holiday tears: doing the best we can

It’s always unexpected.

And yet.

It’s right on time.

It was an average Sunday morning.

Not one of our better ones.

Call it holiday grumpies or the price of too many late nights or the stress of getting it “all” accomplished, but the atmosphere at our home was anything but cherry and light.

Bells weren’t ringing and chestnuts weren’t roasting.

Attitudes stunk. I was pretty confident that I was doing my part to raise what might be the world’s most selfish children. I also felt the need to let those children know their trajectory toward that end goal.

My sprained ankle made it difficult for me to take a walk – which would have helped our entire house, I’m certain.

I felt failure in my bones.

Failure as a mom.

Disappointed that the darlings weren’t being darlings when what I wanted was darlings.

I did the tasks.

Made another batch of peppermint patties for holiday gifts. Stirred the grape jam for presents.

And I stood there.

Stirring the jam from the recipe I learned from my mom in the bowl I inherited from my mom.

Helping one daughter find the lost library cards. (In the exact place where she said she had already looked.)

Assisting another daughter in measuring a recipe correctly. (Pesky fractions.)

I walked back to the bedroom to ask another daughter a question.

Had to step over a pile of craft projects in their floor. Averted my eyes from the ludicrously large pile of clean? dirty? in between? clothing piled in the corner.

And then.

There it was.

Heavy and hard hitting and seemingly out of nowhere.

Tears.

Just so many tears.

I didn’t know why.

But then, of course, I did know why as soon as my mouth opened.

“I wish I could call my mom,” I said. Through tears. To two daughters who didn’t quite know what to do with me.

“I wish I could tell her that I’m sorry for keeping my room SUCH a mess for so many years.”

For hoarding clothes in corners and writing sad poetry on my wall with a sharpie. For hanging up that hideous Cure poster over my bed. For forgetting about her birthday my freshman year of college. For missing her calls or being too busy to stop by and lend a hand.

For spending my teen years so self-absorbed I could barely look up at the world around me.

Being a mom is difficult.

And I spend so much time trying so hard. Working so much to fix and to mend, to hold out hope and to bring delight. I foolishly think it is all up to me. I think it’s all on my shoulders and I forget, every single day, that my job is not all the things I usually think it is.

The heavy beautiful horrible heart breaking truth of it all is, we never get too old to want our moms.

I feel this way. Thirteen years later.

Which is why I know my job is enormous – this task of mothering six children.

And it’s also why I know we’ll all be okay in some sort of way.

Because despite all my nonsense, my mom loved me. Loved me strong and steady even when we didn’t share the same taste in music and we couldn’t understand certain aspects of one another’s personalities.

I know she loved me.

And I think my sons and my daughters know this too.

They know I love them.

Even when we don’t see eye to eye. When feelings are hurt and bruised.

They know I’m in their corner.

And. One day, when their own babies grow up taller than them and when those babies think they know best, my children will want to call me too. They’ll want to apologize or empathize or just let me know that they finally get it. They finally understand.

I’m not going to lie – I hope I’m alive to take that phone call. (Or hologram. Whatever.)

But even if I am not, I hope they know that I get it. I’m not angry. I understand.

It’s a big, messy, consuming job – motherhood. It’s not linear and it’s not without its deep pitfalls and its dark corners.

We’re all standing in this long line, this legacy, of generations of women saying to their sons and their daughters, you’re not alone.

I’ve been you. And you’ll be me.

We’re all doing the best we can.

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