Jul 8

Jul 8 All Out Mom

teaching life, parenting, personal growth

Summer was different when my girls were little. I fell into the role of all out mom trying to make up for the mom I wasn't during the school year. So we baked, went to the library, had tea parties, and stacked towers of blocks sky high in their bedroom. Those were sweet days in my memory; it's too bad I didn't see how sweet they were when I had them.

Now, one daughter is working full time with a college degree listed on her transcripts, and the other, still working on that degree, dashes into the house from time to time to 'go shopping' from our kitchen and refrigerator. Sometimes when they come for dinner and we all sit down together to once again be the family we were when they were little, my husband catches me reaching my hand forward to stroke one of their arms. That's when he gives me the look. I see him giving me that look, and I drop my hand. There is a part of me that misses all out mom role that is still inside of me.

Summers where I live are HOT, really hot. We used to spend a lot of time in our pool, me sitting by the side to watch them while they played and choreographed routines with a beguiling, floating whale. I would run inside from time to time to fetch thirst appeasing iced tea for me, or pop-sickles I fashioned from juice and fruit from some Martha Stewart recipe I found to make me feel more mommy. At night is when I would busy myself to quell the loneliness inside.

That loneliness was not a regular loneliness. It was not caused from not being with my children and husband. It was a different loneliness; it was a loneliness of unsure mothering. For ten months a year I spent inordinate amounts of time with other people's children, helping them grow and thrive. I would rush home late in the day and gather my own sweet girls around me, only to dash off again the next day. It wasn't easy. I was one of the first generations where women worked, that's what we did. We left our sweet children for other people to care for until we could come dashing home.

The loneliness was dormant during the ten months of the school year, to awaken come summer. I would be so full during the day, doing this and that with students, with my colleagues. I was full in the evening with the love of my sweet girls. The sweet smell of their skin and their hair would follow me into my dreams and with me to school the next day. It was the dash home on the last day of school come summer that caused that loneliness, a moment between moments of fullness, that made me doubt my mothering.

I was lonely inside for the mother I thought I should be, not the mother I was. Now, glancing at my fully grown daughters, and noticing how my youngest tilts her head when she laughs, and how my oldest daughter floats a little when she walks, I know I did good. I was the all out mom.