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Welcome to familywisdom.com, a website dedicated to informing and inspiring couples and families. Each week you will find a new article, story or essay about parenting, marriage or life. Suggestions for articles and questions to Ellen Terich are welcome. You can contact her at e.terich1@verizon.net |
A DIFFERENT SIDE OF MOTHERHOOD 2005-05-05 We're approaching another Mother's Day, that holiday when florists take in enough money to pay for their summer vacations, and greeting cards with sappy verses about mom and motherhood are given to millions of American mothers, grandmothers, mothers-in-law, godmothers, foster mothers, etc. I've written before about how we ought to honor our mothers more than just one day out of the year for all of their sacrifice and love. Today I want to talk about a different side of motherhood, the side of motherhood we mothers don't like to admit, the down and dirty sometimes I wish I could run away side of motherhood. A few days ago my daughter reached the proverbial end of her rope with her two small children ages four and nearly two. It had been a day of whining and defiance, a day when the children alternated between demands and refusals. When it was time to cook dinner, she made hamburgers for the children and put a few noodles on their plate. They both looked at the noodles like they were poison (they had never eaten plain noodles apparently). As my daughter tells the story, Sean gagged when the noodles got in the vicinity of his mouth and Grace threw her plate across the table, which landed her in a time out. When Grace came back to the table, she again shoved her plate. When the children's father came home, my daughter expressed her exasperation by saying "I need a vacation." As I listened to my daughter's frustration and feelings of guilt about having gotten upset with her children, I remembered so many times when, as a young mother myself, I didn't think I could take any more. One time, as my daughter has reminded me on many occasions, I even said I was going to run away. While I just thought I was expressing my frustration, my daughter, who was four at the time, said it terrified her. Now that she understands the feeling and has expressed her own frustration in a similar comment, however, she has a better understanding of what I was going through. On mother's day, with a little help from Hallmark, we like to think only of the good things our mothers have done. We put our mothers on pedestals and express our gratitude for their love and hard work. We don't often think that the day to day raising of children creates enormous emotional ups and downs that are exhausting. We try not to remember the times our mothers yelled at us, or cried out of sheer frustration, or said they wanted to run away, or even spanked us, even though that is part of motherhood too. I don't know of any mother who doesn't have some guilt over "losing it" in a tirade of anger and frustration towards children that are being stubborn, defiant, and ornery. And while most mothers are willing to sacrifice and manage to muster a lot of patience as they raise their children, trying very hard not to make any huge mistakes in parenting, I don't know of any mother who thinks she did a perfect job. And what makes it worse is that most children, even when they're grown, tend to remember those times when mom wasn't perfect more than they remember the times when she was. On Mother's Day, of course, we all pretend our mothers were saints, even though most of them were very human. Maybe it's time we stopped the pretense and just loved our mothers for their imperfections as well as their shining qualities. Maybe in gratitude for all they did, and with understanding for the mistakes they made, and for loving us even when we drove them crazy, and not running away even though they felt like it, we ought to help them let go of some of that guilt by letting them know we love them just the way they are. |