Figuring out this Mama Thing

Do you remember what you were thinking when you had your kids? You sat in that hospital room and you held that little bundle of warmth in your arms, you counted fingers and toes, you marveled at the length of their lashes and the perfectness of their nose. You realized for the first time in your life that you now know what Heaven smells like and you thought that nothing in the world would ever beat that exact moment. You spend a couple of days in the hospital oohing and awing with friends and family at the most perfect creature in the whole entire world and you think I’m gonna rock this mama thing! Then they come in with the wheelchair and the papers and they send you on down the road and at some point (for me it was pulling up in the driveway) you realize that you are now in charge of another human being that can not do one dadgumn thing for themselves. In that moment you panic just a little bit and you start to wonder who in the hell thought that you were mature enough to take care of this perfect little person.

After a few tearful phone calls, lots of diaper mishaps and more spit up than you can imagine you find yourself up in the middle of the night exhausted and at the same time totally and completely content. You’re doing it! You are not only caring for this baby but you’re actually doing an okay job, you’re exhausted and possibly covered in foul smelling odors, you haven’t washed your hair in 4 days but you realize you’ve got this. You have this mama thing figured out.

About three years later once again you start to question your ability to be a qualified parent. This once sweet little blob of a human no longer listens to you. They want to touch everything and put it all in their mouths. They want to run and not be held, they don’t need sleep (even though good Lord you do!). They lay down in the middle of the grocery store aisle screaming because you wouldn’t buy them the goldfish food even though you don’t own a fish and they decide that the checkout line is the perfect place to ask you the most intimate questions about their bodies in the loudest voice ever. Finally you make it home and you walk in the door with six bags of groceries (one of which includes the goldfish food) loaded down in your arms and promptly trip over a monster truck sending food flying across the floor. At that moment you sit them down in front of the TV with crackers and a juice box (even though you swore you’d NEVER be THAT mom), you clean up the mess, put away the groceries and go into the closet to cry. You cry because you’re exhausted, because your house is a mess, because you have no clue who you’ve become and what you’re doing with your life anymore.

Ten minutes into that pity party you are throwing for yourself you hear little feet coming down the hall straight to the sounds of your quiet sobs. They walk in and push their warm little bodies in your lap and lay their chubby hands covered in cracker dust on your cheeks, they tell you “don’t be sad Mama” they’ll share their snack with you. An hour later your husband comes home to find you curled up on the sofa with juice boxes and books and snacks and a messy house and you couldn’t care less because clearly you have this mama thing figured out.

Life goes along with these little ups and downs and then junior high comes and I swear puberty hits them like a freaking brick and turns them into something that quite possibly isn’t even human. Where once their were no boundaries now there’s closed doors. Where once their was more conversations than you could keep up with now there is only silence and eye rolls. It’s so hard to be the center of their universe one day and the next be “literally the most embarrassing person on the planet!” You spend your days speaking with your friends asking if they’re going through the same thing, you read books and monitor their social media to make sure they’re okay. You spend your nights trying to connect with them over the dinner table and forced family outings and then there’s the constant prayers. Sometimes you actually just want to shake them because they have so much attitude and the next minute you want to cry for them because you remember that this is the worst part of youth, trying to figure out who you are when you’re not a child but not yet an adult. But you can’t fix it and you’re frustrated right along with them, with the lack of knowledge of how to make this all better and all you can think is that clearly you are failing them.

Then one day your kid comes home crying because everything sucks and they hate everyone and everyone hates them and they just don’t know what to do. You sit perfectly still listening to them rant, you barely breathe for fear that something as small as a text message coming through will stop this moment and they’ll stop speaking again. While you sit and listen you notice their bodies are getting closer to you on the sofa and that they’re starting to turn into you and the next thing you know they’re curled up next to you holding on and in that moment you know, you know that no matter what they say you’re still their person and that maybe you were wrong and you still have this mama thing figured out.

One day you suddenly realize that you made it eighteen years with this human and that you haven’t completely screwed them up and they’re graduating and going off to college; and it’s completely overwhelming because clearly it was only five minutes ago you were in that hospital holding on for dear life to this person that you had no idea you could love that much. You’re still holding on for dear life but it’s different now, you’re holding onto the moments as that child starts to walk away. Senior year is full of lasts and you document every one praying that you will never forget a single second and that you are making it the most memorable year of your kids life.

All of a sudden August comes and they’re gone. The first month or so is filled with texts and phone calls and trips home. Then that place that they now live in becomes their home, they have their own people, their own lives and what’s happening back home isn’t that big of a deal. You try to be a ‘cool mom’ and give them their space but you kinda fail at it. You nag about grades, about their lack of sleep, their abundance of partying, the people they choose to surround themselves with, the amount of money they spend, their lack of communication or visits home. Then one early morning while sitting with your coffee praying over these kids that aren’t really kids anymore you realize that the harder you try to keep them tied to you the harder they pull away trying to figure out who they are. You get this (finally) and you step back, you give them their space. You don’t give up, you don’t stop communicating but you give them what you think they need. You worry, you pray, you cry, you talk to your husband until he’s no longer listening. You fear they’ve literally gone off to school and forgotten who you are and what you did for them, all the sleepless nights spent staying up with them or waiting for them to come home. It’s so hard to sit back and watch the person who was once dependent on you for absolutely everything act like they no longer need you. You start to wonder if anything will ever be the same again.

Then one day you come home quickly between work and rushing off to a meeting and you walk up to the door to find a package from the town your kid now calls home. So you Face Time that kid and wake them up from a nap at five in the evening ’cause that’s college life and while on the phone with them you open this present that wasn’t just a present, it was truly a GIFT, a gift they spent too much money on because they saw it and thought of you. But the best part of the whole thing is a two page letter written by this kid that sometimes makes you crazy and keeps you up worrying and praying at nights and you realize while reading it just how much this kid actually KNOWS you and how they’ve paid attention to who you are and to what you’ve been saying all these years. So now you’ve ruined your makeup ten minutes before you have to leave and you can’t stop sobbing like a baby but it doesn’t matter because you sit back and you realize that maybe this moment comes really close to beating that moment in the hospital 18 years ago and that you actually did figure out this mama thing after all.