Editors Note: I originally wrote this post over the weekend. I’ve thought a lot about it since and well, unlike what I say in the first paragraph, this is still selfish. Possibly even more so than the last one. Alas, it’s Thursday and I need to put a post up. This one is pretty much ready to go, so here you are. Judge if you want or simply enjoy. Whatever. We’ll be back to yoga moves and cookie recipes next week.
Last week I wrote the post about why being a stay at home mom is rough. The comments were selfish; it’s why I think it would be bad for ME. But more important is my fear of how being at home all the time will/would affect my relationship with Eggroll. Why? Because it totally screwed up my mom and me.
Before I was born, my mom was managing a store her father owned. I was born a month early, on the day she quit work to prepare for my arrival (and the day she quit smoking… looks like I was Phoebe’s alter ego in utero). She stayed at home with me until I started kindergarten. Somewhere in there she got an interior decorating degree from Mount Mary pretty much just for something to do and to get me around other kids. As a trained teacher, she was hoping to get back to that, but wasn’t hired by MPS until I was five and then it was just as a sub. I can still remember the day, a year earlier, when she got the piece of mail rejecting her from that year’s class of new teachers. She cried and cried and I couldn’t figure out why she wouldn’t want to be at home and play with me all day.
I must have been four since I remember this. If you do the math (5 days a week for 50 weeks (allowing for my dad’s vacation days) for four years), that means she made over 1000 pb sandwich, green beans, and milk lunches, watched Sesame Street and Days of Our Lives in the afternoon 1000 times and walked through Brookfield Square every Wednesday morning 250 plus go ’rounds. Oh, the poor thing. No wonder she was going stir crazy. (We’ll ignore the whiny, demanding, only child personality of the kid she was watching, but I’m sure that added to her angst.)
She did all this with smile and grace and besides a few moments of weakness, she seemed up to the task. How was she rewarded? By me bouncing off the walls with joy and excitement when she said the best two words to my little ears: “Daddy’s home!”
I remember bounding towards the door and throwing myself at him. He would always play because he hadn’t been with me the whole damn day and only had to keep interested for a couple of hours before my bedtime. Then I would go to sleep and he’d be able to watch TV or play on the Commodore 64 or do whatever else grown-ups did back then.
I loved this time with dad and as we all know, my relationship with him only got better and better as the years went on. I didn’t have a bad relationship with my mom per say (besides the middle school years, but those sucked for everyone), but it never matched what I shared with pops.
By the time dad was gone and mom no longer had to compete for my attention, the rest of life had also beaten her down. No one – not me, not her students, not her colleagues, not her own mother – had shown her the gratitude necessary to keep up that front while we all bounded off in other directions to play while she stayed back at her perch. She still smiled and tried her best, but a woman can only keep that up for so long before turning to other vices.
Enter today. The day that I write this with my baby sleeping in the Bjorn here on my chest and my mom up in heaven not able to tell me how things really went down. She can’t tell me how she got through these exact same struggles I’m dealing with – how do I be a mom? What am I doing professionally? How do I fill my day without going crazy? How do I entertain Eggroll after eight hours without a nap? How do I continue to be a good wife? How do I get my body back? How do I not resent my husband if he becomes the hero to my child? How do I ensure my relationship with Eggroll is just as good as their’s?
Blah! It’s enough to make one talk to the skies in hopes that her mom may talk back. In fact, she did. About four months ago I received a package from the lady that bought mom’s house in Texas. In it were pictures that must have been lost in a corner somewhere and a story dad wrote in November 1980 about what it was like to be a new dad. (Seriously. It was his language and typewriter paper. He was absolutely the author.) Also, the owner wrote her own note. You can choose to believe it or not, but included in her story was something she said mom wanted to tell me:
“She wanted to make sure you know that she was sorry for some things and you would know what they were and she loved you. … She also wanted you to know that you are strong, she wished she was more like you, she was very proud of you and you will always be successful. In you she saw the woman she always wanted to be.”
I mean… Come on.
I knew mom loved me, but since she was always second in line behind dad or his memory, she didn’t get much of a chance to tell me these things live. This lady might be totally punchy, but I really don’t care. This is exactly what I needed to hear as I ventured into 2014, the year I would become a mom. I need to make sure I get those same points across to Eggroll when I can tell them to her face, not through a faceless stranger.
I truly think my relationship with Eggroll will be better if we’re not together all day. If some days Randy or a babysitter gets to yell “mommy’s home” to much scampering and smiles, we might all turn out for the better. One of my friends commented last week that she doesn’t know any parent of teenagers who wishes they were working when the kids were little. I think my mom would disagree with that comment. And I might, too. Only time will tell.
(P.S. Were there a MULTITUDE of reasons that Margo + Padre > Toonie + Mom? Absolutely. Those will need to be resolved at another time and blog post, but for now this is my issue.)
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