On Motherhood

It’s hard being the mommy. Especially when you’re not really the mommy anymore. I mean, harder-than-algebra hard.

In the span of six swiftly passing years, I have been a military wife with two young kids, a single mom (almost the same thing), a newlywed and mother to a blended family and now an empty-nester. I am thrity-six years old.

My now grown son is moving to Germany in a matter of weeks and my teenage daughter lives fifteen hundred miles away with her Dad and large step-family. I have a beautiful stepson but he lives with his mom and step-dad in a town 70 miles from our house so our hands-on parenting has been reduced significantly.

Funny thing, life. I became a parent when I was too young to know that I wanted to be a parent. I spent many years wondering when I would get to taste the freedom that my peers had in their late teens and early twenties. Many days were spent wishing I didn’t have to be the mommy. Sometimes I would curl up in a ball in my darkened bedroom and wish I could go back and do everything over the ‘right’ way.

Now, sometimes, all I wish is for time to go backwards so I can experience it all again, only this time paying more attention to the little things and this time doing it with a mate who wants to be intimately involved in each and every minute detail.

I know I was a good mom. I know I am still a good mom – as good as I can be from such a long distance. I know my kids think I am great and they know what a hard time I had and how I did my best despite the hardships and the challenges.

Mistakes were made (nothing too serious, I hope), but I did most of it pretty well not even considering that I was at a distinct disadvantage in numerous ways. I was extremely young (17), formally uneducated (high school dropout), and lower income (can we say 'poor, white trash'?). However, a combination of good genes and continuously improving parenting skills resulted in two very excellent young people, if I do say so myself. I guess being semi-smart and semi-bored helped me give these kids an interesting growing up experience. To say the least!

One thing I learned very well was how to be flexible. Part of that comes from being a civilian in the military world and moving every three years. Part of that just comes from being a parent – each new phase of development, each new school year, brings new challenges and new expectations. Now that my kids are basically out of the house, I’ve got all this “flexibility ability” and not that much to be flexible about. Sure, there is work and school and my fabulous husband and the cat, but they are all pretty low maintenance and not at all difficult. I don’t want the chaos that used to reign supreme in my life and in my house, but I miss the challenges. The frustration that comes from having a problem and needing to work (hard) for the solution.

I know I’ll get over it. There are so many ways in which I like having no (direct, hands on) parenting responsibility. It’s cool to come home as late as I want and not have to deal with someone else’s homework or issues. It's (really) nice to come home and see the sink not full of dirty dishes. Et cetera.

I’ve finally got the freedom I craved as a young adult and a young parent. Only now, I don’t really want it. I want to have more babies and raise them to be the beautiful, thoughtful and loving people that my kids are now. I want the craziness and the sleep-deprivation and the dirty diapers. I want the preschool and the dropping off and the shopping for new shoes every six months. I want to shed tears on the first day of kindergarten and I want the Saturdays spent at t-ball or soccor practice.

I want to go to a different classmate's birthday party every other weekend and spend a fortune in birthday presents, but get it all back on my kids’ birthday when all of those kids come and lavish ours with presents in return. I want to go to parent-teacher conferences and be slightly offended when they say “little Q is very bright but spends all day day-dreaming” but also slightly proud to know that our kid is thinking of something other than what they’re being told to think. I want it all. The good, the bad and the overwhelmingly hard.

This is all part of the adjustment period I am sure. Combine that with a loudly ticking biological clock and I think I might need therapy! And part of me wonders, seriously, if I hadn’t had my tubes tied at age 22, would I really want to start all over again now? Or would I have had 5 more kids with my ex and been committed to an asylum from the chaos that would have ensued? Would I be happy to quit my job and drop out of school yet again in order to stay home and be a mommy?

The answer to all of those questions is probably yes. YES. I would have wanted to start over. Even though I would have probably had five more kids with my ex and I would probably have been committed to an asylum. I would be ecstatically happy to start again now with the man I love, stay home, bake cookies and watch Sesame Street.

I am still a mom. I’ll always be the mom, right? I talk to my daughter nearly every day and our conversations are light-years better than when she lived with us. She’s 16. Need I say more? She has a job interview today! Good luck, Jojo! My son will be here in 4 days! My baby boy is all grown-up. For real. And I still want to cut his food for him and tie his shoes.

Motherhood is a journey. As Cosmo-grrl says, Motherhood is the only profession that, by the time you're really good at it, you retire! I miss my kids like crazy. I know they’ve just left the nest (perhaps a little prematurely) and that’s not a good thing or a bad thing. It just is. I know it was inevitable they would leave and move on and have lives of their own.

I just didn’t know that it would be harder to let them go than it was to have them in the first place.