On not being the perfect mom…
Sometimes the whole world can exist in a moment
Standing at the kitchen sink, rinsing out my coffee cup and looking out the window sightlessly; I’m on autopilot.
My daughter is calling to me from the living room, and when I say calling I mean she’s approximately 2,346 minutes into recounting to me a scene from She-Ra that we both watched yesterday. She’s doing such a rambling, disjointed job that even if I was curious to understand exactly what she was trying to tell me – which honestly I’m not, because we just watched it yesterday – there’s no way I would be able to follow it.
As I try to tune back into her voice, I am struck with fear that I am unconsciously repeating a pattern… As an only child, were there times that I was so full of earnest joy to share my life, my feelings, my thoughts with someone – anyone – that I would speak into emptiness as I hear her doing now? Is she going to grow up with the same deep ache of loneliness pulling at her heart, colouring all her choices, just as I have?
But how can I tune in and pretend to care about something that I honestly just don’t give a shit about? I love her from the deepest depths that my soul has ever known love but goddamn it I already know that Swiftwind sang a funny song about friendship, I was there too!
This tension snaps me so deeply into the moment, it’s as if time stands still.
The rain beading on the kitchen window in perfectly round droplets, until they become so full that they run the banks, overflow from input – there’s just too much water for one little drop to hold. It runs down the window, release and relief, until it stops.
I realize I have been standing at the sink, wet hands suspended over the basin, for longer than I think. How do I find the balance to be here, really here, right now? How can I turn off the voice of fear that sees so much of myself in her, so much of my mom in me….
Am I forever doomed to repeat the same cycle? I’ve tried so hard to choose differently, choose a life that would give me the flexibility to work when I want, so that I could be there more. So that I could be the one picking her up from school, sitting at the table having a snack with her and listening to her, and here I am – hiding in the kitchen, ignoring her. Am I a horrible mother? Is it that I don’t know what I really want? Is it just that I’m missing my village? Is it just covid? Is it the system that’s broken, or is it me?
I dry my hands, tea towel soft on my skin, a small grace. I go back to the living room and sit beside her, look her in the eye, and drift off somewhere else in my head.
