Just A Mom

Unless you catch me on a weekend working outside, I normally appear to have it together. The key word here is “appear.” Make-up on, hair a deliberate mess, and clean clothes equals normal, right? Oh, but the symphony of chaos inside my head. It’s not like voices that don’t belong to me but rather a loop of self-doubt and second guessing. I second guess on a professional level. I would match up my skillz with the best of them.

This parenting thing is tough. My expectations of emerging from the flames of adolescence and the teen years has been extinguished by reality. I foolishly thought that once they reached adulthood I would be golden. In my fantasy, I discover that I hadn’t screwed them up too badly and would celebrate by waving my success in the faces of my imaginary critics. Uh, wrong.

Grown children become brave. Brave in the sense that they reveal things to you in a way that they would not have done at an earlier stage in life. Now, I will claim a minor victory in that they are comfortable enough with me to say things that I still can’t imagine spilling to my mom. My kids don’t afford me the luxury of building a pretend existence. If they would just allow it, I could construct something spectacular; not real, but amazing!

Katlyn was my first. I was only 19 years old when she was born. I was instantly maternal. I vividly remember the first time that I laid eyes on her and felt this unexplainable rush of love and protectiveness. I saw no further than that moment. I had no idea of the multiple ways I could screw up as a parent. There are so many, and I have probably danced around nearly all of them. I just knew that I would die for her.

My only sure goal was to give my kids what I didn’t have; to take the way that I was parented and do the complete opposite. Now in choosing this philosophy, I pretty much dismissed anything that my parents did right. Yes, there were some things that they did right. I was just unwilling to acknowledge those things at the time. I would parent by example. This meant that I would set these unrealistic expectations of myself and others and let my kids marvel at how brilliantly I handled it all (I am a smartass. They didn’t marvel.) Perfection was the name of my game which translated to robotic. I didn’t let my kids see raw emotion which I am still pretty uncomfortable with. I was terrified of them seeing me make a mistake.  I gave a valiant effort at maintaining a spotless home because in my family this was a clear indicator that you were doing it right. It was ridiculous then and still is today. I never let my kids know when I was stressed out or overwhelmed and I definitely did not let them know that I was winging the whole thing; not a clue what I was doing. Still not quite confident in the whole parenting thing this many years later.

I am a believer in the concept that how we love is determined by how we were loved. If you are one of the fortunate ones who felt loved unconditionally, no matter what, you are probably better at expressing your emotions and feelings than I am. I can write it, but I don’t want to have to look at you and say it. So, as my children age, I find that I am less confident now then I was when I started this journey nearly 23 years ago. I am still learning though, and willing to grow, change and evolve. This is where I swoop in for the win: my kids still speak to me, they all will admit that they love me, and the majority of them still claim me as their mother.