“Are you okay, mama?”
He knows what this is like. The flu he’s had for the last week has made its way to me.
“Do you need a bucket to barf in?”
No, I tell him. I’m okay.
“Do you need some more water?”
He’s taking inventory of all the things we’ve so recently offered him, but right now I’ve got everything I need.
I can see the concern in his small blue eyes. He still wants to help.
Quietly, gently, he lays his head on my shoulder. It’s the perfect medicine.
People tell me I’m brave for sharing my experience.
I’m not feeling very brave this week.
People have said they’re in awe of my honesty.
Sometimes I’m scared to be honest.
My story has taken a turn and for a week now I’ve been trying to find a way to share it. This turn has two parts and both need to be told. I need to tell them. I started to write one – the really hard one – and the other came out. The first is apparently not ready. I’ve tried to coax it, to assure it the telling will be okay, but it’s not ready.
I’m not ready.
The second is now in draft – a jumble on the page. Its format doesn’t do it justice. There is weight to this decision I’ve made – both the heavy weight of admission and the powerful weight of potential.
This part of my story needn’t be poetic but I need to tell it the right way.
I’ll wait, and it will come.
When Connor was really young – I don’t know how young, but young enough to still be considered an infant – I got a book from the library called Raising Your Spirited Child. My husband saw it on the stairs and gave me a funny look.
“Oh, you better believe we’re going to need that,” I assured him.
I skimmed the book and my resolve fled in fear at some of the descriptions of “spirited” behaviour. I don’t think I actually got to the how-to-deal-with-it stuff before promptly sliding it down the library’s return chute, out of sight.
I’ve thought of the “spirited child” concept many times since and I now know exactly what the author is talking about. The complete and utter meltdown because I’ve put his water in the wrong cup. The sheer determination this child shows in refusing to go to sleep easily or stay asleep once there. His spirit – unless sick – seems to know no bounds.
A Today’s Parent article about parenting the “difficult” child has me thinking about this again. “Difficult” isn’t really a word I like in the context of children and, besides, saying he’s “difficult” doesn’t really help people who don’t have difficult kids understand what’s meant by that. I do, however, like how the article’s author defines it:
First let me say that by “difficult” I mean kids who are more difficult to raise. In fact, more is the operative word here — more active, more inclined to explore (read: get into things), more emotional, more likely to question, more labour-intensive, more just about everything — apart from obeying, sleeping and playing by themselves.
This describes Connor exactly. Everyone who meets him comments on how “busy” he is. He gets into everything. He comes by his emotional nature naturally (ahem) but even I’m surprised sometimes at how immediate and explosive his reactions are. My mom once commented that he’s the type of kid who needs four parents. Let me assure you – as one of the two parents he has, I’m well aware we’re understaffed.
The “except” part of that description applies too. Obey? Not so much. And he’s not good at playing by himself – less so, even, than the average almost-three-year-old. And have I mentioned that he doesn’t sleep well? There have been times it felt like he didn’t sleep at all.
The Spirited Child book offers the same observation:
Research shows that spirited kids are wired to be “more”—by temperament, they are more intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent, and uncomfortable with change than the average child.
“More” sums it up perfectly. Everything about Connor is “more”.
I’m a Type A and an introvert (which are not, as you might think, mutually exclusive qualities). I like to be busy, but on my terms. I like to have control over things. And at the end of the day I like to come home and decompress with a little quiet time. Having all of that and being a mom to a toddler – especially one who is “more” – do seem to be mutually exclusive. I know it comes with the territory, but it’s tough for me. Really tough.
My husband and I have always talked about how we think this side of him is a good thing. I’d much rather have a happy, active kid than one who sits there like a barnacle on a rock.
I’m starting to appreciate what this actually means. The summary of the Spirited Child book notes that spirited children “possess traits we value in adults yet find challenging in children.” Quite coincidentally, my therapist pointed this out recently too.
Connor is smart, curious, creative, active, attentive and really, really loving. I do value those qualities in him now, even if I don’t always appreciate the side effects.
I really, really hope he carries those qualities with him to adulthood, and I’m willing to do my part as his mom to support that.
There are times when I embrace my motherhood – when I temporarily allow the rest of the world to fade away and cease to matter. In these moments I find peace and rightness, as though I’ve found the fulcrum on which my life is meant to pivot.
This is not to say the rest doesn’t matter at all. I will always be more than a mother. It’s just that in those moments I am a mother but I am also me. I can see myself. I’m not hidden behind a curtain I didn’t see being pulled.
Connor has been sick since Friday night. Nothing major (knock wood) – just the stomach bug that’s going around. But it knocked him flat. My whirlwind lost his whirl.
For the better part of three days I’ve been sitting on the couch, holding my small boy. His temperature raged and, in compensation and protest, his hot little body melted into me, sleepy and still.
I did all the mama things that come with a child who has a stomach bug – cleaning up, calming down, doing laundry. When clothes needed to be changed I changed them. When we ran out of sheets in the middle of the night I improvised.
But those are just the things we must do as mothers. We do them with love, but they must be done. To be fair, my husband took on most of the worst of it, but still. Those things are not the things that truly define me as a mother.
Mother and Child on a Couch, by James Abbott McNeill Whistler
When my child had been sick in the middle of the night and wanted his mama, I was a mother.
When I sat on the couch hour after hour holding him, I was a mother.
When I coaxed medicine down his throat, counting squirts and promising juice chasers, I was a mother.
When I lay next to him in bed at night listening to his breathing long after he had fallen back asleep, I was a mother.
This type of illness is nothing compared to what some mothers face. Nothing. But the type of worry – the what-if worry – is in the same category. It makes us mothers.
I am a mother because, when he woke up after that first long night and wanted nobody but his mama, I returned to the couch and continued to hold him even though my body ached with tiredness.
I am a mother because I would have taken on every pain, every symptom, if it would have taken it away from him.
I am a mother because during this time his every need came before mine. I gave up sleep when I needed to sleep. I delayed meals when I needed to eat. I passed on exercise when I needed to move.
Instead, I held him.
Because I am his mother.
