Mirrors and Moonlight Sonata

Blog Post Entry - #4 Monica Rae

- May 15th, 2020 -

Diapers vs Depends, Trends vs Traditions,

13 vs 40...

“What?” My daughter yelled as I knocked on the bathroom door. “Turn the music down,” I said, “I can’t hear “Wheel of Fortune” on the TV!”

When did this happen? When did I begin to prefer crosswords and “Moonlight Sonata” to echoes of dance party rhythms?

Eight years ago, I was sitting in a cramped living room, shoulder to shoulder with a group of women I barely knew, celebrating a mother-to-be. After building a ‘diaper tower’ we handed the expecting mother note cards on which we had written our token advice about motherhood. These cards were placed in a decorative box for her to pull out on the nights she was wide awake attempting to soothe her little one. Having been a mom for a while (a mom that was never at a loss for words) I promptly knew what to write on the card.

“Remember, the days are long – but the years are short!”

I am holding onto this truth as I plan a ‘quarantine surprise party’ for my baby…my 13-year-old baby.

It’s true a mother’s love is biased and never ending. It’s a love that forgives, accepts, and justifies. In its greatest moments it’s pure and inspiring like a young fawn learning to stand after birth, its mother knowing her young through scent and touch. And yet a mother’s love remains instinctual—seeking protection at all costs like a hovering hawk never far from her young—ready to devour any predator that gets too close to her. I would know this love the moment the midwife handed my child to me.

I was on call 24 hours a day, in full surrender to her cries for hunger, warmth and play. Motherhood was alluring in all its newness yet misleading in all its unknowns. The truth is there is no road map, no matter how good your example was or how many books you’ve read. It’s learning to ride a different kind of bike and the only way to do this is by falling over and over again. Stretch marks, wrinkles and changing breast size, free time that no longer belonged to me, endless conversations about diapers and each new thing she said and did…my life was no longer my own.

I was becoming someone else. I had to; my legacy would be reflected in her eyes.

I assumed the title Mother made me the all-knowing one. I would guide her, discipline her, empower her with wisdom and compassion. What I had not anticipated was the mirror she was holding up and the way her vulnerability would rip at my soul, revealing what I did not want to accept about myself.

Children disguise nothing. As mothers we are pulled into their naked truth—the diarrhea on the brand-new sofa, the tantrum in the airport because I left her favorite pink blanket on the plane, the throwing of rocks at kids at the playground, or the complaining in front of my co-workers about how many animal chores she has.

Every mother has her own struggles whether it’s an absent husband, an overbearing or distant family, a disabled child, or a demanding career outside the home and it all has a defining effect on her role as woman and mother. We become vulnerable, unsure of how the role will change us…not certain we want to change.

For years, I was afraid of change…. Trying to savor every moment in my picture album, keeping myself busy, wasting time holding tightly to moments that passed sooner than I could capture them on my cell phone.

Young or old? Passion or wisdom? Is that it? Is it one or the other? Aren’t there two sides to every coin?

The truth is…. Nothing is lost—only changed.

But why are we so afraid of change?

Our fear is not in our inadequacies…. it is in the hidden truth we are capable!

Our fear is concealed in the nakedness of having to try, learn, apologize, and become students of life again.

Every year on her birthday, I snuggle beside her and tell her the story of her birth. How I had it all planned out—a cat sitter lined up, my bag and birthing plan beside the door weeks ahead of time, her room stocked with clothes and diapers for the months ahead.

The perspective of time allows me to chuckle at her 3-week early arrival. I did not know then how the unpredictable would haunt the role of motherhood. Or how years later I would begin to welcome the unknown.

Recently, I watched the Netflix movie, “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.” One of the relationships in the drama is between a father and son at odds with how to sustain the farming they and their community depend on. Covered in dirt, relying on a single meal a day the boy approaches his father in the field explaining to him the extraordinary idea of using wind power to pump water. He glances up at his defeated father and says, “There are things I know that you don’t know.”

The camera shifts to the father, his face says what words cannot—the audacity of the child, to assume he knew something his father didn’t.

Later the film would reveal the sobering truth—the audacity of the father, to assume he knew everything.

My child has humbled me with her honesty, inspired me with her compassion, challenged me with her differences and revealed to me on more than one occasion the hypocrisies that I cling to in my attempt to balance the roles of woman and mother.

She’s a teenager now. She pushes my boundaries out of curiosity much like she did as a toddler—using words instead of wails. Her room is messy because I keep my kitchen clean. She prefers laughter while I gravitate toward the kind of truth that makes you cry. She likes crop tops and I try to hide my middle age curves. As I watch her enter her teen years I know there will be life pains I can not keep her from, differences and opportunities we will navigate and yet she is as she’s always been….determined to hold onto happiness.

I learned what my soul pleasures were not when I was chasing kids on the playground in grade school, I learned it instead when I glanced at the profile of my 13 year old learning to drive, her willingness to embrace the unknown, confident with love beside her. I was young again; tear drops of pleasure that had come from change…

She isn’t a teacher by degree, although she surely teaches me

She has more compassion, than I can muster on my hardest days

She returns often with her affection and her praise,

what a blessing I received

In my…

My ever-present mirror, my child teacher, who I hold so dear

DEDICATION: This blog is dedicated to my Emma.

*Parts of this blog are used by permission from my published book, “The Middle of Ordinary.” Available on Amazon and personal order.