It is the era of the Bad Mother confessional. Proud recounting of the slacker things we do as moms, the ways in which we defiantly refuse to compete for the Mother of the Year award. Everywhere one turns, it seems, mothers are unashamedly sharing the ways at which they don’t quite meet the needs of their children.
That is not me. I’m not proud of my lousy mother moments. In fact, because I came to motherhood late, after success in other things, I am beyond disappointed sometimes at how badly I am doing as a mother. I can’t believe I’m not a really, really good mother. In fact, I thought I’d be great at this, as I’ve been at a few other things (how modest!). I certainly thought I’d be better at it than many of the moms I see in big box stores, in parking lots, at playgrounds, screeching at their children, slapping hands, saying mean things and meaning it. I had planned to be a warm, calm, loving presence, fun and funny, physically affectionate, verbally encouraging, patient and kind.
And I am SO not. Of course there is the usual disclaimer – sometimes I am a good mother, all of those things about warm and loving and patient, blah,blah, blah. Sometimes I am so Zen it amazes and amuses me. But that’s not where my head has been lately, and that is not what keeps me up at night, after I’ve put the kids to bed and am left alone with a too-busy regretful mind. There have been times, in the last few months especially, when I am a horrible mother. When, if you spliced each horrible moment into a video and submitted it to the authorities, I would possibly be investigated. And I can’t believe I’m that person. I’m so disappointed with myself, and the slow drip of accumulated horrible moments weighs me down like depression.
Examples. You’re dying for examples, I know. We all have said horrible things to our children, haven’t we? And we want to know where we rank. Well, here goes: At one point in January, at a playcenter, with my three year old refusing to put her snowsuit on and come with me and the baby, who was already hot and grumpy in her snowsuit, and with the staff turning out the lights and standing at the door with their hands, figuratively at least, on their hips, I leaned over and uttered my first death threat. Whispering, so that the other mothers wouldn’t hear, I said “If you don’t put your snowpants on right now, I’m going to kill you.” Except I used an adjective before the word ‘snowpants’ and ‘kill you.’ Yes, that adjective. Yes, it starts with an F. I’m not trying to be funny. It is a horrible thing to say to anyone, much less one’s own three year old. It makes me cry remembering it, especially because I really meant it. That it was all I could do at that moment not to grab her and stuff her into her outdoor clothes, deliberately trying to hurt her as I did it. Instead I uttered the death threat.
The other moment that sticks in my head is from a shopping trip a few months back. Going into our third store, me hauling the baby in the car seat plus the diaper bag/purse, my older daughter trying to keep up. And, as she has done every time since she could walk, when we get to the door she stands directly in front of it, so that when I pull it open, towards us, it hits her boots, and she has to scramble to get out of the way, to duck under my arm, to trip over my feet and get herself through the door in front of me. As if every door that I have ever opened, including our own front door twice a day, doesn’t open exactly like this. And I said, not loudly, but aloud, “Could you be any stupider?” The S-word. The one that has been banned from parenthood, replaced by the milder “silly” – the word you should never, ever say to your children, certainly not until they are at least 12. I tell myself she didn’t hear me. She doesn’t know what it means, anyway. She didn’t respond at all, just tripped and bumped her way into the store, probably knowing mommy is grumpy, trying to stay out of my way.
Those are the specific instances that haunt me, but there is a general slide in my performance as a mother. I blame the winter, the demands of a baby sister, lack of sleep, single motherhood (my own choice), and the presence of these two children with me every minute of every day and several times a night. I have gone so far as to hire a babysitter for two hours a week, Wednesday at dinner time, so I can leave the house without two children, so I can have a break. But still. Every time I am a lousy mother, I add it to my mental list, and my goal of being a great mother recedes still further. A few times lately I have shouted, as loud as I could, at my 3 year old. Just a syllable, or her name. Not a tirade, not a diatribe, just a primal scream that stops her in her tracks, stops her whining and wailing and ego. She throws up her hands toward my mouth, squeezes her eyes shut, like a cartoon child standing before a roaring lion. And she falls mercifully silent, with a side of whimpering, completely compliant. And I take a breath, and we move on with our task. It is not a good parenting tool. Especially since it will soon lose its effectiveness and I’ll have to come up with something worse. But it really is primal – my primal response to a balky, frustrating, egotistical three year old. Who is also tiny and quite obedient and eager to please and clingy and anxious.
And whereas I used to compare myself favourably to the bad mothers around me, I’ve found myself falling short of the good ones lately. A few weeks ago, at McDonald’s playland (I say that with no shame – we once spend TWO blissful quiet hours there), there was a young woman and a 4 year old girl. They spoke to each other like sisters, like fond sisters. The young woman was conversational, like she cared what the 4 year old was saying about the toy in her Happy Meal. They talked about other things between play sessions on the slide. I couldn’t figure out if the young woman was a mother or a sister or a babysitter. She seemed most like a teenage babysitter. Cool. Calm. In the moment. There were no warnings, no nagging. I could not guess the woman’s age. Twenty? Twenty-five? Eighteen? Thirty? Far younger than I, in any case. Finally, I asked if she was the girl’s sister, and she smiled. “Mom,” she said. And allowed that she looks younger than she is. She didn’t give her age and I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know. But I kept thinking about her, about her relationship with her daughter, long after we left. And I was wondering if I’d be a better mother if I had had my children that young. Would I have had more patience if I was a twenty-something mother? Would I enjoy a game of Candyland more? Would I yell less?
When I told a friend that I was becoming a horrible mother, she said I should talk to a mutual friend: “she’s going through that shitty mom phase, too.” Which of course puts it in perspective. We all go through it. It’s a phase. We have good days and weeks and years, and not so good ones. Some of it is about our children, of course. I know the joke about three year olds, that we should never think of them as our adversaries, because in truth they are our enemies. Heh. But it’s a lousy excuse for me. Mine is really quite a good one, thus far. She’s just clueless. She doesn’t yet understand that if the baby is already crying, and sweat is rolling down my face as I try to get us all out the door in our snow gear, that now is not a good time to decline to put on her boots.
I have a British friend, another Single Mother by Choice, who says she does not agonize about her bad mom moments. She’s a good mom, or at least, good enough. And she gets on with it, without the gnashing of teeth over how much she may be crippling the self-esteem of her children when she is fierce and impatient. And I applaud her for that unapologetic stance, that refusal to find “aha” moments in the parenthood journey. But I can’t do it. I can’t let go of my dreams, my expectations. I still want to be a great mother. She’s only three years old, the other is a baby, if I’m perfect from here on out, they’ll never even remember the death threats and meanness. I just have to be perfect. Starting now. No more mistakes. No more yelling, no more impatience. I love them more than life itself. I just have to act that way. A great mom would log off the computer right now, tiptoe into their bedrooms, smooth their sheets and brows, and kiss them goodnight. Whisper “I love you.” I’d do it. I really would. But if even one of them woke up, my quiet few minutes before bedtime would be gone, and I can’t risk it. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow I won’t be so tired, and I’ll risk it. But not tonight. I just can’t.