I Mother

I mother.

It's what I do.

It's in the marrow of my bones, the ethereal quality of my soul, the code inside my DNA.

I mother.

I have been mothering since before I can remember, since I first caught infant Tammy's head in my four year old palm as it headed toward the hard tile.  I mothered Tammy when I was 17 and I aimed to wipe dark purple lipstick from her 13 year old lips.  And years later when I cautioned her against tying herself to a small town boy and getting stuck in small town life.  And still more years later when I insisted she take more time off work to be home with her children.

I mother.  I don't always do it perfectly.  It often causes problems with my oldest little sister and me because I know everything and she knows nothing.  Or, as she would describe it, I think I know everything and she's perfectly capable of running her own life, thank you very much.

But what does she know?

I mother.

I mothered Breezy when she was an unruly baby refusing to take naps, and I was a ten year old stroking her chubby little leg as it shot up into the air in a special ops military stand against falling asleep.  I mothered her when she was 7, still thick with baby fat, front teeth still not fully grown back in, and we danced and sang our way through a two person talent show like crazy fools in the front yard of my mother's house.  I mothered her as she entered high school and I moved my unwitting first husband and our whole life 300 miles north so I could be near her for that most difficult of times in a young girl's life.  I mothered her later that year when she snuck out to a college party and I called the cops on her.  I then grounded her to the house for the weekend and put her on hard labor, housecleaning for two days straight.  I mothered her as I insisted the older boy who wanted to take her on a date come inside, show me his driver's license, and open up under my interrogation.

I mothered my baby monkey Teno when I gave him his bottle every morning for his first nap of the day and we watched The Fox and the Hound.  I was 14 then, and just about to run away from home.  I mothered him for years upon years from a distance after the day I ran screaming and crying from the house at 15, fleeing an abusive stepfather.  And even then I left only reluctantly because I was convinced my siblings, my babies, needed me.  I sobbed for weeks upon weeks when I left baby Teno because I just knew he needed me and he would never know me.  Then I put my big girl pants on and remembered that I was a mother, and so I mothered.  I picked them up in my car as soon as I turned 16, and I took them here and there with me.  And when they moved 300 miles north I drove up to drive them back down here for weeks at a time, Easter, Christmas, summer vacation.  I watched WWE on Mondays and Thursdays with my five year old brother, and I learned how to perfectly imitate (Teno would dispute this) The Rock "If you smeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelllllll......... what The Rock...... is cooking."  Nailed it.  I mothered him when I drove up the coast weekend after weekend to watch him play baseball for 12 years.  I mothered him when I offered him a bedroom in my apartment so he could come to the Bay Area and play baseball for the local community college.  And I mothered him when I let him go again, months later, because he was homesick.

I let them all go, all my siblings, and I realized that part of mothering is learning when to not mother. It was time for me to be a sister.  A friend.

And years later, when I had my own child, I knew that all those years of trying and failing and knowing everything and being so certain and falling on my face or sticking my foot so firmly in my mouth had paid off.  My sisters and my brother had made me into the mother I always wanted to be for my own children.

Now, when I watch my children learn something, when I hold them close, when I smell their hair, dirty with sweat and dust or clean and fresh from a bath, when I nuzzle their necks and kiss their round cheeks, I try to remember to let go, but I worry.  I worry in a way I never did as a mothering big sister.  Often and deeply, I worry.  But I don't worry, as you may think, that I will lose one of them.  I worry that they will lose me.

You see, I have built a force field of love around my children, as my mother did her own children.  My mother swore that as long as she was alive, her children would live, because, she says, with a steely confidence unlike her, she cannot survive the loss of child.  So, quite simply, she won't have to.  I give my children that same gift.  They will be fine.  They will fall and get up, they will get hurt and heal, they will suffer, but they will survive.  They will be human, live human lives, and, ultimately, thrive.  Because I made them that way.

But my greatest fear is that I have worked so hard all my life to be the kind mother I always wanted to be, and that my children will miss that somehow.  Something will take me out of their lives.  I never felt my own mortality, never for a second worried about death until I had my daughter.  Of course I cannot live without my children, that goes without saying.  But what strikes me is how they could ever live without me.

Who will cry with them when they get their shots, when a friend betrays them, when they fall from their bikes, when they work hard for something and still don't get it?  Who will help them navigate when it's okay to just sit and cry and when it's time to dust themselves off and get back out there?  Who will savor their dirty sweaty scent before bath time?  Who will look at them with love, albeit a frustrated, exasperated love, even when furious at some juvenile misdeed?  Who will reprimand them, unafraid to discipline and help them become civilized human beings, but never for a second failing to love them deeply?  Who will there be that they know will love them no matter what?  Who will always make their needs a priortiy throughout their entire childhoods?

No one.  Let's be honest.

So I worry.  So I mother.

I don't think being a mother is "hard."  It feels very natural to me.  It flows through me like a river through a valley.  But I do think it is all encompassing, draining, taxing, and exhausting.  Mothering takes everything you have and rarely gives back in full measure, and almost never does it give back immediately.  That river cuts new paths, smooths rough rocks, changes the landscape entirely, never thinking of what it is doing, just doing.

Just mothering.  

So I am a firm believer in the airplane analogy.  Put on your own mask first.  Then put on the masks of others.

Even when I am taking care of myself, filling my own vessel, it is so that I can use my vessel to fill that of others.  So that I can mother.

I head out of my house to run most days of the week so I can stay healthy, so that I can be patient with my kids, so that I can live longer for my kids, so that I have energy for my kids.  I work so that my daughters see their mother proud of what she does outside of the house, contributing to society using the skills she has to give to others.  I try hard to have a loving, stable relationship with my husband so that my children see what goes into a strong marriage.  But I also do not hesitate to call my husband out for what I see as missteps because I think it is important my daughters see a woman stand up for herself and hold her own as a partner in her marriage.

My girls' eyes are always watching me, shaping themselves after me, trying to do what I do.  My five year old uses my words, my tone, and my body language.  My four month old already mimics my facial expression and the sounds I make.  I am their first teacher, and since I am homeschooling, I will be their primary teacher for years to come.

So today, on Mother's Day, I breathe through the worry that my children will lose the foundation under their feet, and I work to let go of the worry.  I take care of myself.  I take time alone.  I reflect on all the mothering I have done for almost forty years, some good, some not so good.  I take myself to a movie.  I enjoy a few peaceful moments in the bath before my five year old companion bursts in. And I remember the letting go.  I remember letting go of my brother and sisters.  Letting go of the need to control.  Realizing that I had done all I could as a mother, and that time was over.

And while my time as a mother will never be over with my own children, I can let go.  I can let go of the worry.  I can sit at the end of each day and know that I gave all I could, that I took what I needed to take, that I taught what needed teaching and let them learn on their own what they needed to.  I can let go of the worry that they will lose me because the reality is that I am doing what I can to be around, and beyond that, I have no control anyway, so worry is only wasted time and energy.  Because of my brother and my sisters, because of my own mother, who, although she doesn't always practice what she preaches, has taught me to practice what she preaches, I can let go.  I can enjoy my glass of wine, I can feel grateful for all the mothers in my life who have become my village, I can sit in my house at the end of the night, house quiet and candlelit, and rest in the comfort that I mother.

In the trifecta of maiden mother crone, I skipped right past maiden and went straight to mother.

And I remember that force field my mother placed around me.

And I rest easy knowing that someday I will be crone.