Poetry & Prose

On Being a Mom by Anna Quindlen

Ang — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 02:51:45 +0000

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, have all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations --what they taught me, was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all.

Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2.

When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there some thing wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China . Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the, 'Remember-When- Mom-Did Hall of Fame.' The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pick up. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, 'What did you get wrong?'. (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get onto the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.

Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.

A Mother Because of Her

Ang — Thu, 01 May 2008 23:19:50 +0000

The joy I feel today is somehow mixed with pain,
A title once hers, now offered up for me to gain.
You see, I became a mother in a not so usual way,
At the loving hands of someone else, I celebrate today.

I am now called Mother, because she made it so;
She sacraficed her role with love, and let her baby go.
Now cards and flowers are mine, and happy wishes too;
Will you remember her as well, or will you have no clue?

She too is still a mother, even on this special day
Though no longer in her arms does her baby lay,
But forever in her heart remains a love so strong and pure
And as I enjoy this day, I remember I'm a mom because of her.

[Author Unknown]

How Can I Love Another?

Ang — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 02:49:49 +0000

This was passed along to me by my pal, Traci. It captures most beautifully that "how can I ever love another child the way I loved my first" feeling.

I walk along holding your almost 2-year-old hand, basking in the glow of our magical relationship. Suddenly I feel a kick from within, as if to remind me that our time alone is limited. And I wonder: How could I ever love another child as I love you? Then he is born, and I watch you. I watch the pain you feel at having to share me as you've never shared me before. I hear you telling me in your own way, "Please love only me." And I hear myself telling you in mine, "I can't," Knowing in fact, that I never can again. You cry. I cry with you. I almost see our new baby as an intruder on the precious relationship we once shared. A relationship we can never quite have again. But then, barely noticing, I find myself attached to that new being, and feeling almost guilty. I'm afraid to let you see me enjoying him — as though I am betraying you. But then I notice your resentment change, first to curiosity, then to protectiveness, finally to genuine affection. More days pass, and we are setting into a new routine. The memory of days with just the two of us is fading fast. But something else is replacing those wonderful times we shared, just us two. There are new times — only now, we are three. I watch the look between you grow, the way you look at each other, touch each other. I watch how he adores you — as I have for so long. I see how excited you are by each of his new accomplishments. And I begin to realize that I haven't taken something from you, I've given something to you. I notice that I am no longer afraid to share my love openly with both of you. I find that my love for each of you is as different as you are, but equally strong. And my question is finally answered, to my amazement. Yes, I can love another child as much as I love you — only differently. And although I realize that you may have to share my time, I now know you'll never share my love. There's enough of that for both of you — you each have your own supply. I love you — both. And I thank you both for blessing my life.

[Author Unknown]

The Woman Who Gave Birth To Our Child

Ang — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 00:24:13 +0000

I'm not sure where this little essay came from, but it describes perfectly how I feel about my boys' birthmother, Amy.

This versatility in the concept of "mother" has been enormously illuminating and liberating for me as I try to be a mother to our daughter. I now occupy a vast, uncharted, and unimagined territory of grief and human connection. Not a day passes when I do not think of or pray for the woman who gave birth to our child. At the visceral level I experience deep emotional, psychological, and spiritual bonds with her. I am moved by the heroic quality of her life: bearing, caring, giving in, and finally giving up. I long to know her, to tell her that I am her shadow sister who walks with her, and that I will keep her trust to my death. In this almost surreal relationship we have been knit together by a trust without any guarantees. Not faith or hope exactly, because no promise has been given. Merely the amazement of two distant and unlikely fates inextricably intertwined through one little life.

[Author Unknown]

A Poem for an Adopted Child

Ang — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 00:21:58 +0000

Once there were two women
Who never knew each other.
One you do not remember
The other you call mother.

Two different lives
shaped to make yours one.
One became your guiding star
The other became your sun.

The first gave you life
And the second taught you to live in it.
The first gave you a need for love
And the second was there to give it.

One gave you nationality
The other gave you a name.
One gave you the seed of talent
The other gave you an aim.

One gave you emotions
The other calmed your fears.
One saw your first sweet smile
The other dried your tears.

One gave you up -- it was all that she could do.
The other prayed for a child.
And God led her to you.

And now you ask me through the tears.
The age old questions through the years,
Heredity or Environment--
which are you a product:

Neither my darling -- neither
Just two different kinds of love.

[Author Unknown]