Mother

It's common to fear becoming your mother. It's so common as to be a cliche. I'm sure that part of it is a simple generation gap - nature's way of achieving balance by swinging the pendulum back and forth, each daughter resolving to mother differently. But then I'm sure too that everyone has their individual reasons. And I have mine.

Becoming a mother and, even more so, reading about motherhood has allowed me to a very large extent see my own mom with more grace and understanding than ever before. I do feel I have a clearer idea of the mother she was then, the mother she is now, and everything that went on in between. Essentially, I'm able to see her as a human being, nothing more and nothing less. I'm able to really get that, just by deciding to procreate, a woman is not obligated to become a saint, and in fact is completely incapable of doing so.

Still, as a role model and to some unknown extent a genetic influence, I still regard her with some anxiety and trepidation. It's not that she didn't care for us, it's not that she didn't love us, it's not even the yelling that seemed like such a plague at the time. It's the way, and I realize that this still sounds childish despite my claims to be enlightened, she made me - us - feel like a burden. I'm sure it comes as no surprise that I was a sensitive child, and the idea that my mother was sometimes sick of me was crushingly hurtful.

Now of course - children are a burden, at some times, in some ways. And I do understand that it's unrealistic to expect a parent to convincingly pretend unflagging enthusiasm in little children's games and needs, when the parent is tired as all parents eventually are, and when the parent is not receiving enough help from her spouse as my mother probably wasn't due to my parents' very traditional arrangement of housework/childcare/paid work.

But my mom would sometimes just totally check out. She would say something the effect that she was done being mommy for the day. And children take things literally, and as a sensitive child I took this as a profound rejection. Rationally I know that mothers need time to themselves, and I try not to overcompensate for my childhood injuries by doting on Miles overly much every minute of the day, but at the same time if I am sitting down with a book and leaving him to his own (supervised, of course) devices for a while it's hard for me not to feel a pang, sometimes a throbbing hammer, of guilt.

The real crux of the matter came when my parents decided to split up. It's impossible to know who I would have been if this hadn't happened, how my view of my mother would be different, how my memories of childhood and our relationship would be different - maybe I would see it all totally different and remember only how lovely she was when she was lovely. But what happened is carved in stone now. What really sent a dagger of resentment into my heart was not merely that she wanted to leave my dad, but that she wanted to leave us, the kids.

I have no idea why my mom ever let any of us hear this, and to this day I'm not sure who did besides me. If I can objectively lay blame on my mother, it's for this sin: letting me, or us, hear her say that she wanted to be done mothering. She wanted to resign her post and get a life - one that wasn't all about us. I can relate a little to feeling that way, if I imagine 20 years of being a full time stay at home mom, but I think we should have been protected from hearing it, because we were not capable of understanding it at the time. I was the oldest at 20, my brothers were 17 and 12, and my sister was only 3.

My mom said she wanted to move out and get an apartment. She wanted to leave us with my dad in the house. From a feminist perspective I can see the double standard in how hurt and furious this made me, when dads the world over have been doing that for years - but she was our mom. A stay at home mom. Our primary caregiver. It wasn't completely out of nowhere - she had been finding ways to distance herself from us for a few years and I can recall putting my baby sister to bed many, many nights as my mom had already clocked out and gone to chat online or watch TV. But still her wish was shocking and felt cruel. Were we so awful she didn't even want to be in the same house with us anymore? Kids whose parents divorce are often told it is not their fault, but for us... it kind of was.

For some years I felt my mom was a kind of monster, but I see now that she wasn't. Just tired, and careless of our feelings. For years I saw her as cold and couldn't remember her ever hugging or kissing us, or touching our hair, or saying she loved us. But I know that memory is, if nothing else, highly fallible.

Now that I have a baby I find myself mirroring her in strange and amazing ways. Songs that she sang bubble out of nowhere. Baby games that she played come to me with some kind of uncanny muscle memory. Not a few times have I been glad that my first child was a boy, because otherwise I think the feeling of walking in her footsteps would just be too eerie to be borne. It makes me feel, having a boy firstborn, that at least in that way I can stake out a separate identity as a mother. Not only that I won't feel exactly like her but that she won't see me, see us, as some kind of reincarnation - which would be smothering to me.

Now that I have a baby I never want him to feel rejected by me. Perhaps that's unavoidable. I can't be cheerful all the time. I also don't want to let this anxiety turn me into a permissive fool, or to let Miles feel unmoored by an inability on my part to draw a sensible line: I am always here for you, but sometimes I have to be here for me too. I just want him to always feel loved and accepted, always. I suppose that's the territory that every mother is trying to map out, and most of us will succeed imperfectly.