Mothering Through Hard Times
Our van moves down the highway, my husband behind the wheel. In the passenger seat, I wipe tears from my cheek. We have just left our firstborn child at college for the first time.
This loss has been looming for the last year. All summer, I tried to cram in as much quality time with her as I could, hoping it was enough to make up for the past, knowing full well that it wasn’t.
And I was not prepared for the rumination this transition would cause, but here I am thinking back over pieces of the past.
2008
My five-year-old hop-skips down the driveway with her little brother and me following close behind. Her backpack flaps against her, too big for her body. Her excitement is palpable. Today is the first day of kindergarten.
My son and I are going to the drop-in daycare center after the bus leaves. We’ve spent a lot of time there playing and making friends. Even though it provides me with the only daycare I can afford, I usually stay and play instead of leaving. But now that my daughter is in school, I begin to split my time between the kindergarten classroom and the drop-in center.
We have full lives. We go hiking on weekends. We hang out with friends and go to soccer practice, and every night we read together. I go on as many field trips as the school allows. We play outside and inside and upside-down. We dance in the living room, and in the evenings I make dinner from scratch.
Time passes. My son starts school, and I accept a paid job in the drop-in center. I volunteer at the school on my days off. At home, I clean, I discipline, I show up where I’m needed, and I finish what I start.
I don’t yet know how our lives will change in one year.
2011
I lie in my bed awake but immobilized. When I open my eyes, the room spins. Fireworks ignite inside my brain. Every sound is coming at me through a megaphone. Even with the bedroom door closed, I hear my children fighting as if they are standing above me. I put my pillow over my face, pinch it around my ears, begging through tears for the sweet protection of sleep.
Hours later, I reawaken. The throbbing has eased enough that I can open my eyes. The world is still spinning, but if I move carefully, I can manage to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the kids.
I ease myself onto the couch near them. They start eating and telling me about their fight. I listen as best I can, but I’m on a merry-go-round. I’m on tilt-a-whirl. I’m falling through the air.
There is a refrigerator sitting on my legs. The refrigerator is actually crushing my legs. It’s not a refrigerator; it’s an elephant. I’m either going to die underneath this elephant, or I am going to lose my legs. Please, let me lose my legs, I beg inside my mind.
As if through a haze, I hear a small blurry voice speak, the pitch of its words ending in a higher octave than the rest. Some functioning part of my brain recognizes this sound as a question. One of the children has asked me a question. Did they ask for something? About something? I don’t know. My concentration is like that of a goldfish. I ask the voice to repeat itself. I miss the words again.
Say it one more time, I plead.
The need to repeat themselves is something my kids hate.
Why don’t you ever listen?!” one of them shouts at me, exasperated.
I don’t know how to explain this to them. I don’t know how to help them understand. They are only six and eight.
2012
The walls are dingy white. The walls are khaki gray. The walls are always one muted shade of tan or another. The doctors are always men. They are always dismissive. They are always overconfident. They never have adequate answers.
The chiropractor says maybe I hunch my shoulders too much when I sew, so I stop sewing. He says maybe I should stop spending so much time on my computer, so I stop writing. He says maybe I should stop bending over to pick kids up at work, so I start sitting on the floor. He says maybe I need to detoxify my house so we get an air purifier. He says maybe I need to detoxify my body so I try removing sugars, gluten, processed food, alcohol. He adjusts my neck every time I see him, and I go home feeling worse than when I arrived.
My primary physician sends me to a neurologist. The neurologist sends me to an ENT. The ENT sends me back to neurology. The second neurologist refers me to the dizzy clinic. Then I see an MS specialist, and he refers me to an endocrinologist. My primary physician says I might have to live with whatever this is, but he sends me to rheumatology just to be sure. The rheumatologist refers me to an immunologist and a gastroenterologist.
They perform MRIs and CT scans and x-rays. I get a spinal tap, a nerve conduction survey, and an EKG. Every time I see a doctor, they ask for blood. Often they collect more than 10 vials of blood at a time. But every test by every specialist comes back as unremarkable.
I am the thinnest I’ve been since I was 14.
I have read the internet looking for answers. And I have more doctor’s appointments than my kids have playdates.
Days pass.
Months pass.
Years.
Now the children are nine and eleven. I’ve cancelled plans with their friends so many times their friends have stopped inviting them over. We take a trip to visit family, and the kids care for me on the plane rather than the other way around. I stop disciplining and following through on consequences. I stop requiring chores and setting limits on screen time. I engage with my kids less and less. The longer this goes on, the more things I let slide.
I learn how to prioritize what needs doing, and I stop doing everything else. Survival becomes my main focus.
I need a mobility aid to walk. I suspect this development is embarrassing to my children, but which is worse: your mother needing a mobility aid or having to help your mother walk without one? I begin to wonder if they’re relieved when I choose to miss an event.
My neurological symptoms are scary for all of us. I give up driving. I quit my job. I no longer dance in the living room. I have lost my independence. I have given up everything I enjoy. I cannot concentrate, and I cannot remember things. Some days I stay in bed. We eat frozen foods, take-out foods, and fast foods most of which are baked, supplied, or warmed by my husband after he finishes 8–10 hours of work. He’s exhausted and my efforts to help feel futile. I hardly ever make dinner from scratch anymore.
The kids are now entering high school and I don’t remember how we got here. I can tell you about the order of health events in my life, but I don’t remember simple stories about my kids over the years. I struggle to even remember what they told me 10 minutes ago.
I’ve never been to a PTO meeting. I don’t volunteer to run the concession stand. I don’t take the kids on adventures anymore. We don’t have their friends over. We’ve stopped throwing birthday parties. We’ve given up on taking family vacations. And I miss a lot of soccer games.
All I want is to be able to mother the way I intended. To volunteer at events and help raise money for the cause. To show up at parent-teacher night and not look like I’m drunk. I want to go to my kids’ sporting events and cheer. I want to invite my kids’ friends over and drive them anywhere they want to go. I want to take them on vacation, to amusement parks, and for hikes. I want to stop missing things and stop having to choose to care for myself instead of showing up for them.
But instead, I find other ways. We spend a summer painting pictures on discarded plywood with acrylic paint. We watch movies together. When I’m able, we play board games and video games. Sometimes, the kids come into my room, lay on the bed with me, and talk. They still don’t completely understand, but they’re more forgiving now.
When I’m too sick to make dinner, I coach them from the couch on how to make the simple things. It’s not been easy learning to let them help. I have it in my head that a mother is supposed to do these things for her kids. And I feel like I missed them growing up.
2017
I can barely breathe. I think it must be anxiety, but my attempts to calm myself aren’t working. Walking from one room to another is abnormally exhausting. When night arrives, I discover I cannot lay down without losing the ability to breathe. I wake my husband at 2:00 a.m. with an overwhelming feeling that I am dying. He takes me to the emergency room, and I am hospitalized. My oxygenation levels are dangerously low. My heart is surrounded by inflammation. The doctors run tests, and my specialist list grows. But because of this crisis, one of my doctors starts to understand the bigger picture. And then the best thing to happen to me in six years occurs. He gives me a partial diagnosis and a prescription.
And with time, this prescription helps me start rebuilding parts of my life.
2021
“You are a good mom,” my mother says to me while I tell her about dropping my kid off at college. She likes to affirm this for me, but I always cringe internally when she says it. A lump instantly forms in my throat. I do the best I can with my circumstances, but I don’t feel like a good mom. And ultimately, I don’t want to keep measuring myself using the “good mom” narrative. There is too much pressure, shame, and guilt wrapped up in that ideal.
Instead, I want to see my mothering from a place of appreciation for all the delights and sufferings we’ve been through. A place where my mothering is neither good nor bad. It just is.
LACI HOYT wants to live in a world where kindness is a priority and everyone owns at least one hand-knit sweater. She writes from her home in upstate NY about living with chronic illness, love and relationships, and any other thing she can’t get out of her head. Her writing has been published through The Kindred Voice. When she’s not writing, she can be found with knitting needles and yarn, hunched over the sewing machine, or creating unique dolls and bags for her Etsy shop. Every Sunday, you can find a new haiku published on her blog. Visit Laci at www.liviatree.blogspot.com.
