Courage

Last Wednesday, Mason pushed my every button. It amazes me that even now my children can act as if I just came up with this whole “you have to get ready for school” business on a spontaneous whim. Like, I will remind them to go brush their teeth, and I am received with a primitive wail, a drop to the knees, and a “Whyyyyyyyyy do we have to brush our teeeeeeeeth?!” as if we haven’t done it for years now. They “forget” to pick up their backpacks, they “forget” to eat their breakfast until the minute we need to walk out the door (at which time they declare themselves “starving” and whinge about how they might fall over from hunger if they must take a step more), and they always “forget” their socks and shoes. It’s like Groundhog Day every day — they never seem better prepared for the process than they were the day before.

Mason, at age seven, adds a layer of attitude to that selective ignorance, and he gives it to me liberally. He ignores me, he backtalks me, he leads the others like Lost Boys into the Land of Naughtiness. Wednesday was unremarkable in that it was checkered with me having to remind them many times to do each and every step of the morning process, but for whatever reason, I was stressed and at the end of my fuse even more than usual. When I finally herded all three boys upstairs for the dreaded Brushing of the Teeth, Mason ushered Ben, age two, aside and started urging him to throw toys down the stairs instead of following me for his brushing.

Well, that did it. We’ve had maybe four thousand speeches in this household about the stairs: Don’t Play on the Stairs, Don’t Throw Things Down the Stairs, Don’t Show Your Little Brother Anything Having to Do with Standing at the Top of the Stairs. It’s a common theme, as I am pretty sure we are due for at least one tumble-down-the-stairs incident any time now. When Mason started chucking random toys down the stairwell gleefully and encouraged his littlest brother to follow suit, he chucked my last nerve down the stairs with the toys.

I screamed at him. I never, ever thought I would scream at my children. I certainly never thought, when I slept for sixteen weeks in a La-Z-Boy using my nipples as pacifiers for a wailing and inconsolable baby because I loved him just that desperately much, that I would find myself holding that same baby by his pointy, gangly shoulder blades and scream at him like some wild-haired banshee. “What have I told you about the stairs?!” I screeched, even in the moment wondering when I became Mommie Dearest. But I couldn’t stop. I was so overtaken by my everything that I just completely lost it. I had dropped my emotional basket.

He just laughed nervously back, refusing to show me any real fear or remorse, never answering my question. I screamed until I couldn’t scream anymore, until my throat burned and my voice became hoarse from the effort, and we picked ourselves up, both exhausted, and the four of us walked quietly to the car and left for the school.

I was a broken woman. The shame and the guilt and the frustration hunched my back and burned in the back of my throat like bile.

The boys had school chapel that day. Charlie, the Kindergartner, wanted me to come to chapel so he could sit with me and Ben instead of his teachers. But Ben was unusually feisty, and I was worried we wouldn’t make it through the ceremony without a scene. I asked Charlie if I could just drop him off that one day and skip chapel instead. He started to cry. Resigned, I decided to walk over and give Mason a conciliatory hug where he sat with his class in the pews, just in case I had to leave in a hurry mid-service. When I did, his teacher caught my eye. “We had a rough morning,” I whispered in explanation. She pulled me aside. “I have to tell you,” she said under her breath, “he must save it for you. He’s always perfectly behaved in class. He’ll just sit and read at his desk with chaos going on around him.”

I know she meant her words to make me feel better, but instead, it just unhooked the latch to the dam. I burst into tears, standing right there in the middle of the church, my toddler hurtling his small body over the tops of the pews, my six-year-old looking around for me anxiously. Other parents glanced over and caught my wet eyes. I couldn’t stop crying. I just looked at his teacher with a weak smile and said, “He’s just… hard on me. I just don’t know how to parent him sometimes.” I bowed my head, grabbed Ben, and scrambled back to the Kindergarten section to take my seat with Charlie, embarrassed by my uncontrollable tears.

My turmoil that morning was not about teeth-brushing or hurling toys down the stairs. It was about the pile-on of the whole motherhood thing — the combination of feeling like nothing I say is ever catalogued or imbued with any substance, that I never feel like my children are safe, that life is about me constantly running lists in my head (will they have more cavities? are their uniform shirts clean? is the homework done? will they eat the lunches I made? will they fall down the stairs when I am not looking? will I step on a toy on my way down the stairs and trip and drop the toddler? will we be late… again?) and waiting for the other shoe to drop. I keep wondering when I will feel like I get to be on the same team as my children, when I don’t have to be the pain in the neck, nagging mom. When I get to drop the title of Fun Sponge of the Universe. When I get to lay this weight down, just for a minute. Because it is heavy.

Every day, I never, ever feel like I did it perfectly. Or even close. I wonder how much I am screwing them up and how much better could I be doing as a mother. And on a day when I break and scream at my seven-year-old firstborn child, I see just how very much I can screw up, how much damage I can do. I knew for sure I that I had failed that morning as spectacularly as I could have failed. It almost felt liberating.

After chapel, a friend of mine — another mom — texted me. “Are you okay?” the text asked. I called her. I cried. We agreed: this motherhood thing? Not for sissies.

That’s the truth. Being a mother takes a hell of a lot of courage. That doesn’t seem right, because it’s not like pre-mama me said, “I am going to be really brave and… have a baby!” I had no idea. I blindly (some would say stupidly) walked into motherhood. I thought it would be fun — almost indulgent. Some days — most days — are fun or indulgent in some way. But every day takes courage, whether I knew it or not when I signed on, because I have three pieces of my beating heart walking around outside my body — three little guys who could break my heart into a thousand, trillion pieces at the drop of a hat — and nothing is guaranteed. Every day is an adventure, and some days, like last Wednesday, are bonafide FAILS. The kids hurt themselves, they are hurt by others, they could hurt someone else, they are out and about in a world I don’t trust. They might grow up and break my heart over and over, as teenagers and beyond. It doesn’t matter how devotedly I do this mother thing, how hard I work, how much sweat and blood and tears I divulge; I cannot control them, I cannot control their fates. All I can control is how much I love them and how much I show it.

So many mothers are going through so many tragic, heartbreaking journeys right this very moment. They are facing health issues of their own, or their spouses’, or their children’s. They are worrying about money, about social issues, about the future. Their courage is worn right on their faces. But it doesn’t matter if we are going through something monumental or something mundane. Motherhood takes courage. It’s so. stupid. hard. Some days it takes courage just to throw my leg over the side of the bed and climb out, and I am not dealing with any of those special hurdles — just the run-of-the-mill, vanilla, First World, everyday hurdles. Even so, some days I just fail, and the worst part is, I know those days will happen. I know it, and I have to do it anyway.

It’s so stupid hard. But it’s all that matters. Don’t fool yourselves — we mothers, we’re made of strong stuff. Strong, imperfect stuff. I hope, and I have faith, that will be enough.