The Impossible, Beautiful Project of Motherhood
Let them run free this summer!’ says the email from a children’s clothing brand. I’m waiting for a friend at the coffee shop when it pops up on my phone, insistent.
It’s only early May, but summer looms large, both in my imagination and on my to-do list. Figuring out the schedules: the camps, swimming lessons and other activities for my son, when the grandparents are visiting, if we are traveling to see friends, if I’m taking on any extra work etc. etc. My husband is about to return to work after a seven-month absence due to an on-the-job injury. (Left hand crushed in four places, multiple surgeries). Back a ‘to three weeks in Alaska, three weeks in Montana’ schedule.
‘Let them run free this summer!”
As our country continues to implode in an ever more spectacular fashion, our government making policies which directly attack mothers, families and children both at home and abroad. As our leaders try to sell off our public lands while waging an illegal war, gutting our social services, putting immigrant children and families in concentration camps, and policing women’s bodies- doing everything possible to take away our ability to determine for ourselves when and if we will bear children. ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ indeed.
Mother’s Day: day when we pay lip service to mothers and their importance while continuing to foist a heavier and heavier mental, physical, emotional and spiritual load on their shoulders. But at least we get flowers!
(Do I sound bitter? I am!)
But, as Rick Bass writes in With Every Great Breath, my current read,
In the midst of a war, one has to write or speak about war, but one has to write or speak about beauty, too.
Spring is here in its great abundance- a luxury of green and blue, white and periwinkle. Right now the weather is perfect. 70s, light breeze. Bunnies and deer nibble at grass and dandelions in our yard. (Get a job deer my husband yells at them, but they just stare, huge ears twitching.) It’s been a light snowy spring after an alarmingly dry winter, so I’m as delighted by every rain and snow shower as I am by the sunny days. Our wildly changeable Montana spring. The sky stormy grey-blue against the yellow-green explosions in the trees. Already, the blue flax are blooming.
Let them run free this summer!
I’m privileged to be raising my son in an area where kids are allowed more free reign than most places. This is a small town; you see kids walking or biking to school, to friend’s houses, traveling in packs or solo. It’s the type of place where my son and I have spent hours playing with a kid that we’d never met previously before someone came looking for them. Theo is an only child (he asked me recently if he could have either a baby sibling or a robot so he always had someone to play with….as of yet no plans for either) and I want him to explore with friends, to roam wild a bit (as appropriate for an almost 7-year-old). But I know I will have anxiety, so I’m thinking about purchasing a Garmin watch or an Air Tag or some such thing, so when he takes off at the Farmer’s Market with a gang of children I can calmly continue to buy vegetables without having to stalk them from afar.
Let them run free this summer!
(Never mind that, for many mothers, this is impossible or too dangerous).
The mothers of my generation, most I talk to anyway, seem to understand how important it is to give your kids space and independence, to let them try new things, take risks, get out of their comfort zones and expand their horizons. Helicopter parenting produces anxious kids. You don’t need research to see the correlation, although the research mostly backs it up (“Systematic Review of “Helicopter Parenting” and Its Relationship With Anxiety and Depression”*).
Still waiting for my friend at the coffee shop, I start idly scrolling through Facebook. Mistake #1. As I’m doomscrolling, news from the trial of the delivery driver who murdered 7-year-old Athena Strand dominates my feed. Mistake #2. I click on the comments on one of the articles. While most people naturally express deep sorrow for the loss of a beautiful young soul and for her family, going through pain that no family should ever have to experience, I don’t have to scroll too far to find, inevitably, a different sort of comment.
Where was her mother?
(Athena was with her father and stepmother, and her mother was in another state- not that it matters!)
Where was her mother? Why was such a pretty little girl left unprotected?
I don’t see any comments asking about the father’s whereabouts.
Anger courses through me. I stand up from the table, walk into the sun. I take a deep breath, close my eyes and tilt my chin up toward the sky. The sensation of sun on my face, creeping down my neck, the bright orange-red color on the inside of my eyelids.
I’m angry not just for what this poor mother has had to endure. But also for what it forces me to admit. My own mom was right…they really do blame mothers for everything.
The mother in this case could not have done anything to prevent her daughter’s murder, but even if, in theory, she could have, the blame should rest solely and completely on the man who chose to brutally abuse and kill her.
This is why I’m a helicopter mom…
Another comment on the article. I can’t blame her. The anxieties and fears of motherhood are many and intense. And yet, we know helicopter parenting hurts kids by foisting our anxiety onto them. It is extremely statistically unlikely that your child will be murdered or kidnapped, and yet the fear of it is omnipresent, inescapable. It is much more likely that your child will be sending you copious therapy bills a decade or two from now. But the animal mother inside you does not know that.
How do we accept that, especially as our kids get older, we cannot always protect them, always keep them safe? It’s intolerable, and yet if we don’t learn to accept it, we run the risk of damaging our kids. Just one of the many impossible dilemmas of parenthood.
Let them run free this summer!
I’ve felt more joy than I ever imagined I could as a mom, excavated new and old parts of myself, grown as a person in countless ways. My insides rearranged by pregnancy and motherhood. Along with the deep depths of love I’ve experienced as a parent (phrases my son is practicing for speech right now- sixth place, deep depths, wreaths, cold baths, winter months, strong truths) has come corresponding fear, anxiety, and guilt. I know I’m not alone. Parenthood forces you to admit how much in this world is out of your control. One of the things that makes motherhood a tiny bit easier is the many amazing mothers I know, who are brave enough to be wildly vulnerable and speak the truth about both the joy and the carnage of motherhood.
Happy Mother’s Day. We hold the world up. Always remember.
A Systematic Review of “Helicopter Parenting” and Its Relationship With Anxiety and Depression
Grown up kid of helicopter parents here, and yeah—it does a number on you. I’m glad to hear that there’s a general movement away from that. Happy Mother’s Day :)
They really do blame mothers for everything. That's so spot on it's ridiculous. When I was a kid, a friend of mine was murdered. Years later, I saw some online commentary about it. "Where was her mother?" popped up more than once. (For the record, her mother was inside while my friend was waiting out front for her dad to come home, not that it matters, as you said.) Parenting is a wild, wild thing, and the world seems to have only gotten wilder and is falling apart at the seams. Or maybe we just know about it more now, I don't know. The point early on about not only writing about war during war, but also beauty is a fantastic reminder. Something I need to do more of myself.