This morning when I should have been tending to any number of things I hopped on Facebook. I knew I owed a few friends a recipe and was on my way to look up who in my messages tab when I decided to scroll down and see what was new on the “block.” Since I only manage to get on Facebook about twice a week for a grand total of ten minutes – no, I am not cool –there is usually a lot new.
Amid the save-this-animal, clap-for-that-child, and find-this-funny was MotheringintheMiddle’s post: Misery Loves Company. Ah, this same tune had been playing over and over in my mind since 2013 poked its head in the door.
Misery sure does love company.
In late fall, our eldest was miserable at her college and we spent many nights helping her through a tough decision to transfer. I thought – well, okay, I wanted to believe, but deep down knew it wasn’t true – that I had seen it all in parenting. Apparently not.
Then, as I moved her into a new college I got a call from our youngest doctor. The results of her renal and bladder scan were in. There was something there, lurking in her belly, perhaps pressing on her bladder. In the end, many stressful appointments and a surgery later, it turned out to be not one, but two large cysts that had wedged themselves down into her pelvis, obliterating her appendix and glomming onto things they shouldn’t. She’s ten by the way. Definitely had not seen it all.
Simultaneously, my mother died. After 15 months of trying to live – and suffering in the midst of it from cancer – she passed away ten hours after I loaded my youngest into bed following her hospital stay.
Um, hello? “How much can one mother take?” I ask.
In the days following my mother’s funeral, my sister and I discussed this. And discussed it. The misery was rampant. At my house, at her house – the day she landed back in Boston following mom’s funeral her oldest son was injured in a hockey game. She always said she hated to not be there since hockey can get nasty. Well it did. So she spent the weekend in two different ER’s trying to get him healed.
It was my sister’s friend who had told her that when there is a death in the house, it is sometimes like a magnet for misery. Well I hate to say this, but she was spot on.
And so this week, as I drove three hours south to tend to my eldest – who is struggling with college transitions and perhaps more – that tune was playing in my head again and I thought about all that was going on.
About how I myself just wanted to run away. To get a new life. To hop off this train of crisis after crisis. To for once not be a mom, who everyone depended on, who had to hold up the ship, shovel the crap overboard, shore up the crew, and steer the course. That the misery could keep itself for once and find other company to hang out with.
And then it dawned on me. I am a Mom. That is my journey, all of it. I chose it and love it – albeit I am NOT liking its side effects much right now and I thought some of my mommying would be waning as they left the nest. As much as I would like to right now, I cannot abandon ship. My children, young and old, are counting on me.
If given the chance – really truly given the chance – I would not sell my motherhood to the devil for a cruise through calmer seas. Even with a spot on deck and sun every day.
But if someone wants to buy me a few days in that chair, just as a diversion, a refueling stop, I won’t argue.