November 19, 2004

• On Being Mom

  
  

   

  
  

  Maybe, of the million life options in front of my eldest, someday she’ll be writing soppy homilies for Reader’s Digest on ‘My Soccer Mom.’  Hopefully I’ve given her sufficient fodder:  “Multitasking like the best of them, my mother worked a full day to support the family, bought my birthday presents on her lunch break, wrapped them while sitting in the stands watching my gymnastics lesson, and stayed up late writing my birthday note.”

  
  

   

  
  

  There are mothers – hundreds of millions, all over the world – who really do sacrifice for their children.  There are parents who die for their children.  And if that were ever required of me, I hope I would do it as instinctively as the next.  But the thing about being a middle-class American mother is that, frankly, it’s all about being incredibly selfish.

  
  

   

  
  

  For me, the most revelatory thing about having children is the internal psychological piece of it.  For the purposes, presumably, of continuing the species and all that, there’s a part of my brain that truly believes that my children are not just an extension of myself, but a superior extension of myself.  Back in the days of the sabertooth, that meant I’d leap out and distract the beast (or at worst give it the full meal of myself), while the kids had a chance to escape.  But here in my own fortunate fairyland of a comfortable wage, the family sedan, and suitable clothing for every season,  all this means is that the potential range of my own personal self-satisfaction index is extended three-fold (in both ways, up and down, of course – but since this is a soppy homily, let’s ignore the ‘down’ part).  Any praise given to my children is as pleasing as if it were given to me, any success they achieve as personally satisfying.

  
  

   

  
  

  I have always been a seriously Type A character, with the prickly need to be best at everything.  I have not only competed with my siblings, my classmates and my colleagues, but I’ve competed with my husband and my best friends.  It’s not a characteristic of which I’m proud, and my only excuse is that during the days of the sabertooth, my having a trophy shelf of sabers in the back of the cave might have been good for the clan, as well as for my own self-preservation.

  
  

   

  
  

  But my competitive streak is entirely absent vis-a-vis my children (well, not in relation to my children’s relation to other’s children; of course I think of my own as the Supreme Cream of the Crop – but again let’s focus on the positive, here).  I can watch my eldest cartwheel across the floor, twirl around the bars, and flawlessly execute the balance beam, wearing an extremely expensive new Danskin – all things I could never do, in clothing I never possessed – and feel absolutely, completely, and only, deeply proud and satisfied.

  
  

   

  
  

  There are frightening ramifications of this, such as the intimation of my internal anguish when this piece-of-me seriously rebels against me.  Sometimes I wonder whether the whole ‘teen thing’ isn’t so much the misbehavior of the child, but of the adult parent, who's caught in that sudden realization that the child is, in fact, an entirely separate, and separate-thinking, entity.  Or what of the bewilderment when they leave home entirely?  I never really feared the ‘empty nest’ syndrome, believing myself fully equipped with a thousand alternatives to the way I’m spending my time at any given moment …. but maybe, after all, the loss of two parts of myself will be more than temporarily wrenching.  However, focusing again on the ‘now,’ and the positive:

  
  

   

  
  

  There’s little in life more satisfactory than being the mother of a new-minted seven-year-old, and her little sister too.

  • 7:02 am
  • 16 Comments