Why I Love Being a Mom

I turned down the lights and held him for a moment before I sang him a nigh-night song. He rested his little head on my shoulder listening to a voice that only a baby could love. I laid him down, tucked his cozy blankets gently around his body, and said a little prayer thanking God for my special boy and whispered “amen” to which he yell echoed me, “AMEEEENNNNNN!” I kissed him one last time, whispered goodnight and turned to leave. My heart began to race. I’m almost free! A casual tip-toe quickly became a sprint followed by my own version of touchdown show-boating on the opposite side of his bedroom door. I made a beeline for the kitchen. That bowl of cereal that I had been craving was seductively whispering my name, “Come and get me! You won’t even have to share one bite!” Just moments after the milk bathed my mini-wheats in nummyness, my ecstasy came to a screeching halt. It was interrupted by a little boy screaming at the top of his lungs. It appeared to be something urgent. “Moooooommmmmyyyyy!” Staring longingly at my cereal, I ignored the first five to ten shouts. Eventually, I admitted that I would have to suspend the passionate affair between me and my late night snack. Slightly dissheveled, I tear myself away from my lover and head back to the slave cave. Making my way toward his room, the beckoning voice becomes louder with every step. I whisper urgently, “I’m coming honey.” Translation: “Please oh please stop screaming before you wake up your sister.” I open the door expecting to see him standing in his crib, but instead I find him laying just as I left him all nuzzled in his blankies. The only difference is his left arm is raised with his index finger extended. He looks at me and softly comments, “Boogie.” I fumble around his finger to find a miniscule yet sticky fragment, peel it off his finger on to mine, whisper good night and make my way back to my cereal, grinning ear to ear. Despite the intensely hard work, I wouldn’t trade this job for the world!

Ode to the First Borns

When my father was a young boy, he got his picture published on the front page of his community’s newspaper in recognition of bravery for putting out a local fire. What the newspaper failed to report (for the sole reason that he hadn’t confessed) was that the young home-town hero had bravely extinguished a fire that he himself started!
As my first born is getting older, sometimes, I feel a little bit like my dad in this story. As I parent her through new challenges, we are battling fires that, somehow, I feel responsible for starting. From the beginning, I have been the parent who felt the subtle yet irresistible pull toward high expectations, especially when it came to my oldest. I have always felt impressed by her and confident of her emerging abilities. Believing so highly in her, I have observed myself challenging her, oftentimes, seduced to realms beyond what is developmentally appropriate. I still remember with a tinge of pain, the day I took her to kindergarten readiness testing. As I sat in the far corner of the room watching her tiny hands struggle through the most rudimentary of exercises, I was overwhelmed with emotion. Tears ran down my face as I encountered with fresh eyes, the violent dissonance between what I had been expecting of her and this more accurate picture. As a tender green shoot, she had just barely penetrated through the soil into this thing we call life and I had been trying to hang swings from her branches.
Flash forward five years. As I now watch this same little girl, I observe an emerging young lady with a broad, and at times overwhelming, sense of personal responsibility. As her mom, I have taken on the role of trying to help her be gracious with herself, to accept personal limitations, and to give herself as well as others ample space for being human. I want her to be able to cope with the fact that sometimes when you do your very best, it still isn’t enough. I want her to be able to live with the reality that sometimes others let us down. And so I try to help her, and yet I must sit with the awareness that her whole life I have challenged her toward excellence, inadvertently lighting the match of perfectionism and fanning the flames of personal striving.