Mother Made
If you’re reading this, you have one. Or you had one—though I can’t imagine a mom being past tense even if she’s gone. It’s the universal tie that binds, the inextricable link of life. We are because she was.
And is.
And forever more shall be.
Mothers have the most demanding, integral job on the planet—and yet what’s crazy is nobody knows how to do it. None of us. Not even the supermoms who self-profess by the stickers on their SUV’s back glass. We all just grope around in the dark hoping against all hope that we don’t break things as we go. And yet, mothers are supposed to know… how to do things, when to do things, what the best things are to do. So we try, but the dirty little secret is, we do a lot of guessing, too.
The truest confession I ever heard from a new mother about her hot-off-the-press child was, “I don’t have any idea who she is, but she sure does.” Maybe I love that so much because it pretty much summed up my baby number two.
My second child and only daughter came, reluctantly we thought, because she missed her arrival date and I had to be induced. But we quickly discovered that we’d mis-tagged her tardiness. It wasn’t that she wasn’t ready, but more so that she was warning us that we had better be. She came in on her own terms, serving notice. When they first laid her on my chest, she looked up at me with these giant ocean-blue eyes-- not writhing, not crying, just looking--straight at me as if to say, “I’m out now and I’ve got my own ideas about how this thing is going to go.”
When they first laid her on my chest, she looked up at me with these giant ocean-blue eyes-- not writhing, not crying, just looking--straight at me as if to say, “I’m out now and I’ve got my own ideas about how this thing is going to go.”
When she was somewhere between barely two and almost three, on a random drive from Oklahoma City to Norman, she put another pin in the ground. From her snuggly safe car seat in the back seat (in the land before we turned them backward for forever and a day), we found ourselves at an impasse over some earth-shattering matter that I can no longer recall. In short, I had a plan for her behavior, and she saw it a different way. After a bit of back and forth over the top of the head rests, I laid down the gauntlet: “You say one more word and I’m going to pull this car over and spank your bottom.”
To which my precocious daughter replied, “Word.” By literal definition, she gave me no choice but to pull over and follow through on my threat. I could see it in my mind’s eye, somewhere deep in the unwritten handbook of “Good Mothering” was a chapter on always doing what you said you were going to do. So I did, as cars zoomed by at alarming rates of speed. With my vehicle running, I jumped out, slamming the front door as I lunged for the back so I could rush in and pounce. But before I could squeeze the handle, the baby culprit pushed the lock button and with a grin as big as Dallas began to victoriously clap her hands from the other side of the glass.
There I stood, on the shoulder of the highway, my toddler locked-in and me locked-out, solidifying the fact that I was pretty much unfit to be anybody’s mom.
Oh the things they teach us, mostly about ourselves.
My firstborn was a pleaser. He was the little guy who did what you asked him to do. He was adventurous and fun and happy in the way that Disney dreamers aim for when they sit down at their desks to create. He was high energy and rambunctious, but he was easy. Easy in a way that juked me. It made me think I had somehow cornered the market—that I’d stumbled upon the secret. That maybe I’d figured this thing out.
But you’ve already met my daughter, so you know that wasn’t true.
We have ideas, us mommy creatures. We have things we envision ourselves teaching our kids and things we imagine them doing. “Look both ways before you cross the street.” “Be kind to others.” “Share your toys.” “Say your prayers.” We see them in Easter clothes and Halloween costumes, and we see them leaving cookies and milk for Santa and hay and water for the reindeer that he’ll leave parked in the backyard snow. We see them in prom regalia, high school jerseys, caps and gowns and wedding whites, but there is just so much that isn’t visible when we draw it up inside our heads.
When my daughter was little, she thought everything could be improved a bit if only dipped in ketchup. So from her high chair, french fries got dipped, chicken fingers got dipped, bread got dipped, carrots got dipped. You name it— if she could hold it, it went in. One day when my Granny was getting out Christmas décor and had lined up trinkets on the table within reach from the high-chair, my daughter scooped up an angel and gave her a little baptism in her condiment of choice. Then she shoved it in her mouth. “Don’t suck ketchup off the angel!” was not a thing I had ever envisioned as a mom I’d hear myself say.
It never works out exactly like we think it will. Mostly because we have no way of knowing who these little people are. Not really. Even when they grow inside us. We think our job is to make them—to make them into something or someone. But our job is really to give them room to make themselves. And in all the internal and external wrangling involved in that, ironically, we mothers are the ones who get made.
We think our job is to make them—to make them into something or someone. But our job is really to give them room to make themselves. And in all the internal and external wrangling involved in that, ironically, we mothers are the ones who get made.
When great athletes win championships, or heralded actors win awards, they almost always thank their mothers, either first, or, tearfully, last. We believe that who we are is because of our moms. And it always somewhat is. But when you become a mother, it hits you that you wouldn’t be half the person you are if it weren’t for your kids. Being someone’s mom is like living through a hard-fired chamber that eliminates the excess and polishes up what’s left. Our children make us better adults. In the process of becoming, it’s hard to say exactly who makes whom.
Sherri Coale
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