Way before I became a mother my own mother warned me about something. She is the most honest person I know and she told me the relationship of mother- child is like a sado-masochistic neverland from which one never quite escapes. I giggled nervously and stopped taking my birth control pills.
Twelve years, two sons, one divorce and two marriages later, I, along with my sons' stepfather, are hard pressed to keep from torturing ourselves daily over the trials and tribulations of my older son's pending pubescent insanity and the younger one's, just, insanity.
Everything from holidays to birthdays to time with their friends, sleep overs, phone calls, homework and summer camp, sports and dropping out of sports, being chubby or being fit, eating or not eating ice-cream or playing the violin, going to bed and waking up on time, playing a board game or a computer game--everything is up for a probable discussion and possible conflict. We talk to our children (something I'm beginning to think may be overrated--okay, I'm joking!), and often to one another. We read books, we read articles, we talk with our parents, with other kids' parents and I listen to NPR religiously to and from work every day. Yet for every moment, evening, hour, or week we have of familial bliss with our well-balanced, happily developing little boys, there is another hour, week, day, evening or weekend during which they are bouncing off the walls, freaking out (literally), fighting with each other or us, or other kids, or feeling better than others or tons worse, or are ego maniacs or convinced they are born losers, making me, in particular, feel like a total and complete failure when I'm not shivering in anger, and wondering, "WTH?"
Because in truth, mothering is difficult, and what's more, there is no true objectivity within it. Attempting to be truly objective in mothering is like attempting to be truly objective in examining your own heart; you really can't see it and if you took it out to look at it you would no longer be alive.
Mothering is like this. Our children are as much a part of us as our hearts; we want what's best for them and what is in their best interest. Yet so often this is at odds with what feels right, or what's easiest, or what they are asking from us.
There was a time when I thought I'd be a great mother and, in certain moments, when the wind is blowing at the right angle and we haven't had to go to therapy or the emergency room, I still wistfully stare off into the middle distance and muse on that feeling. But more, nowadays I simply want to survive motherhood - I want to take pictures and videos and put them all in organized little folders on the computer so I can sit and look at them and love my darling boys without them in the room with me. I want to love them without feeling so responsible, so guilty, or so weighed down by what I have or haven't done to make them how they are or how they aren't.
It doesn't help that psychology is just beginning to turn the corner around the bend from assuming that every single facet of every single person's personality and psyche can be directly attributed to the kind of mothering they had. I mean, I already assume it's all my fault, but I'd like some kind of hope that maybe some of it isn't, here or there.
But in the meantime, I no longer try and be a perfect mother, but just good enough to still be able to breathe. I want to be close to my children and give them all I have, but once they start tap dancing on my good will and tying my soul up in knots, it's time to go to the gym, or take a shower, or watch some television, or read, or write, and let them eat Cheerios and play by themselves. I can indulge them in my love, but need to learn, every day, how to draw boundaries between love and masochism, and preserve some of my mental health in the process. It just may be this is the most powerful lesson I can teach them.
Aimee Boyle is a special education teacher and maker of Challah French toast. She lives on the shoreline of CT and is a regular contributor to EmpowHER.