POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE—OF PARENTHOOD
THE FAMILY GROOVE'S RESIDENT MOM-ENTATOR,
SASHA BROWN-WORSHAM REPORTS ON THE MADNESS OF MOTHERHOOD
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
Everyone told me the first time my daughter called me Mama would be magical—
“you will never forget it,” one woman told me, tears in her eyes, perhaps
remembering the first time the toddler and screaming, “Mommy, I want to GO”
and pulling at her sleeve had said that word.
Well, I must be the worst mother in the world. Because I can’t remember. My daughter is only 12 and a half months old. But I cannot remember the first time she called me Mom.
Even in my imagination, the moment was magical. My own mother died when I was 16, so it has been 14 years since anyone in our family went by that moniker. I knew I would cry when Samara said my name. I would gather her in my arms, rock her, tell her about her grandmother and remember all the good things. But somehow there was never an actual moment. It may have been around nine months when words would spill from her lips and her father and I would say: “was that?”; “Could that have been?” Basically, we were clueless and so by the time she was saying “Mama” on a regular basis, she had been saying it for at least a month.
It seems most of my moments in parenthood—the ones I envisioned with romantic anticipation while I was pregnant—happened like this. For the entire 38 weeks of my first pregnancy, I imagined the moment my child would emerge from my womb. She would be lovely and clean. I would be angelic and motherly. My husband and I would look upon her and weep, our souls merging in this new, perfect being. I would barely notice that third phase of labor—the part when the placenta comes—because I would be so enamored with my new child.
Actual reality: she was slimy and covered in this sticky white stuff. I was so relieved to have her out of me and begging the midwife to just “yank the placenta out already.” She kept crying, loudly, which was doing nothing to distract me from the fact that my midwife was wielding a needle and thread dangerously close to the sorest spot on my body.
“Might she have colic?” I asked the nurse on duty, who laughed.
“No,” she told me. “It is way to early to tell.”
And with that, motherhood had begun. It was too early to tell what my baby would be like, even though I imagined I would know all the second she was born. And, by the way, that second would not even resemble the vision. I was well on my way to realizing that most of what I imagined would not come to pass.
Even now, with a toddler, I am surprised sometimes. Sometimes, when she is asleep and I miss her, I imagine the morning when I will be able to hold her again. I know I will scoop her from her crib, hold her in my arms and we will stand and slowly rock back and forth. I will be grateful for her and she will be quiet and cuddly.
And yet, every morning looks roughly like this: I hear her cries through the monitor, briefly consider putting my earplugs in, stumble to her room, lift her out of the bed and immediately start my day as her servant.
That little pointer finger, the one I was so thrilled that she learned to use three months ago, it has now become the “dictator finger” and it basically rules my day. In the morning, that finger points out of the room, through the open door. In the kitchen, it is accompanied by a loud, “Ba” indicating that she wants her morning bottle (yes, she still takes a bottle, another vision of parenthood I have had to amend for reality).
When I first became a mother, just over a year ago, I had so many ideas of how things would go. Most, if not all, of them have flown the coop. Oh sure, I occasionally get a moment of motherly bliss—the imagined moments where I would hold my child as she cuddled into my chest—when my daughter is either extremely tired or pathetically sick and all she wants to do is rest her head on my shoulder. But mostly I spend my days diverting tantrums, trying to keep her fingers from electrical outlets and listening to Old Macdonald 20 times an hour. Most of my “motherly bliss” comes after 8:30 when my husband and I can break out the sherry, put our feet up and watch a movie.
It is not all bad. In fact, some things—our sleep schedule, for instance—have been far better than I anticipated, although nothing and no one can prepare any mother for the haze that accompanies those first six weeks home from the hospital when the idea of sleep almost becomes like forbidden porn to the new parents. I can remember sneaking off while my husband was changing our daughter’s diaper. And even though I knew he would find me, I just wanted the five minutes I could get before he did. But that time passed—and faster than I had anticipated. By two months, our child was sleeping soundly through the night and we were getting some much-needed alone time.
Prior to children, I had everything plotted and coded. My future was a list; the check marks my accomplished goals. No longer. As a mom, there are always things that cannot be planned, cannot be placed on a list. Sometimes Sam will want her Cheerios at noon, sometimes at 10 and sometimes not at all. Sometimes she will scream and cry when I put her jacket on her and sometimes she will love it. Sometimes she will eat her dinner and sometimes she will feed it to the dog.
And when my husband and I start to wonder: will it always be like this—so unpredictable, so unlike what we expected? I have to tell myself it is still too early to tell. My goals now are much simpler. I want to get a shower at least once a day. I want to go for a run. I want to have a little time to work. And I want to enjoy her for every little thing she does, even the unpredictable, chaotic things. After all, I may have forgotten the first time she called me “Mommy,” but I definitely remember the last.
Looking at me through heavy lidded eyes, a sleepy grin on her face, she waved slowly before turning into her blanket and placing her thumb in her mouth. “Baba Mommy.”
Sasha Brown-Worsham is a mother and freelance writer who lives in Boston, MA where she writes and chases her suddenly mobile daughter around the house.
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