A 2020 Mother’s Day
Being the emotional backbone of this family during COVID-19 is as new and as hard as mothering once was.
A beautiful picture of our family sits on the marble top bar near the kitchen. Our smiles belie the tumult of the time. My husband is to the left, stronger and taller than all of us. I am holding our baby girl, and our 10 year old, auburn and freckled, is leaning into her sister, head to head. The photographer shot us every year before Christmas so we could give photos of the kids to our parents and siblings. But as the parents passed and the siblings got older, we let it go. That baby is 10 years old now.
We’ve taken lots of pictures in these weeks of quarantine. In them, we are baking, swimming, having fun. It looks like we’re on vacation. Pictures are like that — we put on a face, try to get our good side. “Lift the camera higher,” I tell my husband, “I’m not 25 anymore.”
When my first daughter was born, it was a shit show. I was determined to be a great mother. I lost my mother to insanity when I was 12, and although she waxed and wained in her cognition, I gave up on her then, on having a mom. So I was an autodidactic teen. I taught myself nails and makeup and hair, not well mind you, never well.
I was always unsure of my manners — when to send a thank you note, how to break up with a boy without leading him on or hurting his feelings, how to say no to hosting a rager, to being the club chair, to sex. I was on my own so when I became a mother, I decided I would be perfect. This exacerbated my postpartum depression, and when my baby was 18 months old, I got in the shower and didn’t get out for a long time. My husband was home, the baby was safe, but I knew I had to do something. For some reason I was opposed to meds, so I went to therapy twice a week for 6 months and then once a week until I could live in my skin.
My daughter must have sensed my discomfort, she cried constantly. She never slept unless we drove her in the car or rocked her for hours. My husband took most of the night shifts, but I resented him every time he left for work, more if he said there was traffic. That just meant he had more time alone.
I worked hard on myself, and by the time my daughter was 9 years old, I was killing it as a Mom. I was the Girl Scout Cookie Chair, I drove to every field trip, I was in charge of Spirit Day at her school. There wasn’t an outing she went on or a performance she gave that I wasn’t involved in. I listened to her, I felt her pain. I sheltered and cooked and made sure she was safe. She was my favorite person, and I was hers. My husband and she were my world, and I couldn’t imagine another…until I could.
My daughter was growing up, not snuggling as much, doing her own thing, and after I’d twisted and chiseled myself into a mother, I didn’t know how to be anything else. Just when I thought there was no way I could ask my husband to have another child — we’d made a deal, one and done, we were in our forties, well past the deadline we’d given each other to add to the family — and just as I’d pushed the idea of nursing and sleepless nights and diapers, so many diapers, out of my mind, he looked at me and said, “I feel like there is a soul missing from this family.”
Our second daughter was born 9 months later. Adding an infant right before puberty, peri-menopause and a mid-life crisis wasn’t a choice I’d suggest to someone I loved. It was very hard, sometimes it seemed impossible.
I thought the second time would be easier. I had 10 years experience and a housekeeper 3 times a week, I had plenty of free time, and my baby was a dream. She took to nursing right away, she slept and smiled from the time she was born, but the depression and overwhelm came nonetheless. And now it wasn’t just me dealing with it. I had to keep mothering my big girl who was going through her own sense of loss, and overwhelming love, and fear, so much fear. This round, I didn’t have time for therapy, and I was still opposed to meds. Don’t ask why. Today I’d take anything they offered. I must have thought there was a reward for stoicism and crazy. I stuck it out, and now I see, it wasn’t the best for anybody. “Put your oxygen mask on first,” isn’t a cliche for nothing.
I’m not sure when mothering got easier. It’s been somewhat of a breeze for the last few years. I’m not so good at the baby stage, but dealing with feelings and the frustrations of life, sharing wisdom and losses, I love that shit. My girls and I talk for hours about nothing and everything. I’m still making mistakes, but I’m not afraid to admit it, to ask them for forgiveness.
Now that we are hunkered down, a family again, my girls are close as can be. I wake up some mornings to find them in each other’s beds. They play in the pool, they watch Dance Moms, they TikTok. This never would have happened without the global crisis, and when I count my blessings, this is number one. The tilt of waiting 10 years between births has been temporarily righted.
But being the emotional backbone of this family during COVID-19 is as new and as hard as mothering once was, and it’s wearing on me. Some days, I don’t want to do it.
We are all 4 living our own personal struggle. Our oldest girl is missing the college and sorority she finally felt at home in. She is looking at her options for work this summer and beyond, and it doesn’t look good. At a time when life should be opening to her, it seems daunting instead. My baby is in her final year of elementary school, and she feels a loss as well. No Astro Camp, no Final Assembly, she doesn’t get to eat in the middle school commissary on Fridays, a huge honor for which she’s waited all these years. Some nights she cries, her sister lashes out, my husband gets quiet, grouchy. Everyone goes to their corner, and if we aren’t exactly coming out fighting, we are feeling our own pain. I’m supposed to have the answers to questions like:
How are we going to survive this?
Will I ever get a job?
Do I get to see my friends? Can I ever play with them?
There are harder questions, don’t we know it. Some kids are asking when they will get another meal. How will their parents stay safe at work? Who will take care of them if their school stays closed and mom and dad can’t? I have friends whose parents are in care facilities. They cannot even see them. People are on their deathbeds with no one to hold their hand. My family is unbelievably lucky. And still, they’re suffering. I can’t fix it anymore than I can help those who are so much worse off.
It’s new for me, not to have an anecdote. “When I was young, and we suffered a global pandemic….”, is not in my repertoire. If I ask them, “How does that make you feel?” I’ll punch myself in the face. Sometimes, it’s too much. Just like being a new mother, I am frustrated, irritable, and lonely. And just like early motherhood, I know it will not go on forever. This bug will die, the economy will come back. Like so many other struggles our great nation has survived, there will be incredible wins when this is done. Medical geniuses and business brains abound. Greatness comes from adversity. I believe all of this because, why not? I can go the other way. Oh there are days! But I have these girls who are looking at me to model courage, and the bright side is the one I’d like us to live on. I want to raise optimists after all.
I hope one day, when I am old, they will tell me that everything will be ok. And when they do, I want to believe them.
