Today I’ve got a poem for you and an introduction that turned into more analysis than I expected. I took another crack at reading this aloud for those of you who like to embroider, walk your dog or otherwise multi-task instead of just sitting and reading. Love yous. If you’re not interested in my weird-sounding voice, please, just keep reading.
Patience, all we need is
My friend recently posted something on Instagram about how raising teenagers makes you want to eat your young or something like that. Naturally, I don’t know what she’s talking about since the new Instagram profile I’m “curating” only showcases overexposed pictures of family perfection and mom-fluencer levels of radical acceptance and joy: If you’re not best friends with your teenager, you’re doing it wrong!
Admittedly, I do consume my fair share of parenting content and I bounce between the super embracers (People who gleefully call themselves mama) and the super rejectors who talk more about alcohol than parenting. Sometimes those people are funny, but funny’s hard and I’m not sure they always hit the mark.
I’ve found some of the most decent advice in the New York Times parenting newsletter. But one needs only to read the comments below literally any post about parenting and you will see that people like to throw parent-shame like confetti and argue that no one can parent like they can.
I recently read a powerful book by comedian and writer Jessi Klein called I’ll Show Myself Out. It highlights the absurdities and sometimes dark moments of being a mom. But it seems to focus, as so many parental books do, on the stage of motherhood that is the baby/toddler years.
Ms. Klein had her first baby at forty, so we could relate on a generational level which is always nice. I’m the old mom now so it’s nice to be near other old moms. But, having my third child in my 40s, I’ve found that I’ve been able to laugh through the absurdity of those years a little more. The snot, the tantrums, the same cartoon on repeat seem to have gone by faster this time, a new phase always replacing the worn-out one. But thoughts like these definitely registered:
The truth is that motherhood is a hero's journey. For most of us it's not a journey outward, to the most fantastic and farthest-flung places, but inward, downward, to the deepest parts of your strength, to the innermost buried core of everything you are made of but didn't know was there.”
Shwew. And by the way, this book is mostly funny.
What she’s talking about though, is Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces which outlines the sameness of every story you’ve been consuming from Star Wars to The Lion King. Except that mostly in these stories, the woman stayed while the man went on the journey. The woman didn’t even blog about it! Ms. Klein continues:
To illustrate, I invite you to investigate your gut reaction to the term “mommy blog.” Personally, I’ll confess, it always strikes me as mosquito-ish, something small and trivial. If this rings true for you as well, don’t feel guilty; we’ve all just internalized that the word “mommy” automatically diminishes whatever noun comes after it. I guarantee you if Ernest Hemingway were alive and writing an online column about his experience of being a father, no one would call it a “daddy blog.” We’d call it For Whom the Bell Fucking Tolls.
I wish Ms. Klein’s timeline was ahead of me so I could see how she processes each stage of motherhood. Because keeping an infant alive and teaching a young person to thrive are each draining in their own ways - we could fight over which is worse. And then there’s college and empty nesting and stages within stages that I’ve yet to comprehend!
Now I find myself in the “young adult” stage aka, the worst stage you have memory of in your own life. Instead of snot it’s puberty/periods, instead of tantrums it’s more earnest tantrums, and instead of the same cartoon, it’s Snapchat or watching videos about baking cakes with clips of cartoons above the cake baking (and she wonders why she’s feeling like her attention span is shattered - and also I have no experience in this! We still had house phones!).
And car rides. I don’t begrudge anyone a ride anywhere if they’re doing what they love, but it’s a little like sitting by the crib when they’re infants - you’re glad you can protect them but also, go the hell to sleep!
What I loved about Jessi Klein’s book was her use of the hero’s journey as the throughline for herself. Because we should honor the journey! Of course, we should! Mothers aren’t just heroes because we face the crises of our families with a full purse and a band-aid or a plate of organic whatever at the ready. We’re heroes for the journeys we face within ourselves.
And I guess what I’m trying to say is, growing children will make you confront that self more than you ever thought possible. They will make you question the journey. You will search for Yodas to guide you. You will work to become master of both your world and theirs. You will defeat the enemies of your own psyche…sometimes.
And time surely does go on. They grew out of the toddler stage after all. You grew out of bangs and Debbie Gibson and that phas where you smoked cigarettes under the deck. This too shall pass. All it takes is just a little patience. Guns N’ Roses knew it and when have they ever been wrong?
So I’ve been trying to watch my children carefully as they are, but then at the same time, I’ve been trying to remember them as they always have been and that’s where this poem came from.
A memory of you, now a teenager... From the tallest tree in the park A leaf fell for what seemed like minutes A contemporaneousness encounter - I saw it fall, and I saw you see it too I was watching, from the bench, watching you Standing still, head titled back, hands cupped As if to will it your way, you stayed, Your hands a cup of tea for the daredevil’s dive So impossible this task, such heights, And of course it acted as leaves do Subject to the laws of physics, Listing like a great ship on cruel waves, Slicing into, succumbing to the maelstrom Only to be righted again, Pleasantly swaying from helter to skelter, All discombobulation, all peace No wind upset or undermined its path, Its predestined line of gravitational pull A wordless dance. We watched And waited, and waited, and patiently waited Until it rested in your hands And it caught you there, captured you, Its dying in your youthful cupped hand Itself a blast of wonderment, your eyes, mine, The time it took to find you, The veil it lifted between us As if certainty were a certainty As if time, and yes, of course we are!
Thank you. This is often a topic in my anxiety-filled brain these days. As I have a 11.5 and almost-15 year old, the guilt I feel from not spending enough time with them when they were younger (going to school and working long hours after, up until COVID I was 6-7 days and often 60 hours a week). ... it's crushing. Now it's just my anger management and depression and anxiety that mar my time with them. So soon will they move out. If they have the same relationship I have with my parents, I will rarely see them after that. I hope not. I try to be better but I can't be their "buddy", I'm mom and confidant as appropriate. And we all like to hang out actually.
Anyway. Issues.
So thank you for sharing, Jodie xo
Loved hearing your voice! Even though I'm not a Mom I can appreciate your perspective. You and your kids are amazing!