The Resolve Continues

Thank you both very much for your kind words, and it is so nice to know that my musings are not falling on deaf ears.  And I do hope that it gives some hope or sense of companionship to others.  Isn't the internet the strangest thing?  I remember being in university when the internet was just getting up in running (and I had to walk there uphill both ways in 40 below when my horse got stuck in the snow...), and looking up "candy" recipes on one of the school computers in order to make Christmas gifts.  I'll leave it to your imagination as to what came up, but do picture me frantically trying to close ever popping up windows.  And now, it is possible for kindred spirits to find each other and porn all at the same time. 


The first thing I did tonight after Anja went to sleep (asking to go.  She had a bad virus last week complete with fever, and still has the cough, the not-eating-much and early fading) was yoga.  That's two days in a row, as is writing.  The non-chocolate eating not so much, although I did opt out of the ice cream on my waffles at a friend's brunch today.  Such control!

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Along the lines of psychological space, I've also been ruminating a lot on the question of how much interior life it is ok to hold close to yourself.

To put this in context, just before Christmas when Kirk had the week off, I was catching up on a lot of napping and slept from 2-5 one afternoon post Christmas shopping (really, we don't buy a lot, so why did I get so tired?  I did at one point find myself walking like a zombie through the nightmare of Wal-mart, which still seems only good for cheap pregnancy tests, and was unable to force myself to the exit. I almost had to phone for help. Very creepy).

Anyway, I was too zonko to go out with Kirk and Anja, so they went out to shop for me in the evening, and they were gone forever.  I mean, until 9 o'clock, which is much, much past bedtime.  And I got very worried, very lonely and very weepy, which was not helped by the fact that I had just finished reading "Home," by Marilynne Robinson, which is a beautiful but bleak parallel novel to "Gilead."  I very much recommend them both - it is a remarkable way to read about the same conflict from two very different points of view, but you must read Gilead first.  Plus, Kirk had been in Belleville for three weeks just prior, then on call and working much, and out to his staff party the week before while I deloused Anja, and I realized I am generally very bereft and lonely and directionless in the evening.  

 After this realization, I ended up sobbing on the phone to a friend about how I am a bad mother who somehow cannot give everything to her child.  When I am with Anja, I have a constant running dialogue of all the little things I should be doing (laundry, getting dinner, etc), and other, bigger thoughts about "who am I," "what am I doing here, bathtime really bores the pants off of me," "why can't I stop this and just enjoy her," "I'm going to get to her teenagehood and realize I missed her childhood" etc.  That whole week I'd been watching Kirk with her, who is so good at abandoning himself to her in play. 

After listening patiently to the "I can't seem to give everything to anybody, I always hold back in all my relationships" and the "Anja has known from in utero that there is something I withhold from her and that's what makes her want to always be close" I managed to gargle out between sobs, my friend, who is a wonderful person and mother said, "But Brenda, do you think it's even possible to give everything to Anja?  Do you think it's even a good thing?" 

Huh. 

I don't know.

I do know my own mother had not much of an alternate life to her children (very, very long story), and this did not lead any of us to be more fruitful, happy people.  On the other hand, I know people who don't give enough to their children, and my heart dies a little just thinking about it.

I have a friend who is a very wise 82, a mother of five herself, and a decorated children's author at that (lucky me!), and still remembers her mother as a firecracker who could always make her children laugh.  I'm also thinking of Annie Dillard here, and her essay on her mother in either An American Childhood or Teaching a Stone to Talk and how her mother was creative, slightly wacky, and wonderful.  In one scene, when bored with adult converstion at the beach, her mother dug her toe into the sand and rolled as fast as she could down into the water.  In both of these mothers there seems to have been some kind of living, breathing, unexpected spark, some hold on the essence of mysterious spontaneity and joy. 

In other words, maybe it's that giving everything to your children doesn't mean devoting yourself to hockey and soccer practices, or about being the most artistic, or patient,  or what have you, and Lord knows I lack in both the fun and patience departments.  Maybe giving "everything" to your children means fostering enough of a firey, creative place within yourself so that your own spark ignites all corners of your life.  That sounds terribly new-agey, but what I mean is that if you have one facet of your life that is just yours, that no-one else can complain about, put strictures on,or ultimately distract you from, perhaps bath time becomes more bearable and your children see and respect that spark and strive for sparks of their own. 

This is the kind of discussion that I wish was in the baby and the parenting books (though it would probably scare or offend the first time parents who still have ideals and who haven't yet learned the miraculous saying "never say never") beecause, it seems to me, that when we become mothers we become almost more of who we are, and yet everything "should" be about the wonderful and "simple" bond with the baby. 

I wish I had known from the beginning that this was to be one of if not the most complicated relationship of my life.   The question is can I just dig in my toe and start rolling?