motherhood Archives - Page 31 of 32

Surrounded by Savages

A young and innocent Kristen Glover, banished to the Outside while her mother makes quiche

In the beginning, the first man and the first woman had two children. But the children were both boys so their mother felt like she had a dozen.

The earth was young and the boys were wild since they didn’t have any girls but their mother to tame them. They made weapons out of sticks and stale bread and pomegranate seeds. They chased the sheep and ambushed the chickens and managed to find mud in the desert.

They punched and wrestled and ran so much, some days their mother thought she might go deaf. Other days, she wished she already was deaf.

“That’s it!” the first mother shouted. “I’ve had enough!”

The boys stopped dead in their tracks and wondered if this might be the end of the human population increase.

But God looked down on the earth and had compassion on the first mother because she was the only woman in the entire world, which pretty much meant she was surrounded by savages.

So God looked out over the great expanse of all that He had made, but He couldn’t find any place in all that wild world that was soft and beautiful where a mother could rest. So He said, “Let there be an oasis in the middle of this great expanse, and let it be called ‘Inside,’ and let Us separate the ‘Inside’ from the ‘Outside.’”

So God put up four walls and a lovely flat roof and separated the Inside from the Outside. And God saw that it was good.

Then He told the mother, “You shall have dominion over all the Inside. You will put flowers on the table and crochet afghans for the bed and tame a cat to sit in the window.

“And you will lure the man Inside by baking things that smell good and occasionally undressing. Once the Man comes Inside, you will make him take off his dirty shoes and talk about his feelings.

“But if the Man leaves his greasy tools on your counter or uses your best knife to trim his toenails, you will send the Man Outside.

“And you will lure your children inside with bedtime stories and cozy blankets and sugar. You will teach them to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and not to put their fingers in their noses.

“But if the Children shave the cat and turn your best tablecloth into a slingshot and release something scaly onto your bed, you will send the Children Outside.

“Then, you will sip a cup of tea, make quiche for dinner, and paint something.”

The woman smiled.

So it came about, after a surprisingly short period, that the Children spent a lot of time Outside.

And the Man built himself a garage.

Kya Outside, making weapons

The Thing About Mother’s Day

It was the day before our first wedding anniversary when a home pregnancy test confirmed my fear: I was pregnant. The second pink line was so faint, I almost convinced myself it wasn’t there. But when I walked out of the bathroom and showed my husband, his face lit up and he wrapped me up in a huge hug. “Baby! This is such great news!” he beamed.

I burst into tears. It most certainly was not great news, and I was hurt by his excitement. I wanted his emotions to match mine; instead, they revealed the ugliness of my disappointment and fear, the ugliness of a woman who didn’t want to be pregnant with her own child.

It’s not that I didn’t like kids. I adored them. I had worked with street kids and orphans. I paid my way through college by being a nanny to a wonderful little boy. Everywhere I went, I drew kids to me like a magnet. But I didn’t want my own. I never had. I did not dream about being pregnant or holding a baby or decorating a nursery.

Everyone always said that when the time was right, I would want to have kids, and I believed them, partly because it was easier. It’s a solitary thing to be a woman who does not want children. There’s something abnormal about it. “I should try harder to want children,” I reasoned and tried to muster up some maternal instincts by sheer will-power. I wanted those feelings. They just weren’t there.

I held on the hope that one day, my desires would change so I could stop feeling like a foreigner in my own gender. Surely one day, I would want to have my own children. Someday, I wouldn’t have to explain that I didn’t hate children. One day, I would feel like a normal woman.

I did not expect to get pregnant first. I did not expect to have a baby before I was ready to be a mother.

A few weeks later, a blood test confirmed the home pregnancy test. Soon it became obvious that my stomach wasn’t flat anymore. I couldn’t quite fit into my jeans. I stood in the dressing room of Motherhood Maternity with a belly form under my shirt, trying on clothes, while tears streamed down my face. I walked out without buying a thing.

An ultrasound showed the baby was a girl, but I didn’t want anyone to know. Somehow, it made it worse to verbalize the fact that we were having a girl, not just a baby, but a girl. Deep down in the darkness of my heart, I hoped I would miscarry the baby. A friend of ours had lost her baby, and I wondered to God why He would take that baby, that loved baby, instead of mine.

Another couple we knew was struggling with infertility, and we had to call and tell them that we had gotten pregnant without even trying and I had to pretend to be happy because I couldn’t imagine how much it would hurt them to hear that I didn’t want this baby. I didn’t understand why God chose us and not them. Why not them?

The months passed. We found a hand-me-down crib and set it up in our walk-in closet because our one-bedroom apartment was too small to accommodate a baby. I came home from work and saw it there up against the back wall between my husband’s clothes and mine, and I bawled. I wanted to run away. I didn’t know where to go but I didn’t want to be in my own body anymore. I didn’t want to live my own life anymore, but how could I undo it, once it had been done? Something fundamental had changed and I could not put it back. I could not reverse it. I could not run away from it. I wanted to accept it, to embrace it, to be happy about it, but I couldn’t.

I couldn’t be happy because to be happy meant to let go. I was afraid to let go. I was afraid of what God might do if I let Him, as if my fighting and struggling could keep Him from doing it anyway. I was afraid that accepting this baby might make it okay, and I wasn’t ready for it to be okay.

The thing is, I did love children. I loved them so much, I couldn’t tolerate the idea of giving a child anything less than my best, of loving her any less than she deserved. I knew what would be required of me to be the kind of mother I knew I needed to be, and I wasn’t ready to do it yet. I wasn’t willing to do it yet.

But God has a funny way of taking our wills and conforming them to His own. He has a funny way of using babies to shake things up, of using the small things to take down the big things and to bring to light the stuff that shouldn’t be there at all.

The sun was just beginning to come up when we drove to the hospital to deliver the baby. I couldn’t stop shaking. I shook when they prepped me for surgery and I shook on the operating table. Even with a system full of drugs, I couldn’t keep my teeth from chattering. I saw a bright red, squirmy baby pee all over the doctor. My husband named her Faith.

Faith.

It doesn’t take much faith to move mountains, and I certainly didn’t have much faith. I couldn’t even pray for more. But my husband did. He loved me through the ugliness and encouraged the tiny glimmers of love he saw in me. Somewhere in the depths of a very dark heart, that very little love began to grow. It was not immediate and it was not easy, but the more it grew, the more it wanted to grow, until one day, I realized how fiercely I loved this child of mine.

Then I cried. I cried every time I held her. I cried while she slept. I looked in at her and my heart broke because I had not wanted her. I cried because God had trusted her to me anyway, even though I was not ready or willing to open my heart to her. I cried because something I had never had but always wanted was slowly awakening in me, and I did not deserve it.

Over the course of the years, I have grown into motherhood, but it has not been an easy journey. Every year, when the Mother’s Day cards come out on the shelves and the local florists get a surge of business, I feel a sense of sadness. It is still difficult to accept the words “you’re a good mom” because I remember when I wasn’t. Some days, I’m still not.

Every Mother’s Day, I am reminded that I did not want this life. And every Mother’s Day, I am so thankful I did not get what I wanted.

Birth Order Explained: It’s Your Mother’s Fault

Many smart people have spent many long years researching a strange phenomenon related to birth order. The theory goes something like this: your personality is directly impacted by your birth order. If you’re the firstborn, you tend to be a certain way. If you’re the youngest, you tend to be another way. I’m no psychologist, but I can assure you, it’s all true, and it all goes back to your mother. May the good Lord help you if you were born after number five.

The Metamorphosis of Motherhood

After your first child	After your third child	Sometime after your fifth child
Maternity clothes are so cute!	I can’t wait to get back into my normal clothes.	These are my normal clothes.
Jake, come here!	Jake, I mean Susie, come here!	You—come here! No, not you. You! Yes, you! If I say “you,” I mean you!
Look at the homemade costume I made for you!	Let’s see what’s left at the costume store.	Here’s some aluminum foil and a Sharpie.
What would you like for dinner?	This is what we’re having for dinner.	If you don’t eat the casserole, it’s going in the soup for tomorrow.
Don’t eat that off the floor!	The floor isn’t that dirty.	Get it before your brother does.
Your birthday is only a month away! We’d better start planning.	I forgot candles. I’ll hold up five fingers and you can blow them out.	No, I didn’t forget your birthday. It’s called a “surprise party.”
Would you like to learn soccer, karate, piano, origami, French pastry making, Spanish, or water polo?	You’re taking ballet because your sister takes ballet.	There are lots of great cartoons on in the afternoons for kids your age.
Let’s pick up before Daddy gets home.	Let’s pick up before Grandma comes.	Let’s just move.
Let me help you!	Let me know if you need my help.	You don’t need my help.
I’ve created a wish list of educational toys for Timmy’s first Christmas. It includes all the Newberry award-winning books, a baby biology set, Latin fridge magnets, and a planetary motion crib mobile.	Don’t buy him anything that makes noise, needs batteries, might choke the baby, or requires parental supervision.	Just give us the money.
My husband wrote me a love note and rubbed my feet!	He watched the kids so I could go to the grocery store by myself!	He vacuumed!!!
We need to childproof the house.	How come the baby is the only one who can open the baby gate?	He’ll only do it once.
Please put on your new shirt.	Please put on a clean shirt.	At least you’re dressed.
I will never be one of those mothers.	I feel sorry for those mothers.	I am one of those mothers!
I didn’t know I could love anyone like this.	I didn’t know my love could multiply like this.	There’s always room to love one more.

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