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Before I became a mother, I had big plans. I had plans all over the place–I was simply oozing with plans. Plans about Raising Children with Patience and Teaching them Respect, plans that would lead them to be resilient, self-sufficient, and well-behaved.

This morning, when another driver wouldn’t let me over as I hauled ass to my sons’ school’s Mother’s Day Breakfast, I got over anyway and flipped him off when he beeped at me. “Well then let me over you piece of sh*t,” I muttered while my children sat in the backseat.

Last night, my older son came into my bedroom after I’d just fallen asleep, and in his semiconscious state he turned on a light. I told him to turn it off. He didn’t. Didn’t even answer me. So I stomped to the light switch and slapped it off myself, and when he apologised, I remained silent, preferring an emotional wall built with bricks of anger and self-righteousness to warmth and vulnerability.

Some people just shouldn’t have kids. My friend lives next door to a couple who yell at their children constantly, shout things like “You’re a horrible person!” and “I can’t believe you’re my child,” and my heart breaks at this and I gasp, then I live through my own mothering mistakes and regret-filled moments and wonder what damage I’m doing.

When we were traveling earlier this year, I had a great idea that would teach the boys independence. I told them I was walking down the hall to the hotel laundry, literally seconds away, to put clothes in the dryer. I told them to stay exactly where they were and that I’d be back within two minutes. They agreed. When I returned, a minute and a half later, they were gone. My husband found them another minute later, wandering the halls crying and looking for me. My experiment had not gone well. They haven’t wanted to leave my side since.

Motherhood has taught me that I am not patient, but petty. That my children are not (yet) all that resilient or self-sufficient. That getting them to sleep as babies should have been the least of my concerns. That I am not the kind of person who will put spinach into their brownie mix (more than once).

That they force me to confront corners of myself that are unrepentant, irritable, dark, and fearful. That they expose layers of my being that would be best left away from the light. That I am not a success story–not the one I’d planned to be–but, rather, a case study in repeated failure. I have failed to model mindfulness, to respond patiently, to get them to love vegetables, to give me the respect of privacy in the bathroom.

I think back to all the plans I made, and how none of them included teaching my children to be kind. And this morning, after I flipped off that driver, they defended me. After I rebuffed my son’s apologies then finally turned to him and we fell asleep clutching each other, he woke up the next morning not remembering any of my harshness. How this morning, one sang to me and the other showed me the heart picture he drew for me that he only “partly rushed through to get to lunch.”

They want to be around me all the time. They want to be around me all the time?! They meet me with forgiveness, with deep reserves of kindness. They are constant evidence of a grace that holds us all, that makes it not about success and failure but love that never runs dry.

I didn’t plan on that.

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