Charge through it.

I’ve hear the tales of mom’s who lose themselves to motherhood.  We sacrifice it all for the greater good of our family because we are mom and if mom doesn’t do it, who will.  No one loves like Mom.  Mom is Mom and there is no one like Mom.   

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed these years of giving my absolute all to my all-too-often-thankless family who far too rarely ask me what I need.  I sadistically enjoy pushing myself and striving to please people who are constantly reminding me what I’m NOT doing for them.  Those genuine smiles and fleating moments of geniuine admiration and graciousness and gratefulness, when they just can’t help but admit that I’m actually the best person in their whole life, have always been enough to shake the lingering feeling that I am a huge dissapointment to them.  But they are children.  My children.  And it is my job to shake that selfishness out of them.  Children are selfish.  Innately selfish.  And it is a huge parental responsibility, for the sake of the greater good of all mankind, to teach them that selfishness is unacceptable.  No, you simply may not walk this earth thinking that you are the most important thing on it.  And while I can’t stress enough how difficult that is to explain to a toddler, or a 15 year old oldest child, or her three younger siblings (because when you have three siblings nothing in life is ever fair, EVER!), I never imagined I would be tolerating it from the man who was supposed to be in these parenting trenches with me. I never imagined that he would let me get so much deeper into those trenches, alone, and up against four kids.  i didn’t stand a chance.  

So I lost a battle.  I sacrificed myself and took one for the team.  I took on a very big little army and I didn’t have the back up that I needed when those trenches got dark and deep.  And I let my guard down, heading into enemy territory (parenthood) with a selfish partner.  I needed someone who was going to follow me into the depths of hell when need be, and who would reach down and grab me and pull me up when it was painfully obvious that I was in over my head.  I needed that.  You can’t just hunker down and make yourself comfortable in the parenting trenches.   Especially when you have four kids.  Just because I manage to keep us all alive and get dinner on the table and rarely ask you to lift a finger doesn’t mean I’m winning the battle.  There is a war going on, and  that is not the level of solidarity and united front that wins wars.  

But that’s what mom does.  I was so blissfully enthralled in this parenting war and so madly in love with my four enemies (precious babies) that I failed to notice that my back up was…back…way, way back.   Definitely out of reach and practically out of sight, unless it was his turn for my affection.  But I charged through.  I always charge through.  Even now, after I have surrendered to one painfully lost battle, after I have armed my kids with some destructive resentment and bitterness to use against me, I continue to charge through.  after my broken heart finally convinced me that I might be stronger on my own rather than weakened by the dissapointment of a life partner who didn’t love me with all his heart and who I couldn’t count on to be by my side if he simply didn’t want to, I let go, and charge through.  

That’s what mom does.  And it was worth it because if there is one thing my kids have learned, it’s that I would take a bullet for them, even from their own smoking guns.  I’m mom, and you will put me through hell while I raise you to not be a selfish prick, and you will hate me and you will blame me and you will unleash all of your frustrations, whether significant or utterly ridiculous, my fault or yours, on me.  It will all fall on me.  Mom.  Because only a mom can forgive you over and over again as you fail and grow and (god willing) learn to get over yourself.  

I feel like a lone soldier these days. Deeper in the trenches than I have ever braved before.  But somehow I feel stronger just knowing that I’m on my own rather than looking behind me and always feeling dissapointed.  

Milestone: Our first broken heart...

“I was always worried about his feelings and ignoring my own. I apologized when it wasn’t my  fault. I allowed myself to tolerate it when he stopped showing me the kind of affection I wanted. I think I lost myself a little.”  

She sure did.  My daughter fell hard in love.  She held out for the real deal and she went all in for the very first time, and it was big.  It changed her.  She wore a giant smile and exuded a radiant happiness.  Love.  She had discovered love. She was in love.   His happiness meant everything to her, and it can be very easy to lose yourself to that.  

It was a great first love, one that appeared worthy of my girl.  He often recognized and gushed over all of the beautiful things about her, inside and out.  They wore matching giant smiles.  It was genuine and unabashed and I admired it.  It reminded me that love is beautiful and happy and well worth the risks, and quite honestly, it healed that last seemingly loveless piece of my broken heart.  It made me wholehearted again.  And then it shattered my baby’s heart.  

I was lucky to be wholehearted again, and to have healed my own shattered heart just in time to have the strength and wisdom to help her put her’s back together.  I will never forget the tears and despair and pain and confusion in her eyes as she sat across from me, blindsided, trying to make sense of it all.  I remember her asking me questions that she knew I couldn’t possibly have the answers to, even after 43 years of dealing with boys and love and heartache.  She was in so much pain that she was pleading with the one person that she often seems to think doesn’t know anything, for any answer that would make it hurt a little less.  How could love feel so good and then so very bad?  And with all of my newly healed heart, I felt my own first devastated broken heart all over again.  And while we both knew I didn’t have any answers for how someone who loved her could rip our heart out,  I had the experience and wisdom and scars to know that we were both going to survive this, and persevere.

My girl is, by nature (and nurture), strong and not easily rattled.  She is calm, cool and collected.   So as I watched her wallow and sink into sadness, rattled as hell, it shook me to my core.  I cried many, many tears at the very thought of my girl’s tears and the shared sympathetic pain that inevitably comes from being forever connected to my babies by the heart strings.  I knew what she was carrying was very heavy and nothing I could do could ease that.   I knew that to her, it felt eternally hopeless and painful and insurmountable.  But I knew better.  I knew that not only would she heal and love again, but she will also have her heart broken again...and again and again. 

In true Madeline form, she’s bounced back nicely, seemingly well aware that it’s his loss.  If we are very lucky, we learn some very important lessons from our first gut wrenching broken heart, and each one that will inevitably follow. Listening to my 15 year old reflect on her first love and loss with wisdom beyond her years and  resilience and sincere honesty and genuine introspection, and when all is said and done, no regrets, gives me great comfort and hope that she will one day, even before her time, be nearly unbreakable.  

I like to think that my children were all Inherently born with all of the lessons that I already learned for them the hard way, but love and loss is one of those things we all have to live and learn.