I knew that staying at home with Henry would be hard. My husband commutes 2 hours each way to work. He often leaves before I wake up and comes home after 7 at night. Typically, my day is so busy that I don't have time to miss him or feel lonely. But with these relentless snow storms we've been having lately, I've been stuck inside with only Henry to talk to, and I'm starting to go a little stir crazy.
There have been plenty of times in my life when I've had to do something hard, (in the sense of "hard work", not necessarily hard compared to other people's lives). Getting through law school pregnant and with an infant, then taking the bar was one of the greatest challenges I've ever faced. But those tasks had a goal; there was an end in sight and a way to mark the achievement. There was a graduation party, a definite pay off when I got that letter in the mail, a conclusion that showed me that all my hard work was not in vain.
The rewards of being a mom, (and the rewards are great), are not nearly so easy to define. The goal you're working toward is not one that you can really grasp in a definite way. Of course, we all have dreams for our children, but what they really mean, how they will play out for one individual child is much harder to articulate. There is no pass/fail in mothering.
There is also much less encouragement in the form of respect and support for mothers. Maybe it's because everyone has a mother, what we do is in some ways 'nothing special', maybe it's because as women we are expected to nurture easily, without effort or help. We are expected to cherish the role and enjoy our children. And we do. We love their spirits, and we would do anything for them. But that doesn't mean that the daily grind of dishes, laundry, diapers, food, and mopping the same sticky spots off of the same floor doesn't wear us down. It would be nice for once to get the same look of respect, the same warmth of admiration when I say 'mom', as I do when I say 'lawyer'. Not that our self-worth is defined by the esteem of others. And yet sometimes just a drop of genuine appreciation can fuel us for so long...
The hardest part for me right now is not how others see me, or not knowing whether I am doing a good job. It is the
time frame. Most difficult tasks in my life have lasted a few months or a few years. Being a mother is, like being a wife, a life-long pursuit. In this light it might seem that being a mother is a relationship, not a job to be accomplished, so why view it this way in the first place? Why not just sit back and enjoy life?
Any mother can tell you why. The responsibility goes far beyond wiping hands or learning the alphabet. The axiom "the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world" is as true as any I've heard. Certainly, individual acts we take as mothers can have a powerful impact on our children and therefore on the world. But it is not one or even a series of isolated incidents that define our children. We are in it for the long haul, and every day counts.
It's much like staying healthy or anything else that requires daily practice and effort, except that parenting cannot fall back on habit the way these other areas might. Each day brings new challenges, each child is different. What was working fine yesterday may need to change to adapt to today's problems. In some ways, the constant call for creativity actually serves to break up the monotony of the mundane tasks involved in caring for another human being.
Galatians 6:9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.UPDATE: Since writing this post, the snow has closed down the courthouse in Jersey City! This means that Greg came home at 10am, and let me sleep for two hours to catch up after a rough first part of the week. The bad news is that our car was towed in the middle of the night last night so they could plow (no lan line = no warning), but I don't even care, I'm just so happy to get a little break!
