My daughter turned 17 this
morning. Seems as good a time as any to
reflect back on all these years, especially as the bittersweet waves ebb
and flow through me: she’ll be gone in two
months. This is it, I find myself thinking. I’m almost done…. How could
it have only been five years ago that
she was in Kindergarten, telling cashiers at the store her name was "FlowerRose?"
 Six
since she made sacrificial offerings to the elves
and fairies of the backyard forest? Seven
since I was able to hold her tiny, yielding body over my shoulder and cup her
sweet little head with my cheek? Sure, there are many things I wish I could have known about parenthood beforehand — the kind of truths a close and trusted friend might confide haltingly,
not wanting to scare you.  I suppose I wouldn’t have believed them anyway…. Even when I scoured books, looking for the
back story, the unvarnished version of parenthood, I could only suss it out in
bits and pieces. I longed for the magic
manual, spelling it all out in advance. But surely, had I skipped over the surprises I discovered below, there would have been others. Plus, I would have missed out on the booty
that challenges yield in retrospect — where
you’re actually thankful for the hardships;
the shimmering relief of uncovered simplicities, layered nevertheless in pain and struggle.

I’d be doing it mainly alone
Like most women, when I
initially paired up with my now ex-partner, I had visions of a happy family that
extended all the way to the eventual release of our baby birds from their nest
– us standing there together hand in hand, sighing as our little ones bravely flapped off
into the sunset. Instead, this has been my
reality: I’ve parented my children alone for the majority of their lives. Not what I’d had in mind, by any means.

On one level, this leaves me
haunted by a subtle and pervasive sorrow, wondering as I do about my own
weaknesses as a mother; longing for the support and emotional shorthand of a
partner standing beside me; a cohort. On another level, at least I know I’m not
alone — all around me, I am surrounded
by single parents. I’m glad for the
consolation, but I still ache not only for my
children, but all the children in
this situation. Surely, most new parents
embark upon their journey silently insisting (and truth be told, perhaps a
little fearfully), OUR family will be
different, WE’LL stay together. WE won’t end up like all those other people.

Sadly, statistics do not
bear this out. Many of them will be
wrong. 

Still, would I still have signed up
for this had I known that I’d be doing this mostly by myself? Yes. Absolutely and without question. Because I cannot, nor do I WANT to
imagine life without my two wonderful and beloved daughters. However, I might have made some different
choices in my marriage, regardless. I
might have whined less about his dedication to work, I might have let myself be
less subsumed by the tasks of
mothering small children, and saved something more for my partnership, instead
of leaving it the afterthought of cold leftovers. (We both did that to each
other.) I admit, I still wish I could
have headed off the dissolution of our marriage in theory even eight years later, but
it’s because I’ve seen firsthand the schism that divorce creates in children: the
dual worlds; the internalizing of faulty, future relationship models; how much
they end up missing one, or both, parents; the struggles to accept new partners
into the equation. And this, coming from
someone who feels incredibly lucky to have crafted close, working friendships
with both my ex-husband and his wife, and is in a happy relationship myself.

The mirror is often unkind
I knew parenting would make
me grow. How could it not? But I had no
way to anticipate the grueling nature of some of that growth. When we imagine ourselves stretching and
learning from life’s inevitable tests, we often sugarcoat our willingness to
turn and face our blind spots, our ability to break through our
carefully-cultivated walls of denial. Denial is there because it’s served us in some way! Why give that up? I had to take a good look at how my "sad
stories" from childhood were in actuality only serving to keep me in a
cocoon of self-pity and self-absorption and were, in fact, helping me to create
the same exact "wounds" in my own children. I couldn’t continue to be lazy about my
issues. I couldn’t just stay confused or
fearful anymore. I had to figure this one out, even if I hadn’t
the slightest idea where to start. I had
to learn how to thaw, how to surrender into the experience of being a
mother and stop "waiting" until I felt at peace. Not a pretty realization, and initially, it
was overwhelming. Ironically, seeing
this ugliness inside eventually led me to where I wanted to be. And I’m endlessly grateful.

There’s nothing to it
Ha! Who would have thought that motherhood could
also be so damned easy! Isn’t anything
worth doing also worth slaving over? Turns
out, I both under- and overestimated the amount of "work" parenting
would be and was proven wrong time and time again by life. In the midst of a toddler tantrum; at the
height of pre-teen/teen raging and outbursts, staggering from the arrows of
hateful words slung my way – we’d unexpectedly find ourselves making a joke, cracking
a smile, lurching forward for a hug. We’d diffuse the conflict, reaching out to
each other with relief and sudden, unblocked momentum.

My children and I almost
always, if not right after, then at some
point, make sure to apologize and make amends. Maybe it’s with a massage, a
cup of tea, a hand on the shoulder, a small offering of some sort or another. No matter the state of things – a messy
house, looming stresses, whatever — our family routinely finds great joy in
simple playfulness, acts of kindness and generosity. Sometimes I find myself thinking, why all the anguish?  Piece of cake!  This makes my heart swell and helps me to
feel that, if they at least take this lightness, this insistence on connection out there with them in life, everything else will be
okay. 

I’m just not that into you
The older they got, the more I realized, it really was less
about me, and more about them. It’s all
well and good to spend lots of time refining and implementing your ideas
regarding discipline, structure, routine and consequences. But it can come as a rude surprise to bump
up against this: you’re still dealing with separate individuals who have their own
life spirits and personalities. Sometimes
you have to ask yourself  – at what point
are you over-imposing your own will and
preferences upon them in a way that has more to do with your ego, than what’s best
for them? I suppose this question is
only natural to consider as your children assert themselves in
adolescence, but it bears analysis during earlier childhood as well. How many of your "rules" for
childrearing come from a place of fear? From lack at what you did or didn’t have? From a place of not wanting to lose the power struggle? It’s possible to "steer" and guide
without domination, but it took me many years to understand that getting this didn’t mean I was giving up something.

It goes by so very, very quickly
When your children are
tiny and you’re getting up for the seventh time that night, then have to
suffer through the demands of taking care of an
infant or toddler all day, it’s easy to feel like the hours of your life
have slowed to a crawl. You sleepwalk through your days, only to begin the
whole cycle again at night. And when
they’re a bit older, there are colds and messes and stresses and all kinds of
challenges that keep you up at night worrying, fretting, and wringing your hands. Some problems
feel like they’re NEVER going to get better. Plus, you secretly
worry about under-living your own life
– the dreams and goals knitting scarves from dust bunnies under the bed; the
hopes and wishes withering in the corner.  Sometimes it’s only when
you notice the absence of a problem that you later realize it’s gone. Everything
changes.

Life seems to speed up once they hit adolescence,
especially when they seem to care more about branching out based on their own
interests and impulses, and less about pleasing you. You realize with a start that they often
forget about you! Try picturing that kind of behavior from your little five year-old darling!

The last three of four years in particular have whizzed with my children.  I can’t believe my own child is about to set out on her own,
out there in the world, without me checking up on her every day. I’m about to become more of a bystander, someone she simply touches base with. Part of me just cannot take this in — too much has gone by in a compressed
blur, I’m shocked at how fast it’s all
happened. I wish I had savored the
moments more, even the difficult ones, instead of wishing them away. Someday
too, your children will be gone and you’ll miss them.

It ain’t over ’til the very end!
I know intellectually that
my job as a mother isn’t finished once my children walk out that door. I’ll always be wondering how they are
– if they’re happy, feel good in their own skin, are living their lives with a sense of purpose, richness and meaning, surrounded by love. But since I haven’t lived through an empty nest yet, I’ll have to just figure it out as it happens, like so much of
motherhood.

As we sat around the
breakfast table this morning, we talked about what kind of people we wanted to
be when we were older. My
youngest daughter Madeleine, in typical fashion, was still sleepy and wasn‘t much for talking, so she just
listened to Sophie and I meander in our conversation. Sophie wants to be a musician, a
writer, a chronicler of experiences and adventures — essentially,
a wanderer, since our own family travels
have inspired such a massive sense of wanderlust. I want to be an "old lady rower" who continues to plumb the depths of the
world myself. It was weird imagining Sophie closer to my age (43), trying to get a sense of how her life
might feel and unfold — and also see myself
moving closer to my own end, diminishing in strength, but hopefully, not vitality.

For all of us, I wish us a
strong and healthy connections, rooted
in love and compassion, caring and growth, exploration and discovery. Our
story as a a family is at once uniquely
personal, but also universal. Even if I’d had
a manual spelling out all the astonishments above — fundamentally, there’s not much I would have changed, and that’s
deeply and surprisingly rewarding.

(This essay was inspired by the Blog Blast: Tell Us Your Truth About Motherhood challenge from the Parent Bloggers Network, examining what you wished you might have known before you had children.)

© 2008 Jennifer Newcomb Marine All Rights Reserved