Mother’s Day

I was tired the next day, when the night before I slept on the bathroom floor with my younger one, holding her hair, cleaning the toilet - the floor, dozing on the cold tile beside her. Her lack of aim into a bowl by her bed brought us and kept us there. That she was 17 didn’t change from the all the other times before.

You rely on Google for answers when you’re alone at midnight, there are lists of remedies and it's a roulette in choosing which to try first - which one feels the most in tune to your motherly senses...It’s funny how it works, we often have a way of knowing what we need to know in order to get through our lives….but there is no mom-school…there is only navigating the conversations, fighting moments, the amazingly calm and happy ones, the ones where all hell is breaking loose. Do you call 911? Or do you just pray? Decision making at it’s finest, a middle of the night call to your mother or sister - sometimes someone else’s mother or sister.

It's the holding of your breath at night, waiting for the footsteps to creep down for the hundredth time, asking for water, a yogurt, a kiss. It’s the patience in sitting with a small little person at 11pm, who is perched on the toilet, asking big life questions, pretending to pee - just to be with you. It’s the showing up in your bed in the middle of the night for a snuggle, and then walking them sleepily back after a little fill, unsure of who needed it the most just then.

Not to negate the challenges of “regular” motherhood (the kind where you have a partner by your side in the same dwelling), but single motherhood is a whole ‘nother animal. It’s seldom organized, never cute or spotless, and when you don’t have someone to hand it off to, take over while you are hiding and losing it in the laundry room, it’s the loneliest thing ever.

You find yourself sleeping curled up in your child's crib to quiet them, or sprawled on the bathroom floor - taking turns throwing up from the same stomach bug, or later, discussing birth control, dating and heartache, scary life plans. The repeated gut punch of single parenting can scream very loudly, "I'm all alone in this!"

Sure, there's the ex, their father, down the road a ways, who takes them on vacation every weekend…the hair cuts, hissy fits, doctor's appointments, injuries and stitches, the figuring out of shin guards for soccer and goggles for swim - the comfort when so-n-so-was-mean-to-me-at-school-today…is left up to you.

When you think you’re heading out the door with all your shit together….but…you just aren’t...you forget permission slips, to put fruit in their lunch, and the braid in their hair that you said “was fine” really wasn’t. And usually, yearly, it slips your mind that it was picture day - the pony tail already had become a sad-side-pony-tail and they wear their favorite over-worn faded cartoon character t-shirt for their portrait - again.

A few years ago it was my kids’ “every Sunday - day” with their dad, no matter it was Mother’s Day. Yes, they spent Mother’s Day with their dad more often than not. I took off for a walk around our island that morning, passed kids mowing lawns, moms standing on porches holding a mimosa, dads weeding garden beds. The line out the door of the neighborhood breakfast place was full of families going out to eat, the kids sitting at their feet, patiently waiting. Mom friends posted on social media that they were going on getaways and to spas, and all I could think was “I am SO glad I don’t have a lawn.”

We celebrated our Mother’s Day on Mondays, with a picnic blanket, on the living room floor, watching American Idol, eating snacks for dinner, bowls of chocolate chips for dessert. I showed them how to make taffy with marshmallows between their fingers.

There’s the “alone parenting” - with a place for your kids to be dropped off every other weekend so you have the break that parents actually could all use once in a while - time to basically do all the necessary things, which would include showering and shaving, sleeping, cleaning, scraping out the dead produce and leftovers from the fridge - grocery shopping in twenty minutes, alone, all the while holding a coffee, nobody begging for sugar cereal or those drinkable yogurts that stain your couch.

And then there’s the co-parenting. While some things may jive, you’ve got two separate households, opposing rules and a very different food pantry. When the kids come back, your sensibilities are thrown out and it’s ice cream sundaes for dinner and nobody has to clean up their room until the weekend. You’re really trying to rock it every day, it’s the push and pull between your dreams, guilt, inconsistencies, boundaries, and the ridiculous wanting for your kids to love you the most.

Whether it’s keeping the bathwater in the tub or wondering how you can be sure they don’t crack their skulls wide open while running through the house in their socks, you rarely rest. You’re alone in the frustration of bedtime - when you’ve repeatedly put them back “in” until bribery sets in, something they certainly don’t forget about in the morning when they wake up. Alone. It’s just you in the middle of the night, when you find yourself making a grilled cheese just before midnight for all three of you.

Of course there are moments of ease, triumphs and laughs and miraculously, an immense amount of comfort that it is just you - and that in those moments, you don’t have to share your kids with anyone.

Now, in present day, your head screams, “This isn’t normal!” The in and out of the front door, jiggling of car keys, social lives that keep them gone until tomorrow, their scrounging for dinner after work shifts, close to midnight - and 11am whining once they’ve risen, that there are no more avocados for avocado toast. And “Hey, who wants to make a run to Starbucks for an iced something with a shot of raspberry?” “Mom. Will you pay?”

Now, in present day, they have job shifts, concerts, dreams, heartache and fear.

Normal is now different. No routine. No expectations. It’s almost a surprise when you spend time with your kids - you adult-bribe them with lunch or takeout for dinner, to keep them there for a little bit, keep a shared calendar and schedule shopping dates - fit each other into each other’s lives, or more like, they fit Mom into theirs. Normal was routine dinner at 5, stories at 7, playing hooky on a rainy Friday, where a grim forecast was an exciting thing to look forward to because every meal would include bacon, the finale, breakfast for dinner. Settling in to “binge” recorded shows on the DVR, and the Parcheesi board on the floor, now that was normal.

In a matter of minutes, both of my daughters are gone, and folks, as much as I have prepared myself for this moment, prepared them, I am a mess - the deep down, guttural pain, the never ending thinking that I could have done better, screams loudly. I am telling you that letting go is breaking this “very proud of them Mom’s heart” into pieces. Truthfully, I don’t want them to stay, I don’t even want them to really come back unless they really want to, or unless they need me. The yin yang of feelings, really messes with this human being.

My wholeness has been them and it is ripping apart - there is quite a bit of sorrow in it, as we all head into Life 2.0.

Any mom facing this will agree that your life with your kids starts to flash before your eyes in bizarre memories and dreams of moments you have long forgotten.

When one of my girls was 10, she was in the dressing room while I tried on a dress and she casually stated: "You know, that looks like a dress only really skinny people wear..." She saw my horrified face as I ripped it off and then quickly added, "you know the really bony skinny kind of people."

There were times filled with persuasions to eat new foods, tactics, hiding vegetables, and then just flat out not trying. You want to eat all bread for dinner? Go for it. Nothing but the crispy cheese from the sandwich pan on the stove? Okay. A bowl of croutons, hold the salad? Alrighty then.

I’ll never forget though, one dinnertime, the triumph I felt for about 34 seconds, when my littler one exclaimed, "that actually smells kind of good" about our homemade macaroni and cheese (that had been made for the rest of us - because she “no-like”). I casually replied (full of hope), "you should try it MAYBE you'll like it."

She kept walking, tossing her last words of the evening over her shoulder, "MAYBE I'll throw up".

It’s strikes funny when your 20 year old comes to you and in the same sentence asks for a kitten, says she needs to order textbooks for the next semester, and then asks “Mom, is it weird say to yourself ‘I don’t have to feed the kids right now’ anymore?”

They need you differently, like, for gas money. They want you differently, like to throw out their perceptions of world problems and then walk away, leaving you in fear of their wellbeing. All the while the next moment they are chatting about something or other they are laughing too hard about to explain to you. And then the staying up till midnight talking about life plans that change every day, I’ll tell you folks, it throws you for a loop.

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You walk in the early mornings. Afternoons. In the dark at night - your eyes tear up at times and sometimes you’re actually crying. The waves of Life 2.0 are relentless, they bring relief and anxiety simultaneously, which is hard to define coherently. You imagine them wanting you again at some point, even if they don’t need you. You expect they’ll need you though, even if it’s for the very complicated great great grandmother’s chocolate cake that you never got quite right.

The grief of it all is quite something - your eye won’t quit twitching, hands fidget, so much that they need to be held down. The next moment you feel steady and proud, of them, and then strangely, of yourself.

So here you are, minutes away from an alternate life, realizing you’ve got to honor the transition, through memories, tears and pride, all the while sitting in a space of change in your mom-ness. Your purpose is changing, not leaving - they will call. They will return.

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Sometimes it’s like I dreamed them, with the quietness now around here. It’s bittersweet, confusing, and satisfying all at the same time.