Say it with me: I’m a shitty mom.
No? Not into that? Doesn’t make you feel better? Because lately I’ve come to wonder what our group obsession is with telling each other what a good job we’re doing; what wonderful mothers we are. And then I show myself and others a little grace and realise, duh, it’s because this matters more than just about anything else we do. We don’t want to suck at it.
But guys. WE DO.
And we don’t. But the parts where we do suck–where we fall apart, and don’t have the answers, and are left heaving and hurting with heaving and hurting kids beside us? These parts are real and deserve attention. They deserve being called what they are. And what they are, are not our best moments. And I have a lot of them. And maybe shitty is too strong a word, and sucks doesn’t exactly foster conversation, but neither does hiding those dark moments and covering them up with pretty ones.
I’m tired, is what I’m saying. So if you’re tired, and feel weak, and need a place to sit without having to get your shirt dry-cleaned first and have a professional photographer gloss away the messy bits, then there is room over here.
Welcome. Let’s breathe.
The other night The Kid set off our house’s security alarm. Yep, surprise! WE HAVE A SECURITY ALARM! It was news to us too–not that we had one, exactly, because the control panel is right there on the wall, but being the renters we are and having been given no information about said alarm, we figured it was disarmed. That there was no danger of it being set off.
TK woke us from that reverie.
So it was that on a Friday evening at around 7 pm, in the dark autumn night when bath time should have been gearing up, a shrill electronic scream broke through the air on our quiet street. TK freaked out. Loud noises coupled with parental anxiety? TIME TO HIT THE ROOF. Nothing would assuage his fear; no amount of reassurance would calm him. So I did that thing they tell you to do if you want to be a good mom: you play the flight attendant when the plane is crashing and your kids are the passengers. You stay (fake being) calm. IT DIDN’T WORK. Not for TK, at least. Meanwhile, Little Brother bounced around like we had just kicked off a rave and it was the BEST, MOST EXCITING NIGHT EVER. The Husband fiddled with the control panel, then descended to the basement to fiddle with the fuse box, and I heard proclamations floating up the stairway that brought to mind the dad in A Christmas Story when he was working on the heater, so I made an executive decision. Maybe even a shitty one: I poured a short roadie of red (one inch, or 2.54 centimetres if you’re nasty) into a stemless glass, threw on some shoes, forgot my wallet, and told the kids we were going for a drive. LB bounced behind me and into his carseat, glee plastered across his face at this break in monotony, while that same break in monotony plastered terror over TK’s features. He reluctantly climbed into his booster, though, and we backed out of the driveway in time to meet one of our neighbours who was walking by to “check on us” (figure out what the hell was going on and why we couldn’t stop it). He graciously offered us a place to stay if we needed it, which I think was sincere and not code for “I’m going to have you kicked out of the country if this doesn’t cease in the next five minutes.”
And off we drove into the night.
As “Cherry Bomb” poured from the car’s speakers and LB sang Mickey Mouse songs in the backseat and TK asked the same thousand questions over and over and we drove circles around our neighbourhood, I thought about how wonderfully shitty I am at this whole “caring for others” thing. Even the film Bad Moms didn’t touch on the idea of chauffeuring your kids around with takeaway Shiraz in hand, but I thought that movie kind of sucked anyway because their lives were more funny than depressing and who believes that? Besides, LB was now giggling in the backseat and TK was visibly calming (or I was), and at the end of the day if you bring home two intact and somewhat happy children, I’d say that’s a success (#lowstandards).
The alarm eventually subsided once TH pulled the plug on nearly all our electricity. We had to throw out everything in the freezer and fridge (RIP, 2 bottles of champagne), but we survived. Success.
The boys are taking swim lessons and they are truly smashing it. They willingly jump in to their teacher and are both going underwater (LB’s submersions have been mostly accidental, but whatever) and they’re learning survival skills which is all encouraging, but my favourite development so far is how they cheer each other on. TK gets into the water first, and LB yells from the side, “Hooray! Yay, James!” and applauds as if he’s watching the Olympic finals. Then it’s LB’s turn, and James throws out a few “Yay Will, go”s before begging to ride the glass elevator. They are for each other, and it echoes LB’s utterances from his carseat on the night of the alarm: “It’s okay, James. It’s not scary.”
I tell him what a good brother he is, because that’s what you do. That’s what people want to hear, right? But the thing is, sometimes it is scary. Sometimes the thing that doesn’t bother you, or undo you, or leave you heaving and hurting on the floor beside your heaving and hurting children? Sometimes that’s the very thing that DOES do all that to someone else. We are all broken in different ways by different things. Some of us, ahem, get through a spinal surgery and hospital stay with their kid then almost lose their mind when he finally starts talking and won’t stop asking what every. word. means. Some moms have to leave their son’s room during bedtime because he won’t read his damn book like he knows he’s supposed to, and when those moms finally cool off and reenter the room and the son asks, “Mommy, why did you leave?” those moms say they nicest thing they can think of which is also true, and it sounds like, “I needed a break.”
Sometimes we need a break. And here’s what that can look like to me: we all want to hear we’re great at this, but what I think we really want, even more, is to know that in those moments when we’re not so great at it? When we, in fact, kind of suck at it? That we’re still loved, that there are people who won’t abandon or refuse to forgive us.
The boys talk to each other in the car now, and it is hilarious. They argue over the most ridiculous and non-existent crap, like whether the airport is closed and why people go to jail. Throw in a few made-up words and I feel like an Uber driver carting around a couple of drunks. It is wonderful. And, sometimes, when they reach a fever pitch and start whining and my eardrums bleed, it is shitty. But every Saturday, they cheer each other on. They emerge from the pool, and the car, and the alarms, and the days, intact and mostly happy. They are learning to take care of each other, as I am learning to take care of them. We are doing something you can’t be taught yet still have to learn: how to love, and how much life there is in admitting we have miles (or kilometres, if you’re nasty) still to go.