffering must be greater than all others in order for them to succeed as the ultimate mommy.

There is also the opposite, or complementary rule to the above which states: "If you mention any difficulties associated with pregnancy, you will be met with an unsympathetic mother-to-be who proudly announces that this is the happiest and healthiest she has ever felt and she doesn't know what all the hubbub is about."

Unfortunately, there is something worse than the always suffering mother-to-be, and that is the "absolutely perfect mother-to-be" who never has a bad minute, let alone a bad day, during the nine months of pregnancy.

In a nutshell, these competitions are about making oneself feel better and making the other feel inadequate, because their experience is different from your own.

This competition heats-up after the baby is born. And it's true that women can be absolutely ruthless in this sport. And while not all women participate fully, I find that even the most level-headed, fair- minded mothers have a hard time staying clear of the competition. But some mothers (and you all know who they are) actually thrive on the competition. These super-competitive moms must always voice their own opinions loudly and are not afraid to tell you that what you are doing is wrong.

For example, you complain, "Little Mikey hasn't slept through the night in three months and I'm exhausted."

You very well may be met with, "Oh I don't know what's that's like. My little angel has been sleeping in her crib through the night since she was two days old."

Now maybe this mommy is lying, or maybe she's the luckiest mother in the world and her baby really is a sleeping angel. Either way, she could try to be more sympathetic to your cause, since we all know that sleep-deprived mothers are not the best sports.

Other super-mommies try to downplay every negative experience they have, afraid to let anyone think they lack competence in child-rearing. Everything is always "fantastic" and they never ever complain about the demands of motherhood, even when they are exhausted, sick, or admitted to the emergency room on the brink of nervous collapse.

Most insidiously of all, some moms display their children like trophies, taking credit for every single one of their offspring's achievements. These moms will glorify and magnify their progeny's every bowel movement if it draws attention to them. Everything from potty-training to losing a baby tooth becomes a quest for the gold medal. These moms need their babies to do everything "first" because then and only then, can they prove that they are good mothers.

Sure all mommies like to brag about their babies. It is natural to be proud of your children. But beware of those who need to belittle other's accomplishments to feel good about themselves. And try to avoid the trap yourself.

TO WORK OR NOT TO WORK:

One of the least objective areas of competition in the Mommy Jungle is the question of whether one chooses to stay-at-home with the kids, or whether one goes back to work. Here's how this competition works. Stay-at-home mommy defends her life choice by stating, "I just love my children too much to leave them. I believe good mothers should stay home."

Now, work mommy answers defensively, "I could never stay home all day. I'd feel completely bored and brain dead."

In one fell swoop stay-at-home mommy has inferred that working makes one a "bad mommy" and working mommy has made the stay-at-home mommy feel like an imbecile.

It doesn't make sense to me that all mothers are expected to make the same exact life choice. As women, we are as diverse from one another as individual snowflakes. We possess different personalities, priorities, goals, and most importantly resources. So why assume that there is a level playing field in motherhood? And why expect us all to approach motherhood in one distinct way?

When a mother chooses to stay home, it might be based on several factors, including financial resources,
childcare availability, and her own personal priorities and needs. When a woman chooses to go back to
work it is based on these same factors. And neither mother (I believe) makes the choice lightly or without thoughtful consideration.

But whatever the reasons for working or not working, women should be able to make these choices guilt-free and based on what works best for them and their families. And they shouldn't have to waste their energy explaining their choices to others who make hurtful and ill-informed comments.

MAKE ROOM FOR DADDY:

Now fathers, on the other hand, stay directly out of the competition by admitting their parenting inadequacies early on in the game. A father may only need to say "Hey I'm doing better than my Dad did," and he is immediately glorified by his fellow competitors. And to be fair, today's fathers have it rough as well. While men are still seen primarily as the breadwinner, they are also expected to be totally involved at home; changing diapers, giving baths, and spending time with their offspring.

But the competition is completely sympathetic towards men. My husband is surrounded by men who support him, rather than criticize him. When he tells his daddy friends that he took the kids to the park alone, they get down on their knees and praise him as if he is the daddy god. Not to diminish my husband's contributions (because I truly appreciate them), but why is he considered a hero if he takes his kids to the park? I spend countless afternoons at the park with my kids, and yet nobody has ever stopped me and praised my parenting involvement.

Sure, many fathers feel just as underappreciated and over-stressed as us moms. But truth be told, dads are just not held up to the same scrutiny and judgment as mothers. For instance, nobody ever questions a father's love for his children if (and when) he continues to work outside the home full-time after his baby is born.

CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?

By and large, we are a generation of women who went to college, pursued and excelled at careers, and were clearly independent individuals before we entered into Mommyhood. As more and more of us become mothers, we must learn to keep the competitive behaviors at the office and realize that nurturing and supporting other moms will help us as well. The Mommy Jungle doesn't have to be such a scary place. There really are some amazing women to be found hiding behind its dense foliage. I have been lucky to be able to share my own motherhood experiences with my sisters in a non- competitive environment. And I also found a local group of moms at (of all places) my daughter's ballet school. Us ballet moms met once a week during our daughter's classes and found ourselves sharing our mothering struggles and triumphs, or just bitching and moaning. Eventually, we started going out for ladies night once a month and having fun together. We clearly learned that our strength was not in being "the best," but in admitting that we couldn't get through the jungle without a little help.

Ultimately, motherhood offers rich and exciting individual experiences. But it is also an experience that can be shared and the competition needn't be quite so fierce. Whether we decide to stay home, continue working, or do both, it's clear that the real issue here is our uncertainty about our roles as mothers.

Trying to "do-it-all" and "have-it-all" only adds to our anxiety and confusion. It has become convenient to mark our success by judging ourselves against other mothers. But pettiness and competition just widen the gap between us and makes the Mommy Jungle even more inhospitable.

****************************************************
Copyright 2003 Lizbeth Finn-Arnold

Lizbeth Finn-Arnold is the Editor-in-Chief of The Philosophical Mother.

MAY 2003

The MOTHER'S DAZE Issue:

• A Mother's Daze -- Lizbeth Finn-Arnold
• Welcome to the Mommy Jungle -- Lizbeth Finn-Arnold
• Loss -- Regina Walker
• Silences and Motherhood -- Linda MacKillop
• Are You a Candidate for Mother-of-the-Year? -- Susan Krushenick
• God is a Yearning Mother -- Beth Osnes
• Moms and Their Manners -- Gloria MacKay
• Raising Tommy Tornado -- Heide AW Kaminski
• One in Ten -- Luci B Hynes
• I've Seen (a poem) -- Linda Arnold
• Abrasions -- Jeffe Kennedy

Abrasions

By Jeffe Kennedy

I've Seen ( a poem)

By Linda Arnold

One In Ten

By Luci B Hynes

Raising Tommy Tornado

By Heide AW Kaminski

On the outside, it is twirling, raging, destroying everything in its path. He sounds like a roaring train with a loud whistle announcing it arrival, and squealing tires endlessly rattling on.

On the inside, is the eye of the storm -- peacefulness, calmness, serenity, beauty of nature.

Living with Tommy is like constantly being under a tornado watch. You can look at a gorgeous sky and turn around only to be hit by golf-sized hail pellets.

I recently read an article about raising spirited children. Nine traits were given to the reader. The author pointed out that statistically 10-15 percent of all children have enough of these traits to be considered "challenging."

My son displays all of them.

I call him Tommy Tornado, or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. His teenaged sisters call him "a little monster."

From the time I was about four-months-pregnant with him until the present, I have not had a peaceful day. When I began feeling movements, I was immediately convinced that he had either been a soccer player in a previous life -- or that he had ADHD.

A recent, very frustrating experience with Tot-soccder eliminated the first assumption. As far as the ADHD, well, he was diagnosed with it all right! The only night he has ever slept through the night, was his very first one on this physical plane. Like an idiot, instead of seizing the moment and getting rest myself, I spent the entire first night staring at him with ga-ga eyes.

As I am writing this, he is peacefully lying on his cot beside me (naptime at the daycare where I work). He is showering me with kisses on my arm. Just a few minutes agon, he was in time-out.

If a stranger had walked in at the time, he/she would have thought we must have been severely abusing the poor child. He made his disgust over being punished for unacceptable behavior loudly known. He screamed, kicke, threw things, stomped his feet. He had an overkill tantrum.

We go through this several times a day -- every day. Tommy is a highly-spirited child. Intelligent, loving, creative, entertaining, and funny one minute -- but a raging bundle of explosives the next.

I have developed some coping methods. I try to remove him from potentially over-stimulating environments. This is difficult to do, while I am at work. I give in too. Whatelse can I do in a public place, when I know darn well that he will not give up? So he now pushes the grocery cart, even though he is only about two feet tall (even the top of his head does not reach up to the handle), rather than battling with him over sitting down, and not climbing back-and-forth.

I let him sit up on the couch until he zonks out, because he laughs at bedtime routines. For a while, I tried laying down with him. Usually, I fell asleep before he did. When I'm exhausted from reading twenty-some books to him, he will read all twenty-some books back to me. When I lay down with him, I generally wake up around 1 AM and sneak out of his bed. And even though he appears to be sound asleep, he will wake up within minutes and follow me to whereever I am.

Ignoring him is impossible. He will outdo me every time. For example, when I tried to "let him cry it out"in order to get him to sleep on his own, he spend two nights crying for three hours straight. Then he stopped. Not because he realized I wasn't coming, but because I caved in.

Promising rewards for good behavior or threatening withdrawal of privileges for unacceptable behavior does not impress him. I took his four-wheeler, his racecars, and his cartoons away to get him to use the toilet for his bowel movements. He calmly discussed it with me, shrugged his shoulders, and went into the corner to do his business in his pants again.

Sometimes Tommy has three or four tantrums a day. When Tommy's tornadoes go into overdrive, he will scream, and kick, and throw things. Sometimes he will destroy his room. When that happens, I have learned to bite my tongue. I let the tornado rage. Eventually, he will calmly exit his room, smile at me, and then gladly return to his room with me to help with the cleanup.

It can wear me out. Watching cartoons can be a relief for me, as well, as for Tommy. I hate to admit it, but I do use the TV as a babysitter occasionally.

Of course, he likes to change the channels with the remote control. If he loses the cartoon channel and cannot retrieve it, all hell breaks loose again. I try to remind him to do what Steve on Blues Clues recommends: "Stop, breathe, and think!"

Tommy does not like to play with toys very much, except his racecars. He can spend hours lining them up in a very accurate caravan, and then change their positions in the line. He also loves to play memory cards with me, and he quickly discoved the art of cheating.

He is constantly asking me, "What's that noise?" even if it's just something ver subtle. I am convinced that he wakes up when I leave his side because he cannot hear me breathing anymore. Besides his sensitivity to sound, he also changes his clothes upteen times a day. Any little spot, even if it's just water, bothers him. So, it is really surprising that he hates baths. Dirt on his body (or INSIDE his pants) does not bother him one bit.

To keep him busy, he has a little table in the living room stocked with plenty of paper, including construction paper, crayons, markers, scissors, and glue. When he is in the right mood, he loves to be creative, and I don't dare to disrupt him. But he can easily become upset by a dried out marker, or if he doesn't like the way the cutting turned out. Then it can easily turn into tornado time again.

He can already crudely print his name and draws people with big heads, eyes, nose, and mouth (he does label them angry, happy, or sad). He puts hair on top and adds stick arms and lets, and dots for hands and feet. That is pretty advanced for his age.

Sadly, however, a lot of his beautiful creations he destroys after I have expressed excitement over them. He takes a dark marker and wildly scribbles over the entire project.

I think I am handling him pretty well, despite some glitches with my patience. However, I have not figured out how to stop his outbursts before the spill over. Whenever I think I've found something that works, he proves me wrong again.

Wait a minute! I think I have to go. The tornado-warning siren is sounding off . . .

Moms and Their Manners

By Gloria MacKay

I can't speak for fathers (I've never been one), nor daughters (I've never had one). All I know is by the time our sons are grown, a mother must start minding her manners. A young man does not take kindly to being bossed by a middle-aged woman -- especially if she is his mom. Some things change, and some things stay the same. And a mother needs to be aware of the difference.

A son at any age is a son, but a boy is as different from a man as a Matchbox car is to a Mack Truck. They shouldn't be on the same highway. Consequently, those little infractions of good manners a mom gets by with as she's shaping her boy, turns into crimes and misdemeanors when she sticks them into a grown man, like a thumbtack into the heart.

Not that moms are not good to little boy. We bake them brownies, patch holes in their jeans, run their bathwater and set out warm towels, drive them to and drive them from, and even when we're running on empty, we love them with a passion.

We're good, all right, but not as perfect as the cards we get every second Sunday in May, slick with loopy verses, twining around scratch-and-sniff flowers. We are human. Mothers have shortcomings like everyone else, and we work on them -- like everyone else. But one of our failings I don't often hear mentioned is how often we forget our manners when we talk to our children.

Since we live in a culture where the feelings of a child are easily stepped on as a crocus in a crack of concrete, this is not surprising. But then again, manners is a game we like to play with grownups. We mince our words as fine as fresh basil, and bite our tongues without choking. The same mother who stands passively in the quick checkout line, behind a woman with two extra items in her cart, will elbow her way in front of a child. Or at least think about it. Ladies first. Age before beauty.

Mothers do not have to prove how much we love our sons. We go without sleep for them, fight for them, and would kill for them, and die for them. But this has nothing to do with our deportment. "Manners" is a habit, not a passion, and "bad manners" is a bad habit, one so built up into our pecking order that a mother might not notice when her little peckee has grown up and deserves "company manners."

The other evening, I was sitting in the kitchen of a Boss Mom friend of mine, when her son dropped by. He is an ordinary man, married with children, employed, and presumably with feelings as close to the edge of his awarness as most people's feelings.

He said to his mom, "Did you know Patrick lives only five miles away from here?"

Mother shifted in her chair, and narrowed her eyes. "Three miles," she said with a knee-jerk smile.

Son leaned forward on his elbows. "Actually, Mom, not that it matters, but it's closer to five."

"Three," she said, as her cheeks started to simmer.

Son sighed, but persisted. "From the highway to the first left is three. From there to the stop sign is one. From the stop sign to his hous is two. That's five miles. I know because we go jogging sometimes."

Mother's face took on the flushed look of victory. "Not as the crow flies, Dear. I'm talking about how the crow flies. You're wrong!"

Son rolled his eyes at me while his mom tapped one fingernail on the formica tabletop. Should he catch the ball and throw it back like a man, or drop it like a little boy?

I stumbled into the pause. "Speaking of jogging," I said, "there's no place that is too far to walk if you have the time." This is a line from Steven Wright, my favorite comedian. They looked at me as though I were crazy (it must have been my delivery), but it shut them up. Sure, it wouldn't have hurt to let his mom have her way, but I think it's time she starts minding her manners.

I relinquished my role of Boss Mom with more ease than some only because I never fit the job description in the first place. The hardest part of raising four sons was bossing them around. "Structure," I called it, and Lord knows they needed it. But once in a while, often at lunch, I would play the manners game with them, laying on the "pleases" and "thank yous" thicker than cold country gravy. And then I might make a mistake and have to apologize to them.

"I'm sorry I forgot to pour the milk."

"I beg your pardon. I think I interrupted when you were talking."

After they escaped outside, I would chuckle over their quirky little smiles, and round, solemn eyes. And I'd award myself an Oscar, a supporting player, of course.

I don't have much occasion for games like this anymore. Mothers and sons end up pretty much as equals (give or take a mile or two). But I like to think that I will always maintain a bit of my edge. I just have to keep minding my manners.

God Is A Yearning Mother

By Beth Osnes

Having just had a baby, I have some insight into why God may have divided itself into what we call creation. When the baby is inside the mother, there is a calm, complete feeling, knowing the baby is safe within, one with you, perfectly surrounded. Yet, there is an anxious dissatisfaction because this being, or potential for a being, is still a stranger, unknowable.

It is so close, so far within, that ironically you cannot know it. In birth, that vein-popping "Big Bang" process of separating baby from mother, God from itself, a wall is broken through -- a single entity becomes two.

Once the baby is out, there is the wild satisfaction of seeing your baby, holding it, sensually drinking in the child, knowing the child for all of its quirks, giggles, dents, and bruises. And there sets in a yearning for being closer than is possible, now that the distance between the two of you has granted you this perspective, this clear vision.

This yearning kicks its heels deep into you and will stay with you always, making you feel that you can never hold your child closely enough, that you will never look at her face long enough, that you can never spend enough time with her, even if you are together all day. This, I think, is love. Love seems to require separation. Or there can be no object and agent, two distinct beings.

And how did this entire cycle begin? I imagine that the creative force, I call God, in a courageous and desperate act, threw itself into the wall of time so there would be a part of itself thrust forward that it did not completely know. It wanted perspective. It wanted to love. So in the darkness, we, that God propulsion, see the light of like spirits in others from a distance. And we fall in love.

We kindle the God-spark within us, strengthening our own light through the instrument of our talents, so that when we return to God at the end of our time here on earth, God can welcome us. We can regard each other knowingly, and together, burn all the brighter.

Of course, in my experience, I have witnessed that all do not choose to travel towards the light, but rather, choose darkness in its many manifestations. This is a choice and it would seem, a necessary part of the formula. God must have known that you can only come to know something if part of it is unknown -- its choices. Perhaps God gave us freewill so it could come to know what another entity would do with the gift of creation. I imagine that God also wanted to see itself through another's perspective.

Maybe God just wanted to love. I look to myself and question why I want to create children. Thinking about it, I realize that most strongly, I want something to love. Also, I want the chance to witness what choices a child will make on its own.

I want to watch and see what this child will create in its lifetime, given the tools of my love, my help, its talents, the knowledge of the time, and its own imagination. I want to see myself through my child's eyes. For any of this to be possible, I know my child must be free. I know I'm leaving myself open to feel sadness, to disagree with some of its choices, to even feel rejection at some time -- but I want my child to be free.

For when the gift of love is freely offered to me from this child, whith whom I have trusted with all that I am, I know my heart will swell beyond capacity with joy. If I know this about myself, then I deduct upwards that I know God. I, a leaf on God's tree, have God's design within me.

Therefore, I believe that God is profoundly human and feels all the yearning of the heart that we suffer, but six-billion fold. Having shared the light of its soul with each being, God, I imagine is wallowing in the most profound, wistful sadness, teetering on ecstatic joy. The fluctuations of each human heart like a parent is felt, absorbed, taken in, caressed, walked the floor for, and cried over.

God is a yearning mother.

Are You a Candidate for Mother-of-the-Year?

Are you in the running for Mother-of-the-Year? Take the quiz below and see how you fare.

THE QUIZ:

1. Your two-year-old son darts into the middle of the street the second you turn your head to lock the car. You:

A) Run after him, scoop him up gently, and then sit him down on the curb and say, "Gregory, honey, that was a very, very, very, naughty thing to do. You may never run into the street again, that is dangerous. You might have been hit by a car my little pumpkin."

B) Run after him, scoop him up, give him a shock-value thump on the rump and then tell him to never run into the street again.

C) Run after him, give thump on rump, and then apologize to him 400 times while crying and searching for your therapist's phone number because you just hit your child and now you think you are the worst mother in the history of the Universe and should never have had a child in the first place.

2. Keeping ourselves healthy is hard enough, but with all the warnings about nutrition, organic vs. non-organic, and child obesity, a trip through the grocery store can be arduous at best. You:

A) Buy only organic foods; you read each label and are aware of the caloric content as well as the carbohydrate, cholesterol, fat, and sodium content. You are pleased to say that your children have never eaten anything made with refined sugar, processed wheat, chemical food colorings, food additives or preservatives, and as a matter of fact, they've never stepped foot into a commercial grocery store.

B) You make an effort to buy organic vegetables and meats whenever possible. You're aware of some labels, but quite frankly, you simply don't have the time, energy, or resources to devote your life to this matter.

C) You'd rather not discuss it; you just returned from McDonald's where you ate a Quarter Pounder with Cheese super-sized extra value meal and then proceeded to finish off the left over fries and chicken nuggets that your children left behind when they went to play in the ball pit.

3. Your daughter comes home from school and begs you to allow her friends to sleep over-just
this once-on a school night. You tell her no because she must get to sleep early on a school night. She gives way to a high-pitched why noooooooot? You:

A) Sit her down and explain, again, how children need plenty of rest on school nights and if her friends were to sleep over they would all stay up far too late talking and giggling and then would be too tired to function properly the next day; besides, you have to get up for work in the morning and you don't want a house full of children. However, you tell her that she can have 100 girls sleep over on Friday or Saturday night if she would like.

B) You tell her, "BECAUSE I SAID SO and don't ask again!"

C) Stick a chopstick through your eyeball because going with response (A) means having to listen to repeated whines of why not until you finally breakdown and say yes just to shut her up, and resorting to the (B) response means sounding just like your mother, so the chopstick it is.

4. Your seven-year-old son loses his first tooth. Before going to bed he writes a note to the Tooth Fairy requesting a pack of Yu-Gi-Oh! game cards just like the ones she gave to his friend Sam last week when he lost his tooth. You:

A) Didn't know the Tooth Fairy was now giving gifts, so you kiss him goodnight, throw your jacket on over your nightgown and drive all over the tri-state area looking for a 24-hour Toys 'R' Us, praying you find one, otherwise, your son will wake in the morning feeling as though the Tooth Fairy loves Sam more than him.

B) Feel badly, but stick to your guns and toss a few bucks under his pillow; you refuse to get caught up in this trend.

C) You ask your son which of his friends receive gifts from the Tooth Fairy, then you grab a sack of potatoes and shove one spud into the exhaust pipe of each car owned by a parent who changed the Tooth Fairy rules.

5. Your oldest daughter, Becky, is turning eight next week. You:

A) Plan a bowling party and invite her entire third grade class so no one in the class feels left out. The bowling alley charges you ten-dollars per child, which provides you with two-hours of bowling, shoes, balls, a party room, pizza, cake, and soda. You purchase party bags for each child and fill them with candy, games, puzzles, whistles, bubbles, stickers, miniature playing cards, twisty straws, and plastic rings. You cringe just a tad when the bill comes to $300.

B) Plan a disco dance party in your home. You borrow a disco ball, make tons of food, and plan hours of dancing and games. You refuse to give party bags because you believe children need to learn how to give a gift without expecting one in return.

C) Bang your head against your office wall for you know, no matter which party you choose, the birthday girl is still going to cry midway through the party.

6. Your teenager wears black and listens to Marilyn Manson. You:

A) Demand all Manson posters come off his bedroom wall; puzzle over how to play a CD backwards in order to see if Marilyn is one of those devil worshippers; and swear this music is the cause of society's downfall.

B) Do nothing. In your high school senior year, you had a Mohawk and wore sixteen safety pins in your ears.

C) Spend sleepless nights trying to remember when it was exactly that Yanni and Neil Diamond made into your CD collection and wonder whether this means you're middle-aged or a just a geek.

============================================
RESULTS:

Okay, here's the fun part. Count up your answers and see if you qualify as Mother-of-the-Year.

Mostly (A): Lordy, lordy, I'm glad I'm not the only one who's allowed mainstream culture and pop
psychology to bamboozle me into thinking and behaving as though I am the offspring of a Stepford
Wife.

Mostly (B): Liar, liar, your pants are on fire! Come on, at least once, you've been a weenie and
second-guessed yourself or went with popular opinion.

Mostly (C): Yes, yes, I know. Parenting sure has a way of making our thoughts and emotions go
helter-skelter. But wouldn't it be fun to really use those potatoes?

So you're not Mother-of-the-Year material? Let's just call each other even and admit that we're all
doing the best that we can.

*********************************************
2003 Susan Krushenick

When Susan Krushenick was pregnant with her first child, she spent every second of every day fantasizing about how perfect a mother she would be, so perfect in fact, she thought books would be written about her and documentaries be made. Then she gave birth.

Susan graduated from Vermont College in June 2002. Recently, she was selected to participate in the Vermont Artist's Week residency program, which is sponsored by the Vermont Studio Center. This is her first published essay.

Silences and Motherhood

By Linda MacKillop

"Get a good education so you can take care of yourself," was what my mother told me when her own marriage ended after 19 years, and she found herself starting over. "You'll go to college no matter what, because that an experience I wouldn't want you to miss," she used to say to me. Her words programmed me into thinking about getting an education first and foremost.

Encouraging children to get an education is great advice, but she never said that motherhood was an experience she wouldn't want me to miss. Parenting was never presented as a prize to be sought. Instead, there were heavy silences and gaps about the experience of raising a child -- silences that gave way to my own misled perspective of the job -- leaving me thinking it was a pretty mundane event.

When I was in my teens, my maternal grandmother, Nina, help up a pearl necklace to me. "And someday this necklace will be for your daughter."

"Oh, that will be nice," I responded, completely oblivious to the implication and weight of passing something of value down from one generation to the another. At the time, I was also oblivious to the fact that this was one of the few verbal messages spoken to me about motherhood.

Knowing my mother's and grandmother's difficult journeys, I understood their emphatic and proud feelings of seeing me complete college. But in their efforts to see that I got an education they missed out on, they neglected to speak of motherhood as an experience laden with riches. Instead, parenting seemed to be a mere afterthought. My family neglected to describe to me the indescribable love a mother experiences for a child.

I had to wonder if motherhood had cost them too much, and if so, what? Was it the loss of identity, lack of fulfillment, the stifling of a dream, or the disappointment of an expectation? Or maybe it was all of the above.

I wondered if I had been part of the disappointment.

Yet, here I am with four teenage sons, loving the role of mother, feeling the womenin my family missed so many joys for themselves, feeling they missed so many messages and lessons that could have been passed down to another generation. Sometimes I think that I've made quite a big jump into a love affair with motherhood, considering my poor preparation. Other times, the jump doesn't seem really all that far.

When my first son, Kyle, came home from the hospital, my mother flew up from Florida to see him. When she arrived at my apartment, Kyle as lying on our bed covered with an afghan. Dumping her luggage in the middle of the floor, and forgetting to even take off her coat, my mother approached her new grandson with trembling hands and voice, and teary eyes.

"Oh, my goodness, this is him." She reached for Kyle, clutching him to her chest.

I was stunned at her reaction. I rarely saw her react emotionally about anything. She never spoke tender words to my siblings or me. And yet, here she was aweed at the arrival of her grandson.

In those days after my son's arrival, both my grandmothers responded to meeting him in a similar manner. Both women left their husbands in the dust as they raced to where the baby waited in the room. Each of these meetings seemed to combine my grandmothers' own memories of being passed their newborn baby, with the lifetime of experiences that reminded them of how quickly a child would fly from their arms. I had to wonder what had been said to them that caused them to pass down such muddled messages about children and motherhood.

All the women in my family seem to wrestle with some form of private demons. When I look at their lives in terms of motherhood, they said to me that children never fill your most vacant places. Have reasonable expectations. The love of a child is a wonderful gift -- but it's a gift that doesn't have the power to scare away our darkest nights.

Maybe these experiences hover over a newborns arrival -- tarnishing, staining, and diminishing joy. In the midst of the sterile, safe environment where a new infant is enfolded, wrapped, and held, there is another presence -- the lurking of potential heartache, that eyes the family, and waits for just the right moment to pounce.

I've learned that we need to approach parenting with eyes wide open, accepting the fact that some of our parenting years may not meet our expectations. In fact, our children may not meet our expectations. Some our our children may turn away from us, some may reject us our teachings, some will fail school, or have troubled friends, or be a troubled friend. Some will visit a police station, and we'll only get the phone call. Some will die.

My expectations about life and parenthood bean to take shape as I struggled to find my niche in the many roles of life. I thought about my grandmothers and mother's expectations about parenthood. They may have welcomed their experiences of motherhood, thinking it would lead to fulfillment, meet their needs for love and security, or just meet their needs period.

Parenting doesn't meet our needs, though. It doesn't fill our deepest loneliness. In fact, it can often add loneliness because we're isolated from people during the caretaking of a child. A young mother's time and schedule molds with naptimes, quarantine times with sick children, mealtimes, and bedtimes.

We sit home while our childless friends go out to lunch and dinner. They soar in their jobs to places we'll never be able to go. They travel, dropping everything at the spur of a moment for an adventure. We say, "No, I don't think that will work for me," instead spending an evening at the bed of a sleeping child's sickbed, watching them by the glow of a nightlight, while peace settles on them for the evening.

Soon after my son was born, one of my grandfathers entered a nursing home with early stage Alzheimer's. I would go to visit him often and always brought my son. How the other Alzheimer's patients responded to my small child was both telling and tragic. Here were elderly patients in a fog of dementia, pacing floors, talking to themselves, oblivious to people around them. They mechanically and rhythmically rocked, talked, hummed, and tapped. But the only thing that broke this trance-like behavior - was the appearance of a child.

I would walk down the halls and they seemed to sense the very presence of a child -- turning from their doorways, coming out of hallways, and calling to us: "Baby! Baby! Come to Mommy. Come to Mommy!" Their arms would reach for the baby. And sometimes someone would begin to follow me. Other times a woman would have tears in her eyes as she called, "It's me, Grandma."

Sometimes they would rock their arms as I passed, vicariously holding him -- remembering (so obviously remembering) what had touched them most deeply in their past. I knew they were back with their own children in their minds, remembering the touch and feel and unique infant scent they had experienced so long ago.

Their reactions caused me to look at this experience that is so profound and ingrained in our souls that it can transcend sickness and mental disorders, bringing people back from a foggy, diseased world to remember. But if it is as deep and life-changing, so personal and meaningful a moment above all others, we should talk about it that way, instead of giving way to silent messages where another generation can read falsely between the lines.

I wish my own mother had spoken in those terms.

Loss

By the time I became pregnant for the second time, we had been trying for a year. My firstborn son was three-years-old. I became pregnant almost instantly with my first child so we were surprised and confused by how long it took for this next pregnancy to happen.

I knew I was pregnant at the first possible moment. I proceeded to the bathroom with my early pregnancy test and a good feeling. I emerged with a smile and a litany of questions and fantasies. Was this a boy or a girl? How would my older son adjust? Was I really ready for a second child? Could we all cram into this NYC-sized two bedroom apartment? Would my marriage change?

My husband was equally excited and relieved that after a year of trying, we had met with success. For that day and the next and the next I would look down at my abdomen and smile. No one else knew or could tell by looking at me, but I knew. Having been through this before, I was aware of all the drama and excitement that was to come and I would smile spontaneously out of anticipation of it all.

I made an appointment with my OB right away. He was a new physician to me and had recently taken over the practice of my much beloved OB/GYN who had delivered my first child. He examined me, drew blood to confirm the pregnancy, and sent me on my way with vitamins and a follow-up appointment.

Children break your heart. That never made sense to me until I gave birth to my son Zachary. The intensity of my love for him was rivaled only by my sense of powerlessness over his ultimate fate. To have so much responsibility for, yet so little control over another human being, is devastating to me on a daily basis. This period of pregnancy, though fraught with its own fears and concerns, seemed like a time of safety. A time when, though things can and do go wrong, the focus is on all that is growing, developing, and possible.

I made my second OB appointment and all seemed well. I had none of the morning sickness that plagued me daily during my first pregnancy. In fact, I didn't feel different at all. Perhaps this had all become old hat to me. My days were focused on my older son, my job, and I realized I was not as attuned to this pregnancy as my first. I have heard that is the case with second pregnancies. An older child needs your attention so there is less room for the pregnant daydreaming my childless pregnancy allowed.

I went to work early one day to allow myself the opportunity to check out the Pumpkin Maternity catalog. I certainly couldn't afford this chic attire but I experienced great pleasure from imagining myself in leather boot cut maternity pants. And then, I felt it. Not so much a gush but a trickle. A trickle that didn't stop. I walked gingerly to the ladies room, fearful, and confirmed what I knew. I called my OB and made it to his nearby office in 20 minutes. The examination, the internal monitor, his comment that he was able to hear a heartbeat, all seemed unreal to me. I was detached and attuned only to my experience that this would soon be over. The direction became acutely clear to me.

My OB sent me home stating the bleeding may stop and the episode could resolve without complication or it may not stop and proceed to a miscarriage. There was nothing he would do or could do at this early stage.

"Sometimes this happens because there is an abnormality and this is the body's way of processing it."

I went home and for hours moved as little as possible. The bleeding continued sporadically until I felt a substantial gush and I realized that was it. I called my OB and he sent me to the delivery unit at the hospital as it was after hours. This was where my first son was born and the familiarity of it was comforting. The fetal monitor confirmed the miscarriage. My OB offered his awkward condolences and after about ninety minutes, I was in a cab back home.

I got right into bed and my three-year-old climbed in next to me. My husband brought me tea and eventually the three of us drifted off to sleep. I awoke at about 3:00 am. and looked over at my son and husband both still deeply asleep. I went out to the living room and said good-bye formally to this entity that had shared my life for what was then only several weeks but continues on to this day.

******************************************
Copyright 2003 Regina Walker

Regina Walker is a regular contributing writer to The Philosophical Mother. You can read her other essays, "Fear and Self-Loathing at Gymboree," "Different Theories," and "Brooding" or by visiting The Philosophical Vault.

A Mother's Daze

In May 1996, I was five-months pregnant with my first child when I celebrated my first official Mother's Day. Granted I wasn't technically a mother yet, but I've always been impatient, and besides I felt like a mother. That first Mother's Day was all about me and how special I felt because of my ability to create life.

Seven years later, I don't think I'm all that special. And instead of thinking about myself, I find myself thinking about the mothers who have faced intense tragedy and hardship this year. I think about Laci Peterson, who anticipated motherhood, and yet would never hold her baby in her arms. I think about Lori Piestewa, the first woman to die in combat in Iraq; a 23-year-old single-mother who won't be getting flowers this Mother's Day. I think about all of the mothers who had to say goodbye to their children as they shipped off to war; and those who had to receive the most heart-wrenching news in the world -- that their children would not be coming home from Iraq. I think about the Iraqi civilian casualties, and wonder about the children that have been maimed or left motherless by this war.

I realize now that being a mother is more than just about giving life. It is about being brave enough to face the daily and continuous struggles with life, death, heartache, love, pain, pleasure, disaster, and whatever else comes along to threaten your brood. And ultimately, it is about embracing the unknown and loving and nurturing despite all of your fear and doubt. Motherhood is a courageous act.

So enjoy your over-priced card, your lovely roses, your high-calorie chocolates, your flashy bracelet, or whatever else you receive this Mother's Day. Put your feet up and take a break. You've earned it. We all have.

******************
Copyright 2003 Lizbeth Finn-Arnold