By Melodee
My daughter is four and a half. As the youngest child and only girl in my family, she exerts her will on her brothers by crying. She sobs, weeps and screams, in fact, which punctures my eardrums and spins my head on my neck. Her brothers, ages 14, 14 and 9, cannot remember being four years old. They can’t remember being irrational or whiny or unreasonable. They demand that she act fairly, adhere to rules, and never follow them around. They accuse me of letting her get away with everything. They critique my parenting and offer me parenting tips.
They cannot get along with her. So she cries.
This dynamic is driving me nuts.
They whisper insults just to get her goat. She wails. I holler. They protest. She sobs. I lecture. They comply. She stops. Until the next time.
I am a terrible mother, no doubt about it. I thought I would be a dandy mother, a singing in the kitchen, humming under my breath, eye-crinkling, smiling at all times mother.
But then again, I thought I’d give birth to Jo, Beth, Meg and Amy and we’d embroider, play sonatas on the piano and converse in quiet tones about Papa. (In lilting British accents.) I would have been a magnificent mother to reasonable, sane, creative, gentle girls. (I would. Don’t argue with me.)
But I am the mother of whiners and kids who stink. I am the mother of children who have the temerity to point out my faults to me. I am the mother of children who sass me and question my authority on the basis of my flawed human judgment. I am the mother of boys who are digging a coffin-sized hole in my backyard, the mother of a barefoot daughter who refuses shoes outside even on forty-five degree rainy days. I am the mother of children with no interest in contemplation, meditation or quietness. And they leave wet towels and inside-out underpants on the floor.
I am a mother with chipped edges and missing parts, a mother without a map who wonders if she should retreat rather than forge ahead. I am a mother with no clue if I’m doing all right or if I am destroying my children with my temper tantrums.
Tonight I thought of that sunny afternoon in September of 1989 when my dad beckoned my sisters and me into his brown-toned living room. He sat in the rocking chair. Terror filled me because we were not a family who had family meetings or sat around chatting. This meeting must have a purpose and that purpose would be bad. I knew in my thumping heart.
The sun rays striped a horizontal pattern on the carpet. My dad took off his glasses, swiped a hand over his balding head and face. His hands were always rough, his fingertips so dry they cracked and sometimes, I’d say, “What did you do to your hand?” and he’d shrug and say, “I don’t know.” I couldn’t imagine not knowing why I bled, but now I’m a mother. My hands are dry and sometimes, I find a streak of blood and I have no idea why. I don’t even notice the pain.
He began at the beginning, describing the time he couldn’t read some writing. This puzzling event led him to the ophthalmologist, who sent him immediately to a neurologist who ordered tests which revealed a brain tumor. That news resulted in a grim prognosis: four months to two years.
Then he crumpled, broke down and sobbed. I circled his shoulders in an awkward hug–we were not a hugging family, but this news demanded a hug, even an awkward one. Some time passed while we all cried.
When we stopped, he mentioned a hidden two-pound bag of M&Ms. We tore it open and ate M&Ms in defiance of his impending death.
I wondered for the first time tonight if he wasn’t crying for himself. I don’t think he feared death at all. But as a father, did he look at us and see orphans, victims of his cancer? He knew we’d suffer the loss, that we’d be broken, that we’d have to find our way through his illness, his death, his funeral, the grieving, the unknown.
He’d miss meeting his grandchildren, reaching retirement, and pleasures of vibrant colors of autumn, Kringle at Christmas-time, hot-fudge sundaes, bratwurst you could only buy in Wisconsin. But beyond that, he was a father. Did he cry because he knew his death would cut us to the bone? Did he cry for himself? Or did he cry for us?
Almost twenty years later, I wonder.
What shocks me is how keenly I feel the loss of him the older I get. He was the guardrail, keeping me on the road, protecting me from falling off a cliff. And although I can stay on the road without a guardrail, I drive so much more carefully, I worry so much more, I fear sliding off the road. I resent the fact that my father was taken from me when he was so young, while I was so young, just when we were getting the hang of being father and daughter.
Maybe this has nothing to do with feeling feel like a substandard mother on days like today when I said too often, “Please! Go play!” and rushed to judgment instead of investigating the crying.
Being a parent is hard. I thought that my parents were just not very good at parenting, but as it turns out, they did the best they could under the circumstances. The job itself is difficult. Especially when you aren’t parenting little women, but real kids who forget to brush their teeth unless you steer them into the bathroom and point at the toothbrush.
Melodee can also be found writing at Actual Unretouched Photo.
