ANUFEEK, DA WUV TONIGHT? by DC Lambert
When my five kids were young, they adored Disney so much that even now, decades later, the moment I see or hear even a snippet of a vapid movie, a catchy song, up spring entire three- dimensional scenes of their childhood.
I stop to buy a coffee at Wawa during my hour- long commute from work, and the piped-in music asks, “Can you feel the love tonight?” and – although I’d been worrying about how to encourage my younger son to take anti- anxiety medication, how to talk to my youngest daughter about her wedding plans, whether to interfere in the schism between my older son and daughter – the image of my then- three- year- old daughter, now 29, pops up instead, overlaying everything else, like color in a black- and- white movie. She’s singing lispily, in baby clothes she’d taken from her 20-month- old sister and somehow managed to squeeze into: “An- u- feek, da wuv tonight?”
Yes, there she is, lying on the parquet floor in our tiny townhouse in Madison, Wisconsin, where we lived then, her three dolls carefully laid out next to her for a “nap,” and her baby sister – now 28, engaged – is trying to climb up onto the windowsill as she climbs on everything, and her older brother – now 31, in medical school – is coming in caked with mud because he and his friends flooded the sandbox. “Wait! Wait!” I say to him as he heads upstairs, mud and all, but I have to get the baby, who may fall. My then- husband isn’t home – he works in his lab over 12 hours a day – but that’s a reprieve, for when he returns to the mess of three small babies, he’ll go on, when no one else hears, about how I’m useless, a piece of shit, ridiculous, no one would ever want me except him. Then loudly he’ll exclaim to the kids, his hands on his hips like a semi- dissatisfied boss surveying his territory: “I sure appreciate your mother. What a cook she is!”
But for now, my daughter sings breathily as I scoop the baby from the windowsill and call my son back downstairs and help him take off his muddy clothes with one hand, holding the baby in the other arm as she tries to wiggle out to get back up the windowsill, all while I’m wearing a hapless- and- harried- but-upbeat persona, like a poor player’s mask. And all these patchwork pieces are then grafted back onto my Disney memories, so that gradually, Disney itself is infused with a bittersweet nostalgia and a confused and misplaced sense of my own identity.
I pay for the Wawa coffee now, thinking how I believed that time would last forever: my children would always need me, always be adorable and innocent, I’d always be there for them.
“Sweetie, it’s ‘can you feel,’ not anufeek,” I’d said with a tiny smile then, or something like that. I barely remember how I responded, in fact, as it was one of the literally hundreds of similar interactions every single day with my three, then, four, then five small children. Why that memory woven into The Lion King, and not another? Some oysters create pearls out of the irritation of sand, and other oysters stay empty or even die. So it is with events in our lives: they are remembered only haphazardly, called up by music or scent or ego or happenstance, like jigsaw pieces tossed in the air. We imagine we have the whole puzzle, until we look closely, or the numerous gaps are called to our attention, or we glimpse a piece we forgot we lost.
* * *
A few years ago, I stopped in Madison after dropping off my younger daughter, who was then in college in Chicago, and visited several old friends. An unlooked- for and under- discussed boon of staying home with small children and a large circle of fellow stay- at- home mothers is that, as with veterans of battle or survivors of a community trauma, you are close for the rest of your lives and can pick up instantly the moment you see each other even if it’s been years.
Over one of her decadent delicious breakfasts, my friend Sabine asked me if she remembered the first time we met.
I shook my head. A blank.
She smiled, then said we’d been outside my old townhouse. She’d been with her three small children, and met me taking a walk, my baby in my backpack, my two- year- old son at my side. “He was stark naked,” she added. “Just walking around, stark naked.”
“What?” I felt the chair I was sitting on seemingly shifting into sand, and had trouble orienting myself. Had I really allowed him to be naked outside?
“Yes,” she said, then added that as we talked, he just squatted and pooped on the grass, and I casually picked it up with a bag, and resumed talking.
“Right in front of us! He just pooped!” Sabine chuckled, sipping her mug with the New York Times crossword puzzle image. “And you acted like it was nothing. And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ ”
Even when she recalled this memory to me, and even now, as I drive the rest of the way home down 295 at 35 miles per hour because of its interminable construction (they’ve been “improving” this highway the entire 15 years I’ve lived here), past one of the inevitable police cars pulling someone over, as I sip my Wawa coffee carefully so it doesn’t spill, as I drive – even though you’d think letting my naked two- year- old shit outside would be something I’d remember at least when reminded of it, I still cannot. It’s definitely one of the missing puzzle pieces, tossed up and sailing off into some abyss somewhere; and I was so ashamed then, at my friend’s house with all its light and light wood floors and windows overlooking white birch woods, that I couldn’t speak. At her table, I picked up my own mug, then put it down, then picked up a warm croissant, then put it down, and blinked back tears. My ex was right – this was my first thought – I was ridiculous, beneath contempt.
“And now here we are, almost thirty years later!” She got out of her chair, and hugged me, tightly. I could feel the cords of the muscles in her thin arms.
“I was toilet training him, do you think?” I said, stuck on the image of my child squatting like a dog.
“Probably.” She went back to her seat. “Who knows what any of us were doing then. We had no idea what we were doing.”
And presumably that’s why I cast that particular memory into oblivion – because it didn’t conform to how I wanted to see myself then, as a competent young mother. Sabine was right, though at the time it was easy to imagine we were pros, as we had no gauge to frame our competence or lack thereof, and the needs were simple, and the detritus of screw-ups would only flower years or decades later.
* * *
I’ve made so many mistakes, so many ways I’ve chosen the wrong path, not even knowing I was choosing, not even knowing, even now, if other paths would’ve been better, not even being able to see a pattern in the choices, looking back, or forward for that matter, except a kaleidoscopic swirl of good intentions and self- delusions.
* * *
But the blank space of that memory somehow sparks another memory: as I pull into my parking spot at last, and climb up the three flights to my apartment, I remember this same son, then three or four, toilet trained at last, fully clothed thank God, leaping onto the hood of my car and begging me to stay as I’d tried to back away from my parking spot in front of our townhouse.
I’d always remembered this with a sort of put-upon humor –
“Oh, kids! Just once you try to go out alone!” – but now, suddenly, it comes to me how disturbing the memory really is.
Why was I realizing this only now, I wonder as I pass the neighbor who always makes something that smells like burnt popcorn and the other neighbor with the nonstop loud television? Why this moment and no other?
I hear my Pomeranian barking, upstairs; she knows my step. I in turn know the timbre of her barks, exactly as I’d known the timbre of my babies’ cries; right now, she’s just really excited to see me.
“Almost home, Ruby!” I call to her.
Had I been leaving the kids with a babysitter or with my ex-husband then? I think I was going out with my ex? I remember my ex, a concerned expression on his face, prying my son off the hood of the car and setting him down on the sidewalk. But then, if I was going out with my ex, where was the babysitter? I don’t remember a babysitter. I just remember my son staring at me through the windshield, with desperate deep terror in his eyes, gripping his tiny hands on the crack of the hood, my ex carrying him back screaming into the house.
No. I left alone. My ex stayed inside. I was alone in that car. Why didn’t I follow my son inside? Why didn’t I ask, when I got home, why he’d been so upset? Or had I, and I just don’t remember? Or was it that I didn’t want to see? I was too inexperienced. As a young mother, I was encouraged to treat their fear of abandonment – at bedtime, or an evening out – as an expression of the self- centeredness of small children. “Don’t let them manipulate you,” was a common piece of dispensed wisdom. My innocent child.
* * *
When I reach my apartment, my dog grunts and twists her tiny body in her ecstasy to see me. “Let’s go for a walk!” I say. “Leash? Where’s your leash?” She looks at it, then back at me, and I put it on her, and we go outside. At 57, I’m living alone for literally the first time in my life (I married at 19, divorced at 44, my five children then ages 8 to 18). I’m officially “empty nest,” a silly term implying my confusion and loss is a neurotic, female response to a natural process even birds understand.
Outside, I stop my dog from running into the street to attack a garbage truck. (“She thinks she’s a guard dog!” I shout at the men, and they laugh.) “Good girl,” I tell my dog as she confidently trots back upstairs to our apartment. “Let’s get something to eat. I’m hungry, are you?” I’m so used to talking my thoughts in order to teach little ones how to speak, so used, too, to being with someone at all hours, that I’ve transferred all that to my dog. She lifts her liquid eyes to me, hopeful for scraps of food and love.
* * *
As my kids grew, the memory of my small daughter incorrectly singing The Lion King’s lyrics became shiny and ossified, as though I’d laminated it, probably because, unlike the pooping incident, or the leaping- on- the- car incident, it illustrated something I wanted to remember about myself or my daughter.
“And then I said, ‘It’s not ‘an- u- feek’; it’s ‘can you feel the love tonight’ and she says”.– I’d give a small laugh to whomever I’d be telling this story to (I realize this only now, microwaving some leftover broccoli and ziti) – “ ‘NO! It’s ANUFEEEEEEK!’ ” I’d laugh, encouraging my listener to laugh too. I think this was meant to show her adorable three- year- old stubbornness, but it had an unintentional undercurrent of chaos, things being barely in control. Which was the actual truth.
In my kitchen, I peel some chicken skin from the leftover roast chicken I’d bought at Costco and hold it out to the dog. “Some yummy chicken,” I say, as she delicately takes it from my fingers. Then I sit down to eat my dinner, my dog gazing hopefully at me for some more chicken. I’m trying to read a book on Kindle on my phone – which I’ve propped up on a roll of toilet paper I’d set on the table a while back and somehow haven’t managed to move back to the bathroom yet – but find myself reading the same paragraph over and over. I hold a small stalk of broccoli by its stem and twirl it, thinking of the overall pattern of the rings of memory, the giant puzzle of our lives with our illusion the puzzle is whole and makes sense, and I’m pierced by a nostalgia so sharp it hurts.
This child who stubbornly shoved her legs into her baby sister’s onesies and sang, believing herself to be a beautiful singer, who called broccoli “trees” and made a game of eating it, pretending she was a giant – this child no longer exists.
The adult she’s morphed into bears some similarities.– she has a gorgeous operatic voice in point of fact, and uses her stubbornness, ripened into tenacity, to help build her career as an artist – but mostly, that small child, with her particular wants, fears, passions, hopes, is gone. In her own adult perspective, it’s still there inside her, like a nesting doll. And in some ways, that’s true. But in other ways, the small child is just gone– her high voice, her need for a blanket she called Mimi, her insistence that she had to wear Minnie Mouse clothes and nothing else so that I had to scour garage sales to get her clothes until my friend Naomi came up with a genius idea of buying a Minnie Mouse pin to put on any clothes, so she “always had Minnie with her.” (Perhaps predictably, the moment it became easy to wear Minnie by simply pinning her on a shirt, my daughter lost interest in her, and went on to a new obsession, pink ponies.)
And so, yoked onto that memory of her singing from The Lion King is an intense sorrow that this child with skin so delicate the blue veins would show through, her long skinny legs like a colt’s, carrying her blanket for years until it disintegrated – this child not only doesn’t exist anymore, but I didn’t know what I had when she did. If youth is wasted on the young, parenting of the young is wasted on young parents.
* * *
I took it for granted, I think, both that they’d always be young, that I’d always have to use the toilet with one of them watching me, that I’d always smile at their sweet childish mistakes with that confidence I was figuring out this motherhood thing; and simultaneously, that they’d grow up and leave and be successful and I’d be free – which, I believed, would happen as suddenly as a door closed.
“Finished at 40!” one of my friends in Madison often said, since she’d had her third child when she was only 22 – so, at 40, they’d all be out of the house, she believed, and she could move on with her life. All of us young mothers believed it would be like that. We were both immersed in the small and large joys and worries of raising our babies, and looking forward to the time we wouldn’t have to worry about them at all. This would magically happen when they “turned 18” and became an adult. We would then – it was assumed – return to the selves we’d been Before Kids, and think only of ourselves, and not worry or fret or be sleepless.
“We’ll be able to shit in peace!” my friend Naomi said.
The physicality of early child- rearing was the only type of parenting we knew then, and we thought that was what mothering was – exhaustion from lack of sleep, constant chasing, picking up messes, wiping down messes, getting water for them in the middle of the night, wiping shit from butts and snot off our pants, worrying about feeding them properly or nursing them through illnesses or getting them to sleep or shouting over screaming children for conversations,. and desperation for time, any time, alone.
And we were so new at it – while feeling like old hands – that we still believed it was a sort of aberration. (Even as we simultaneously believed it was our eternal, endless state. “The minutes drag, but the years fly by,” many people said, but we didn’t really believe it: the minutes dragged too much and the years that would be flying were so far in the future as to seem unreal and unattainable to us then.)
Simone, an “older mother”– at the time, this meant her kids were teens – heard Naomi imagine the paradisiacal moment we’d be able to poop without a toddler staring, and said, “Oh, little kids, little problems, big kids, big problems.”
This was when my kids were something like five, three, and one. We were at a coffee. I wondered at the time why Simone rarely came to our coffees, which I found glorious – two or three hours once a week, all of us mothers gathered together, eating, drinking coffee, while our kids played. This was the early 1990s, but it may as well have been the 1960s, or the 1920s for that matter. We were living at University Houses in Madison because our husbands were all faculty at the university. We’d open our doors and the kids would run outside and play. It seemed idyllic then, at least for me, at least as long as I was wearing my mask. (My ex mother- in-law, who took pleasure in puncturing my joys much as a small child runs around puncturing balloons at a party, said to me when I excitedly told her I’d be hosting the coffee that week: “Oh yes. I remember doing things like that, when the kids were very small. You grow out of it.”)
Simone’s comment annoyed me and Naomi. “It’s like she has no memory of what all this is like,” Naomi said when it started raining during the coffee, and we had to rush inside my little townhouse, gesturing at “all this,” dozens of small children and babies running around and climbing on us and each other. Anna’s daughter grabbed a stuffed lion and sang, “Oh I just can’t wait to be king!” And Naomi’s daughter Sophie said, “Let’s play mama don’t be sessabee!” and several kids ran upstairs to my bedroom.
Simone came over to me. “You shouldn’t let them jump on your bed.”
I pretended to not hear her and, affecting absent- mindedness, wandered away. I didn’t know how to express what I was feeling – she obviously thought, as a more experienced mother, that I was being foolish to let the small kids jump on my bed (I could hear them through the ceiling, the dim thuds, the squeak of the coils, the chant, “Mama don’t be sessabee, mama don’t be sessabee”), and maybe I was, but on the other hand, it gave them a lot of joy and it was harmless and, most importantly, it gave me five minutes alone. Well, not precisely alone, as I was holding my then- youngest at my hip, but alone enough that I could have a conversation.
I wandered over to the dessert table and grabbed a huge slice of chocolate cake (I was 31 at the time, and breastfeeding, so I could eat practically unlimited amounts of food; now, if I so much as looked at that cake, I’d gain weight. But this too I didn’t see at the time, and thought I’d be able to snack on such food forever.)
Naomi, as always, knew what I was thinking. She took some cake and nodded in Simone’s direction, “If I ever forget what this shit is like, you can officially punch me.”
We both laughed. I couldn’t imagine forgetting, but when I saw Naomi recently, visiting Madison again, she’d forgotten it almost entirely, simply remembering all her mistakes and none of our joys. I had to remind her of her delicious homemade oatmeal- cherry cookies she’d make while our kids would watch and re- watch Donald In Mathemagic Land, or the remarkable children’s outfits she designed and sewed from scratch.
Mainly she tortured herself with her adult daughter Sophie, who’d grown into a brilliant woman who’d gone to Harvard, and had dreams of being on the Supreme Court, which seemed entirely possible – and who, beginning at 21, was diagnosed with schizophrenia, then bipolar, then autism, then two different personality disorders, then back to schizophrenia. Now 33, she’d been fired from several low- level jobs and didn’t work at all, and lived on food stamps, disability, and her parents’ generosity. But she insisted she was totally fine and refused to go to a psychiatrist anymore. Naomi and her husband had spent over $100,000 on various touted treatments they couldn’t afford; they were now in massive debt, plus Naomi’s husband had had prostate cancer and had taken an early retirement. Plus, Naomi’s mother had dementia, and her brother lived 2,000 miles away, so she was the one who visited her mother every day and took care of her when she’d contracted pneumonia and was convinced the staff was poisoning her. This all sounds almost intolerable, but honestly, nearly every woman my age has intolerable stories like these.
Only we don’t talk about it.
It’s a weird race we’re running, a Red Queen’s race in which, instead of running and running and never moving, we talk and talk, and never say anything. Rather than unbosoming our souls as we used to, or, at least, what we regarded as our souls – the deeply important job of raising our children – we now hole our souls in our bosoms, so no one can see, not even us.
I used to feel part of an enormous chain of mothers extending around the world and across time, in poetry, music, art, commercials, movies, books, in the structure of parks and the signs at parking lots. I played a critical role, a topic of fascinated and vitriolic discussions and debates and special considerations and contempt and worship.
Have mothers always been silent and silenced once we’ve turned into dried- out husks from so much nurturing, our seeds scattered? Think of all the ink spilled, the energy of commerce and industry, all the sound and fury devoted to mothers with young children – then contrast that with mothers of adult children.
Is it any surprise we thought we’d stop mothering once our kids were grown?
Our nests aren’t empty; we’re still here; sometimes, we peck at the dross, the leftover worms, bits of twigs, poop. And sometimes we have to rescue our birds and return them to the nest. And sometimes we have to toss them out. And sometimes – most commonly – we have to cheep at them from a distance, or fly out to their nests, then return to our own haunted nest, pretending we never flew out at all.
* * *
Naomi was telling me her therapist had told her to do “tough love” with Sophie. “What does that even mean?” Naomi said.
I was at her house again, which was decorated with dozens of her father’s paintings (he’d been a gifted, failed artist, who’d gotten his MFA from a top art school, never launched his career, and died of a heart attack at 42). “She says I’ve tried everything and nothing has worked, so what have I got to lose? What have I got to lose? Does she even know me? I mean seriously, does she know me? I can’t kick my own daughter to the curb. I just can’t. Remember Lisa? What have I got to lose!” This was a horrific incident with a mutual friend of ours whose son committed suicide at 22 while she was caring for her husband in the hospital, then whose daughter rapidly deteriorated. After a few years of desperately running from specialist to specialist, hospitalizing her, getting her into programs, not knowing what else to do as the daughter lay on the couch without talking or eating or moving, she and her husband were advised tough love, and listened. The daughter killed herself a few months after they’d set her up in her own apartment.
“How can you tell when tough love is right and when it’s dangerous?” I wondered aloud. “Are you supposed to do trial and error with your kid?” And for a moment I was overwhelmed with a cascade of images of Naomi worrying about Sophie, brushing her long white- blond hair with the baby curls at the bottom that her husband loved so much, holding Sophie’s party at the fire station because she’d wanted to be a firefighter when she grew up, so many images that blurred together in a kind of gestalt of Naomi with her plump arms reaching out to her daughter, her mouth open in worry, love, joy.
“It’s not your fault,” I said to Naomi, perhaps speaking to myself as well.
Her pale blue eyes filled with tears, and she picked up one of her beloved dachshunds, massaged its long ears, and said, her voice muffled, “I don’t recognize her now. My God. She chopped off her hair. She weighs like 80 pounds. She was always so driven and – and – and – Did you ever imagine it would be like this?” She looked up at me abruptly, still massaging her dog’s ears. “When you held that adorable baby in your arms?”
* * *
When my kids were small, I had a friend in her seventies, a sort of mother figure as my own mother was dying and 1,000 miles away. One day she looked exhausted and I asked her if she was okay. She said she’d gotten almost no sleep the night before. Before I could ask if she was sick, she said, “My 43-year- old is in the middle of a terrible divorce. My 46-year- old is still not married, and badly wants to be. And my 48-year- old is stuck in a terrible job he can’t quit.”
“Wait,” I said, horrified by a sudden realization. “This never ends?”
“Nah.” She shrugged. “They’re always your babies, you’re always their mother.”
* * *
There is an undefined age in which children stop becoming our primary responsibility, at least ostensibly. This may seem obvious, and it is from the perspective of the adult child: for them, they simply become adults.
It’s not obvious at all from the perspective of the mother.
For so many years, when they were teens, I’d wake up at 5 a.m., teach all day, then come home to make dinner, and basically do my second shift, which didn’t end until about midnight. I was often so exhausted, I’d fall asleep on the couch at 9 p.m., my phone at my ear and my ungraded student papers spilling onto the floor, and wake up instantly the moment any of my kids needed me to pick them up – from theatre rehearsals that went until 11 p.m., baseball or football practice, games, lessons, field trips, appointments, friends’ houses. I’d spring up like a puppet on a string, dash out of the house with my hair sticking up all over the place, and pick them up or drop them off or pick up a forgotten poster board needed for a project the next day, a forgotten $150 baseball mitt left at school.
Then, all at once, I was expected to simply stop.
But also not stop.
Apparently, I’m expected to know when to speak, when not, what to say when I do speak, when to intervene, when not, when to fly out and scoop up my kid, when to tell them to work through it. But the rules are never defined or even spoken of even as the stakes are stratospherically higher – while they choose the partner they will be with for the rest of their life, or navigate their careers, or deal with health issues (this is the worst), I must stand to the side, essentially wringing my hands or doing my best to not think of it all. Whereas just a mere five years earlier, I was up until 3 a.m. wiping their vomit from the bathroom floor, or anxiously waiting for them to come home after a night of partying, or taking them to a therapist it took 50 hours of intensive research to find and tons of money to pay for.
The clarity and certainty of parenting falls in inverse proportion to their age – the older they get and the more experienced you are, the less certain you are of how to parent and the more is at stake. Till they reach adulthood and you have no idea what the hell to do or say, and very little power over your adult child, even as they’re making idiotic decisions that may impact their entire lives. You have to simply watch and take it. Or sometimes speak out. But only in a certain way. Or sometimes lend a helping hand. But partly. Or sometimes give them money. But not too much. Unless they need it. Or sometimes open your door to them. If they need it. Maybe. Or at most, timidly ask something like, “Have you thought about – ?” Or something. I’m terrible at that sort of stuff. Who is good at it though?
Do you know?
* * *
When my kids were babies, I joked they’d made a secret pact to keep me sleepless at night: I’d get something like an hour of sleep before my baby would need to breastfeed; then, as I sleepily settled back in bed, my two- year- old would scream with night terrors for over an hour, unaware of anything; finally, I’d get her calmed, crawl back to bed – and my eldest son would call out, in his thirsty- in-the middle- of-the- night phase. He’d indicate this by heavily panting, and wouldn’t accept a cup left by his bed. I’d pop back up and hand him the sippy cup, which he’d gulp in one minute, then sigh deeply, and lay back down. I in turn would go back to my room, close my eyes at last – and my baby would cry again to nurse. Like a game of whack- a- mole. In the morning, my ex would express astonishment I was so tired. “But you went to bed at 9:30 last night, and it’s”– he checked his watch – “It’s 6:30 now.” He tilted his head in his best imitation of a puzzled manner. “That’s nine hours of sleep. You sure you’re okay?” (I tried to tell this story to sketch an illustration of why I divorced – taking on a wry, lighthearted persona – but quickly discovered that even this relatively minor example of his obtuse selfishness was considered shocking by the wider world. No one likes to hear of suffering unless there’s something in it for them, a lesson, schadenfreude, pity, a thrill, gratitude it’s not them. None of this applied to my marriage – it was too abusive – so I learned not to say anything at all.)
The point is, even when they “grow up,” it’s still a game of whacka- mole, only from a distance, with much less power and much bigger stakes. As I write this, a series of scenes flash through my mind like cartoon stills flashing rapidly to create an illusion of coherence. Which traumatic events should I relate? Which should I obscure? Unlike parenting tales about young children, tales by parents of adults must by necessity respect their autonomy and privacy (so should they for young children, but small children can’t tell you to fuck off).
A few years ago, two of my sons suffered major PTSD and depression, each in their own ways. For years it seemed they had a pact too, taking turns with their crises so that there was never a time with no crisis. I’d just flown my son back to his graduate school when my other son phoned me as I was teaching. He’d made a terrible mistake accepting his new job, he said, and he wanted to kill himself, and didn’t know who else to call. The kind paraprofessional in my classroom, seeing the expression on my face, said she’d watch the students for me (“This is just a job,” she said firmly. “Family is family.”), and, under the fluorescent hum of the teacher lounge lights and the electronic hum of the three soda and candy dispensers, I tried to decide whether I should hop in the car and drive down to him. He insisted he didn’t want me there. After hours of back- and- forth – with me dipping in and out of class all day, and in the car ride home – he gave a small laugh at himself, and said he was fine, fine, he didn’t mean it, he was just being a drama queen, yes, yes, of course he’d go to the hospital if he needed, no worries, he just had to deal with the transition, thanks for listening!
I was unable to sleep all night, having no idea (as usual) what the right course of action was: should I ignore him and drive down anyway? But he was an adult. But he’d reached out to me for help. But he said he wanted to deal with it himself and he was an adult. But he said he wanted to kill himself. But he’d laughed about it and said he was fine. But suicidal people often did that, didn’t they?
I called his former therapist and the suicide prevention hotline. His wonderful therapist actually called him and spoke to him for a half hour, at no charge. The man at the suicide prevention line sounded unruffled and authoritative, like a banker at a convention. “How about this,” he said. “Give him my direct number. Tell him to call me.” I gave my son the number but I doubt he called. I was in an agony of uncertainty. But he called a week later, thrilled, to tell me he’d been chosen for some prestigious conference. When I tentatively asked him how he was feeling otherwise, he was puzzled, and I had to remind about the phone call the week before. He laughed out right. Oh, that – it had just been a bad day. (When I told a friend over drinks about this, she said, “Yeah, they shit all over you. Then they feel better, and you’re covered in shit”).
Naturally, having a respite meant my other son had to choose this time to call, to tell me he thought he should just quit grad school and come home, and could I maybe pay for his airfare back? Eventually – in an hours- long text exchange, this time in the middle of the night – he worked it through and stayed there.
Meanwhile, my daughter texted me as I was driving into work at 6:30 a.m. to say this weird guy at work was creeping her out and kept “accidentally” touching her and she was thinking of reporting him to her boss. I dictated, tying to keep my text- voice neutral, “Good idea!” Then a thought occurred to me and I asked if he knew where she lived and she texted yes, he’d followed her home one day. So I worried about it all day, wondering if this “weird guy” was violent. Meanwhile, my youngest son called to tell me the PT he was getting at college for his torn ACL wasn’t working, and he was worried he’d never walk right again. And as I drove home, my younger daughter texted to tell me she and her fiancé had found a new apartment. I asked her about it, relieved to be genuinely happy for her; for weighing on all my interactions with her was the fact that her fiancé was an alcoholic, but both were pretending he wasn’t. I had no idea how to raise this one since she saw the drinking just as much as I did. “Got to go!” she texted. “We’re going out for drinks to celebrate!” Then, just as I was going to bed, my other daughter texted, to say she’d decided not to tell her boss, but “just deal with it,” and by the way, she’d spotted a mouse behind her oven. I told her to call the landlord, but she said she knew already and to please not tell her what to do as it made her feel helpless. “I’m just calling to vent, that’s all. You don’t have to race to solve all my problems.” The next day she called to ask if I could drive her to her eye doctor appointment as she had no car. Then I called my son to tell him I’d found a physical therapist I thought he’d like (I’d spent many hours researching, asking friends for referrals, etc). “Thanks!” he said. “I gotta go. Are you driving me to the appointments?”
Sometimes being the mother of an adult feels like an abusive relationship in which you simply cannot tell what the other party actually wants because it changes so often and they deny that it does. I know, I know. I’m a terrible mother for saying that. And of course, they are wonderful human beings, if I don’t say so myself. I should just let them figure out all their problems. I shouldn’t internalize so much. I shouldn’t wear a short skirt. I should be mindful of my biological clock. I should cut my hair short after fifty. I should exercise and take calcium so I don’t get osteoporosis.
* * *
How do you parent this adult you’re not supposed to be parenting? And how do you let go? When do you let go? What do you let go of? What exactly is mothering anyway?
If the entire goal is facilitating their growth into independent and productive members of society in a way that is true and good for themselves and others – then do we judge our “job” based on how far or near they are to that goal? What are the metrics? How does one gauge happiness or meaning or success? When is this final job assessment? When we’ve died? When they’ve lived their own lives? Or do we just spend 30 years of our lives throwing up our hands?
“I don’t want to know too much,” was one friend’s approach when her adult son moved back in during a job transition (supposedly). “His big gullumphing body in my kitchen is plenty.”
Other friends simply skip directly from “mother” to “grandmother,” like putting on an old familiar hat that doesn’t quite fit, but will do. Turning into a grandmother, one is then permitted to talk, and post photos of adorable grandchildren. But only gushing joy is allowed. Pity the older mother who doesn’t have grandchildren, or who doesn’t enjoy being the Betty Crocker of grandmothers, happily dispensing free babysitting at a moment’s notice while not being allowed to – heaven forfend – share her decades of experience with her very inexperienced daughter or son (unlike literally any other profession in which mentorship and expertise are admired). Instead we become semi- dotty semi- experienced older mothers who are (what else?) there for them when they need us, but not when they don’t.
A friend of mine.– a pediatrician, I might add – took time off work to fly up to her adult son’s house to watch his two small kids for free while he and his wife went on a vacation. Bathing the baby the first night, she suddenly heard a booming voice over a speaker, informing her it was “past the baby’s bedtime.” It was her own son, spying on her. The baby, he said sternly, needed to be in his crib. And next time, could she make sure he wore a hat when she took the kids outside?
At the other end are broken adult children one must rescue the grandchildren from. Older women are then expected to give up their own lives they’d just reclaimed. This is also rarely spoken of, except in terms of what good replacement mothers they are.
Would that there were a book, What To Expect When They’re In Their 20s, What To Expect When They’re In Their 30s, and so on – but alas.
Eventually, our children return, but as our parents, as with my own mother: I had to bathe her naked and wipe poop off her butt. Our daughters – almost always daughters – become us, with their own circuitous unformed path. That’s if we’re lucky, of course. Many mothers are simply abandoned.
When my first baby came out, his body slippery and alive, his slate- gray eyes alert to the brave new world around him, I couldn’t believe I’d produced something that miraculous out of my own body.
* * *
That screaming desperate terror in his eyes as he clutched the hood of my car.
* * *
When I had five teens and preteens, I took to reassuring younger parents. I felt so secure as a mother, I no longer had to prove myself. “Just do what’s right for you and your family,” I’d say earnestly.
I didn’t imagine a time – only a few years later – when “what is right for me and my family” would be unknowable.
* * *
My earliest memory is being in a crib – so I was quite young – and a doll at the foot of the crib started “talking” to me in the most terrifying tone, and I screamed, and I was unsurprised when my parents – I didn’t view them as parents; I viewed them as divine fixtures – arrived. They were tall, wavery creatures, indistinct near the top, a bit like El Greco figures, as, with indescribable relief, I reached out toward them.
When my oldest was a toddler, he’d wander slightly ahead of me, but, rather like my Pomeranian, would always know where I was without having to look around.
And they were – are, always are – our most precious creation, so precious we let them grow inside us, and emerge from our most private parts, filled with swollen power. I don’t think I once stopped to think what it was like mothering me, from my mother’s perspective, partly because I didn’t even view what she did as mothering; I think I viewed it as simply her being herself. She’d transformed, in my mind, from the dancer to the dance itself.
She died at 56, and I’ve missed her most of my children’s lives, but not more than now, when we could have bonded over this bewildering stage I find myself in. Why did I know so much more about coming- of-age tales, heroes’ journeys, monomyths.– all that structure and order, the lines and arcs, all that redemption and emergence, all those heroes setting out on their path, battling dragons, witches, wizards, monsters, emerging on the other side with a gift or power, stronger or wiser or more magical than ever?
Why did I know this story so well and not the chaotic, unformed, unfulfilling arc of mothering – the story arc without the story or the arc, even in archetype mode, even in fairy tale mode – with no resolution or gift at the end, or even an end, but instead with soundless loss, with sagging womb and flat breasts. The gift is that the gift leaves.
We bleed for our children, our breasts leak milk for them, we weep for them, we lift them high up laughing –
Oh, that I could return, and take them in my arms, and run.
DC Lambert has published short stories in Columbia, ACM, Cleaver, Stand, and Connections. This is her debut nonfiction publication.