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Sparkle (1)
Eighteen years ago this month, my first child arrived six weeks ahead of schedule. While he was hooked up to tubes and toasting away in the ICU’s isolette, I spent those first days as a mother praying for him and reading Annie Lamott’s memoir, Operating Instructions. Between the laughter and the tears, I was hoping to find that elusive “how-to” manual for mothering.
Well, my first born is heading off to college this fall and I am still looking for my very own set of operating instructions. Not the ones that will tell me all the things they think I need to do; I want the ones that help me navigate the uncharted territory of my own heart.
Back then, before the Internet and mommy blogs, we only had two sources for information: books (written by experts) and our mothers (who were clearly not). I read everything I could get my hands on. I learned a lot about what various experts believed I needed to do to be the best mother I could be. But, I rarely read anything about how it would feel to be a mother.
No one told me about the deep, surprising leonine protectiveness, the love so different from any felt before, the frustration and the constant sense of fear, the worry, the anger, the disappointment, the jealousy, the joy so profound it brings tears, the calm, the confusion, the guilt. I needed guidance for all of these unfamiliar feelings and the one person who could have helped me navigate this moonscape, my mother, was strangely silent.
My Norwegian mother married my American father at the age of nineteen. She gave birth to me at the age of twenty. She had my brother two years later, and my sister just before she turned thirty. To my mother, biology was destiny and she fulfilled it accordingly.
She worked hard to be a good mother. She made us lunches that included surprises and sang songs and painted our rooms. She was affectionate and funny and optimistic. To my mother, the glass was always half full.
But it wasn’t easy. She had no family nearby to offer support or relief or guidance. My mother is not a complainer by nature. She believed it was up to her to find her way, and she did.
As I grew up, my mother made it clear she expected me to go to college (unlike her) and have a career (unlike her). “Make your own way,” she encouraged. “Earn your own money.” Our discussions always focused on work and careers, and later marriages. Motherhood? Not so much.
When I gave birth to my son, and then later my two other children, my mother kindly shared all of her tricks. How to prevent diaper rash, how to calm a crying baby, how to deal with teething, how to deal with sibling rivalry. However, when I consider all the things my mother taught me, the one thing I wish she had been more open about was her own experience as a mother.
What did she love? What did she hate? What moved her to tears and bent her over with laughter? Did she wake in the middle of the night, tip-toe to our rooms, and stare at us as we slept in the moonlight, her heart beating with wonder? Did she bury her face in our pillows hoping to catch our lingering scent as we went off to camp and then, later, college. Did she cry at the thought that one day the one thing that brought her more joy and fulfillment would end, or rather change and evolve, leaving a nest so wide and empty a lifetime of tears couldn’t fill it?
My mother explains herself by saying, “Things are different now. Back then it wasn’t talked about because motherhood was just taken for granted.” The limited access to birth control and the lack of abortion as a real option meant that biology was destiny. Pondering the emotions of motherhood were, frankly, an effort in futility. “It was what it was,” she tells me.
But I know there is more to it than that. I am guessing, my immigrant mother struggled to reconcile her love of mothering and housewifery with the feminist expectations that pervaded our culture during my childhood years.
How could she admit that her greatest satisfaction came from cooking a gourmet meal, sewing her children’s Halloween costumes, or decorating our home when the world around
