On Motherhood

People often ask me what it’s like to be a mom. You know, now that I’ve procreated and made it eight whole months. I often answer that it’s somewhat like being in one of the fourteen Saw movies they’ve made. You never quite know what exquisite torture device your child will devise for you when you wake up that day-but it’s always going to be creative and, hopefully, Cary Elwes will somehow be involved. (Mawwiage??) Or, maybe it will just suck and you’ll end up in the emergency room.

Maybe they will dive head first off the bed in search of a ball of cat hair and splatter small pieces of brains about the wood floor. This will then convince your husband that an MRI is needed to ascertain whether or not their IQ will ever rise above the level of towel rack. Maybe they will decide they are Superman and leap off the couch wearing a cape landing with all their body weight squarely on their left front tooth. You never know what exactly it’s going to be. But it all makes you wince and possibly gag a little. And when you’re a mom it’s sometimes actually painful. It’s never really easily explainable.

How can you explain it’s like having four extra limbs and a head but having absolutely no control over them? You can’t. So you talk about how good they smell and how funny it is when they fart. They become exquisite and hidden. They become embroidered burp cloths and soft Onsies that match their “Boppies”.

The truth becomes nothing like my relationship with my child-this fearful and magical thing that I care for and love. She is a stranger to me-a stranger that will one day speak English who will hopefully be somewhat rational like her mother but have her father’s sweetness. Some days she giggles at things that aren’t there and points at the wall and speaks a long line of gibberish. The DSM=IV defines this as psychotic behavior and I’m pretty sure she gets that from me. She grunts and turns red around her eyes when she poops. ( I’m pretty sure she gets that from her Dad.)

Sometimes I’m truly frightened of her. This has more to do with her waking up one day with an IQ that’s one point above crapping in her pants and realizing that I have no idea what I am doing. But also has a lot to do with the mirror she creates for me. Her very existence constantly reminds me of the things that I have done wrong….the things I need to fix. Her birth gave birth to better parts of me. And I can’t ever explain that.

But if I were to truly answer the question, it’s nothing like I expected it to be and sort of more like it in other ways. Its resentment at things I gave up to be with her and joys I didn’t know I had alive inside of me. It’s this entire understanding that I get to do this whole journey called “life” over again with her. Some days, it’s the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning

But most days, it just scares me shitless.