The old lady who lives inside me sometimes has a hard time with what I do for a living. Specifically the part where kids misbehave. She cries out from within my head in her geriatric voice, “When I was a kid, I sat perfectly still in the dentist’s chair. I never would have cried out or acted up! My parents would not have let me get away with that nonsense.” Meanwhile, the kid in my chair makes himself gag, or lets herself pee, or tries to slap my assistant in the tit, and I sigh. Kids: they just don’t make ’em like they used to.

One of the most grating things for me to hear says a lot about my personal belief system. While I’m moving my tender, tired hands about within a tiny oral cavity, doin’ my thang, and a child yells out, “But that HURTS!” I absolutely cringe. Only occasionally will I restrain myself from using that dialect so underappreciated by children–sarcasm–and not say something like, “Who told you that you were getting a Swedish massage today? Did you get lost and think you were at the spa?” I want to teach these children the lessons I learned: that life isn’t fair, that sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do, that they should be glad they don’t have to walk six miles to school in the snow uphill both ways. And sometimes I do that. Others, I just crank up the laughing gas. (Admit it. By now, you really want my business card.)

But kids are just an unfiltered version of what adults think. Which means that we, the grownups, have bought into the lie that a life going right should not involve struggle.

I blame our success. Our first world problems, our hangnails and car trouble, that lull us into a sense of entitlement: we DESERVE to have things go well. A slow internet connection is enough to send me into a rage; which indecencies do you feel especially outraged by when you encounter them? Traffic? The wrong guy winning the election?

We behave as though we were promised smooth sailing. We were promised, in fact, the opposite. Which means that maybe our battle plan should involve less fighting and more enduring. Less rebelling and more accepting. Less outrage and more…whatever comes instead (I’m still working on that part).

During a particularly difficult period of my life, when every day began with a struggle to get out of bed, followed by an entertaining of the idea that today would be the day when I just bailed on the path I was taking—during that period, I amassed a musical collection that accompanied me on my painful drive to a daily schedule I wanted to escape. Lyrics and melodies were my sacred texts and hymns, and they reminded me of a truth that felt far away in the midst of my trials. But I kept listening. Maybe because even when it feels far away, truth is real. Maybe because even (especially?) when life is ugly, beauty is recognizable. Maybe because the sacred is always there, it just takes the puncture wounds of suffering to give it room to seep in fastest. But those songs—my Pain Playlist—remain embedded in my iPod and soul, and now they don’t feel sad to me. They feel like buoys, markers on a path I never left. And the other night, as I fed The Kid his bedtime bottle and began singing, I realized they had become lullabies.

As The Kid grows, transitioning from a hapless newborn into a nearly-one-year-old, I am becoming more aware that the singular title of Mother just doesn’t cut it as a job description. The maternal role contains within its scope a million others: outfit chooser, food label reader, butt wiper, snot sucker, stroller pusher, bottle cleaner, lullaby singer…and those are just the few I thought of in the last five seconds. And it’s not to say that The Husband doesn’t share any of these roles–he is, in fact, particularly adept at the butt wiping. But there’s no one like a mother to harness intuition, overplay emotion, and carry her child with her everywhere–physically or not.

I am TK’s advocate. I’m his case worker and his defender. I can’t imagine all the ways this aspect of parenting will change over the years, how different it will look when he’s older. Will I follow him into high school, brushing his hair and checking his underwear? That’s a solid maybe. When he was brand new, my advocacy looked like keeping him alive. Which, throughout the crying and sleeplessness that I may have subtly mentioned in these parts once or twice, was a challenge in and of itself. Now that advocacy looks like something between the insanity of those days and the confidence of longer-term parenting. Insanity: the other night TK woke up screaming without providing a reason and I resorted to my pillow-pounding and teeth-gritting ways. The next morning he woke up with a wheeze and I cried to TH, “He can’t go to school today! He just can’t!” as if the Nazis were at the front door coming to draft him. Confidence: this morning I made sure his hoodie was zipped up and his socks were secure. And…that’s all I got. Yes, having me as his fiercest defender may be a little like hiring the late Johnny Cochran as your lawyer: I’ll do the job, but not without some “if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit” moments along the way.

And my lifelong posture of defensiveness hasn’t exactly served me well in preparation for this role. Appearing incompetent is one of my greatest fears, maybe because I know that in some ways I am. When it has come to school or work or driving record or life, any defense I’ve had to mount has been purely self-motivated: protect Number One at all costs, even when it reduces me to a sputtering, incoherent mess. Now there’s a new Number One in town, and my interests are his longevity on this earth and the prevention of fear and assholery becoming major components of his personality. Game changer.

Looking out for someone else is exhausting. But not in the mask-wearing, character-playing way it was to promote myself all those years. Now, there is an endless sea of bottles and laundry and child-proofing and…him. The reward is not another day of convincing people that I have it all together–it’s friendships based on the admission that we don’t (and estrangement from the still-pretenders); it’s added depth to a marriage in which communication was easier after ten hours’ sleep; it’s TK’s lopsided grin and squeal when he sees me in the school window; it’s his head on my shoulder in utter surrender and trust; it’s his reaching out for my face. It is recognition. 

And this kind of recognition isn’t worked for, it isn’t postured toward, it just happens. It takes time–seasons, really–steadily turning over and easing into each other reliably, almost as if each is a promise of the next. This morning I drove to work and felt my predictable frustration rise upon being stopped in traffic–a similar frustration to what I felt in those newborn days, when the crying was an alarm and the sun rose on my exhaustion, golden light filtering through the nursery window. I felt interrupted on both occasions. Today, I didn’t notice the gold, though–I recognized it. I finally beheld it. This is living–this constant beholding, this seeing light through darkness. And I know that none of it is an interruption, really, when we are headed toward the beholding. When we eventually look away from the mirror to each other and see someone we know.