The Secrets of Motherhood
No one ever tells the whole truth about motherhood. We hear a lot about how much love you have for your children, how you'd do absolutely anything for them.
This is true. I won't deny it. But why doesn't anyone ever talk about the fact that sometimes, marbled in with the love that is so great it breaks your heart, is a massive dollop of irritation so great that you just can't bear to hear their sweet little voices any more? How, after a monologue by your five-year-old, that's lasted twenty minutes, you feel that if you hear, 'and Mommy, do you know what?' once more, you will just rip your own face off. Or, when your infant has been screaming for almost four hours, and your ears are ringing with the sound even when he's quiet, you wonder how it was that you never got around to scheduling that hysterectomy after the first one was born. You were warned, after all.
There are nights when I look at my sleeping children, and though I know, objectively speaking, they look absolutely darling and snuggly and lovely, all I can think is, Finally! You're quiet! Now I can go finish my novel and drink a glass of wine.
But it's more complicated than that, because even when I'm thinking all these snarky things about my kids, I still love them more than life itself. Even when I'm half wishing they'd just disappear, I know that if they did, I'd die.
I sometimes think wistfully of the time Before Children, when I could stay up all night and sleep in or lounge around all day, unmolested by the nearly endless needs and demands of small children; when I didn't evaluate shirts based on whether they're convenient for nursing; when I chose restaurants based on what I wanted to eat, not whether they had food my kid would eat. Those easy, care-free, and frankly, rather spoiled, days.
[There should be a very large blank space here, since I started this post on Sunday night, and it's now Tuesday night. Needless to say, there has been a lot of mama-angst around here in the interim.]
So anyway, on the other end of yet another bedtime fit, marathon screaming/nursing session, I'm sitting here with a bottle of Rolling Rock. And I'm pining for those old days, and I can't remember what brilliant, grown up point I was planning on making the other day, because I was interrupted by a raging five-year-old just as my fingers were poised over the keyboard to deliver my masterpiece.
This is motherhood as I experience it: I love my boys, they make me crazy, my heart breaks with love and with frustration, I miss being unencumbered, my children are my heart. The paradox is the reality.
This is true. I won't deny it. But why doesn't anyone ever talk about the fact that sometimes, marbled in with the love that is so great it breaks your heart, is a massive dollop of irritation so great that you just can't bear to hear their sweet little voices any more? How, after a monologue by your five-year-old, that's lasted twenty minutes, you feel that if you hear, 'and Mommy, do you know what?' once more, you will just rip your own face off. Or, when your infant has been screaming for almost four hours, and your ears are ringing with the sound even when he's quiet, you wonder how it was that you never got around to scheduling that hysterectomy after the first one was born. You were warned, after all.
There are nights when I look at my sleeping children, and though I know, objectively speaking, they look absolutely darling and snuggly and lovely, all I can think is, Finally! You're quiet! Now I can go finish my novel and drink a glass of wine.
But it's more complicated than that, because even when I'm thinking all these snarky things about my kids, I still love them more than life itself. Even when I'm half wishing they'd just disappear, I know that if they did, I'd die.
I sometimes think wistfully of the time Before Children, when I could stay up all night and sleep in or lounge around all day, unmolested by the nearly endless needs and demands of small children; when I didn't evaluate shirts based on whether they're convenient for nursing; when I chose restaurants based on what I wanted to eat, not whether they had food my kid would eat. Those easy, care-free, and frankly, rather spoiled, days.
[There should be a very large blank space here, since I started this post on Sunday night, and it's now Tuesday night. Needless to say, there has been a lot of mama-angst around here in the interim.]
So anyway, on the other end of yet another bedtime fit, marathon screaming/nursing session, I'm sitting here with a bottle of Rolling Rock. And I'm pining for those old days, and I can't remember what brilliant, grown up point I was planning on making the other day, because I was interrupted by a raging five-year-old just as my fingers were poised over the keyboard to deliver my masterpiece.
This is motherhood as I experience it: I love my boys, they make me crazy, my heart breaks with love and with frustration, I miss being unencumbered, my children are my heart. The paradox is the reality.
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