Confessions of an Amateur Mom

Before I had Reed, I wondered what motherhood would be like. I imagined going on walks, having tea parties, playing dress up, following a stumbling toddler around in the park, baking cookies, and receiving daily hugs from a pudgy armed midget, saying, “I love you, Mommy.” The times when I babysat someone else’s kid, I always had the comfort of knowing it would be different with my own. I would know what I was doing, right?

While I DO occasionally get a pudgy-armed hug, more often I get half eaten eggs and the daily exercise of finding all my things which have so cunningly been misplaced. Occasionally, i’m force fed cold macaroni, even if I have politely and vehemently refused. It turns out motherhood is not the most glamorous thing in the world, much like pregnancy. Once it’s actually you and you’re no longer just staring admiringly at that precious baby or the cute expecting mom, you realize why people start aging the second they become parents.

I distinctly remember talking to a friend when Reed was about three months old. Her son had just started walking and she was describing her typical day to me. “But surely it’s easier than a little baby right? I mean, isn’t he more independent now and don’t you have more time to get things done?” She looked at me with the same polite look you would if you were about to try to convey an abstract concept to an english beginner. Then I talked to parents of teen agers and wondered the same thing. “Doesn’t it get easier when you can talk to your kids and they can actually respond? Isn’t it easier when you can reason with them?” Same polite look. I have learned not to ask. The safest assumption is that there will always be easier and harder trade offs and that it will become generally harder until that dreadful day when Reed’s hero becomes a stupid boy instead of me.

I have to be honest, as we’ve gotten closer and closer to the ubiquitous terrible two’s, I’ve had do remind myself a lot that I only get one shot at this. As she demands more and more of me, it seems we’re farther than ever from some kind of reciprocal relationship in which I do something, like eat a disgusting leftover egg yolk or change a particularly epic diaper or get up before 6 to make breakfast after a sleepless night, and get a kiss and a “thank you”. A few times, unfortunately, I have lost sight of our numbered days with Reed as a toddler. The most recent was on our trip home from South Africa. Our flight left at midnight, arrived at 4am and she didn’t sleep at all on the plane. When we finally got to our hotel in Dar after a sleepless night for us all, it was a little after six. She slept for 45 minutes and then laid in bed, pulling back my bra strap as hard as she could before letting it snap on my back, which she did over and over. I finally sat up, grasped her shoulders, and said, “You BETTER take INCREDIBLY good care of me when i’m old, young lady!” Our first week back in Mtwara was rough. She was adjusting to the heat again and to the fact that we were no longer on vacation and couldn’t both give her 100% attention all the time. She wanted to be held all the time, wouldn’t nap, and slept terribly at night. Looking back, I’m positive much of that was stress she sensed in me. I felt guilty for my feelings towards her, especially because her adjustment was so understandable.

One afternoon, when I was trying to get her to take a nap, it occurred to me that perhaps all this guilt I felt was an over reaction. Love is complicated and fortunately, it is bigger than day to day moods or feelings. This is the case with every other relationship in my life that I would consider a loving one. I think I just never expected it to be the case with my own flesh and blood, that the day(s) would come when I just didn’t like her all that much. Surprisingly, admitting to myself that some days during the toddler months I might not like Reed all that much but believing that it’s ok to feel that way, I was a better mom. The following day I tried to read “Love You Forever” for nap time. It occurred to me then, as it does to all of us at one point i’m sure, the cruel irony that someday Reed would be doing some of these things for me, maybe with my gratitude and maybe not. She will someday take care of me but without the thrill of watching me develop and discover. She’ll be watching me as I un-become me. I held her a little tighter as she fell asleep, thought a little less about the dishes, and extinguished some of the anger I felt about her lack of gratitude. I reminded myself that the day will come when all I want is to rewind and follow her around for a day and clean up her messes and even, perhaps, crave egg yolks.

My own frustrations and journeying as a parent have made me marvel at the lack of consideration we so often give our parents as young adults. They spend our entire lives being completely consumed by us, reeling and losing sleep over every decision they make as they learn how the heck to be parents. Then one day we decide to go to college and somehow, in our infinite twisdom (teen wisdom) get the nerve to be hyper critical of their parenting as we uncover who we really are and all the ways they messed up to make us that way. As if that’s not bad enough, we get married and then they watch as our ultimate loyalty switches to someone we have known for a fragment of the time we have known them.

Mom and Dad, I thank you for the significant time you have poured into me and I apologize for my super twit college days when I was over critical of you. Thank you for eating my egg yolks and changing my disgusting diapers. Thanks for giving me space. Thanks for caring about me enough to spend weeks hunting for modest shorts that could still be cute. Thanks for being patient with me. If I could, I would rewind a bit and be more thankful and aware of how much of you thought of me ahead of yourselves.

And to Reed, my splendidly filthy, adorable rooster, I love you and yours are the only leftover egg yolks I would dream of eating. Forgive me when i’m short and cut me some slack when I crowd you and instruct you too much someday. I’m sorry for the negative things you’re bound to inherit from me but proud of the good things and prouder of the things you will be all on your own. If you ever call me, exasperated by your own child, I will listen patiently, just like my mom has, and remind you that you yourself were once unlikeable, though always lovable.

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