I didn’t post anything about Mother’s Day on social media this year. Couldn’t bring myself to do it. Didn’t have the energy. And that was only partly due to the hangover I was sporting on Sunday, which was due to an outing the day before with one of my closest friends here: lunch, ballet, dinner, her house after, all doused with champagne and pinot noir. My ambivalence, though, was about something deeper. Something that needles me about this day and always has. Something that gets down to the deep roots of motherhood.

The Kid is all knees and elbows now. Not an ounce (gram) of fat to be found anywhere. When he curls up next to me, I feel every sharp edge: his toes, heels, even his bony butt. No longer are there the butterball curves of babyhood or even the waning rolls of Little Brother’s late toddlerhood. I am knocked about by renegade limbs even as I receive the affection that keeps my heart beating.

It’s complicated. And this, this is motherhood.

TK’s school organised a Mother’s Day stall wherein small gifts would be sent in for the students to choose among and purchase for their moms. Guess who sent in the gifts? Guess who organised the stall? This is motherhood.

I can’t tell you how many separate conversations I was involved in about the paradox of Mother’s Day, which is really just a reflection of the contradictions held by motherhood: breakfasts made for a mother who cleaned the kitchen afterward; laundry left unattended without attention called to it, only to pile up and be dealt with Monday by the mother who was exempted the day before. Mother’s Day is like being issued a holiday from your boss, only to return on Monday to find that he (HE) didn’t acquire a substitute in your place and the work just amassed to double the typical level.

If I sound angry and resentful, it’s because I am. I’m also grateful, and joyful, and relieved to be exactly where I am.

It’s complicated.

And no one does complicated like mothers. No one does guilt like them either. This line we constantly walk between being wanted and needed. This role we play that we know, having been told endlessly, is the most pivotal one in our young children’s lives, which just leaves us feeling one of two ways: suffocating under the weight of it, or terrified we’ll get cancer and it will end early and we’ll leave them half-orphans.

Maybe there are some who don’t feel this way. Actually, I think a few are in my Instagram timeline. They feel every moment in only its glowing warmth, with none of the resentments that come with its weight. Well, congratulations to them. How wonderful that it’s all so easy. The rest of us over here, though? The ones having real conversations and drinking a bit too much at the brunch we packed the diaper bag and picked out the kids’ clothes for? We’re the real heroes, thank you. Because no matter how hard it gets (and we ACKNOWLEDGE that it’s hard, constantly), we keep showing up. We don’t leave. Even though the airport and bus station beckon like beacons in our sleep-interrupted nights.

To wit: LB is in the throes of a cold, which has left his nose a faucet. A clear-liquid faucet, thank you, no green snot to be found. But he’s wiping it constantly and has rubbed his upper lip to the point that it looks like he has a red moustache. Cut to his school calling me yesterday and today, yesterday as I was sweating at the gym and today as I was sitting down with some peppermint tea, to come collect him. Now we’re sitting on the couch together, he wiping his nose on my shirt and I attempting to make sense of it all on my computer as some bullshit cartoon airs from Netflix before us.

This is motherhood.

We are the bottom line, the first call, the last line of defence. We are tired, probably hungry, more than a bit resentful, and forever changed. We have given our bodies to the effort and they show no signs of recovering. We donate our minds to the cause (no one told me that introversion is not conducive to parenting young kids; I feel there should be a course on this). We feel crazy every second of the day: crazy with love for these small people who rule our hearts and overwhelm our days.

It’s fucking hard, man. And it can’t be summed up in an Instagram photo.

LB’s favourite toy lately is The Husband’s mousepad (the one he uses when he works from home late at night because he gets home to have dinner and help with baths and I am a shithead, yes I know). It has photos of our family all over it, and LB refers to it as his map. I cling to this child-ordained christening: a work object that contains all four of us; this quartet in front of him serving as the thing that leads him home. That, even when I strain and rail against it, leads me there–is my home–as well.