It’s been too long since I’ve sat down to write. The long story short is that I went back to work last month and it’s been an adjustment. A very positive adjustment, but nonetheless. I have had to re-remember how to squash all of the life stuff in alongside all of the work stuff, and quickly recollected how taxing that is. Not only finding time for the actual physical things we all want to do (work, play with the kids, exercise, sleep, read, relax, etc) but also the mental load of wanting to be all the things (good mom, partner, friend, person). And despite knowing that it’s really not possible, regardless of how many productivity hacks you implement into your daily routine, it’s hard to let go and not try to do and be all of the things.
These days, for whatever reason, I’ve been thinking so much about legacy and how it plays into my role of being a parent, of being a mother. I think constantly about what it is that I want to leave behind for my children. What stories do I want to tell them over and over again? What values do I want to instill in them? And how do I succeed at doing that? I think about generations before me and how they play a role in who I am today, both those that are still alive and those that have long gone. My great-grandmother Riva comes to mind.
Joseph is slowly starting to get into a bedtime schedule and every night, we do the same little song and dance. First we change out of dirty jammies and put on a fresh diaper, fresh onesie, and our favorite sleep slack. Then I pick him up and we close the pocket doors to our bedroom, pull down the blackout shades, and tap on the white noise machine. Then I begin to sing my songs: “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” Barney’s “I Love You” and a Russian song my mom used to sing me about an evergreen tree, a yolachka. I don’t know how or why I landed on these three songs, but they have become our routine nonetheless. In life, and in bedtime routines, if you don’t choose your own way, a way will choose you. That way may be what you were looking for, or it may not be. I remind myself of this ethos constantly.
I hold Joseph’s clammy little hand in mine and we slow dance around the queen size bed that takes up the majority of the bedroom. We always peak at ourselves in the full-length mirror, I stick his cheek right up against my own and he wraps his fingers around my thumb. We waltz around lightly, pausing to peek at ourselves again once we’ve made our round. I pull him in close and breathe in the powdery scent of his head. His hair spun silk, his puffy fingers butter. I close my eyes and feel a mix of unbelievable joy and longing for this moment before it’s even gone. The realization that time is just whizzing right around me is one that I grapple with daily. The recognition that every day I choose to not spend every single second smelling his head and holding his hand and dancing around the room with him is, at times, crushing. And the finiteness of my own life stands before me, reflecting back on me in my full-length mirror, pushing me to remember that I have but one precious life. It’s here, it’s now. What will I make of it? Who will I become? Who have I already become? Have I chosen my way or has my way chosen me?
Last year, my dear friend’s mom died suddenly and unexpectedly at 54 years old and it rocked our community. She (Natasha) wasn’t just my friend’s mom though, she was also my mom’s close friend. My friend Sofya and her mom Natasha were like Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, the closest of confidantes, and the unspeakable sadness of the loss of that bond tore all of us up. How remarkably unfair it all was.
After she died, I felt a deep sadness that my own mom and I had been struggling to communicate well over the last few years. We kept missing the mark on closeness and grew distant, despite spending plenty of time together and constantly trying to connect. We decided to seek help from a therapist and I can’t say enough about how grateful I am to have strengthened our relationship. I’ll spare the personal details, but I will share that the biggest realization for me throughout the process was the reminder that just like me, my own mother too, is just a person doing the best she can. She has her own biases, her own cultural differences, and her own desires to create her legacy. She has her own struggles and insecurities and her own dreams, some of which she gave up for the sake of her children. She made the choices that she thought were best. And I’m sure that she had plenty of her own moments holding me tight as a baby, pressed to her cheek, breathing me in, wondering how and why it’s going so fast. Wondering what path in life she would take. What path in life I would take.
It is impossible to truly understand a mother’s love until you yourself become a mother. To really feel how a parent-to-child love is the only one that is unconditional. To bear the sheer force of it and to feel it in your bones and to know that it has no bounds. To know that it will ravage you from the inside out, break you down, build you up, change you, shape you, alter you for the rest of your time.
But also, to feel the mundanity of it, the reality of it. To register that mother’s are people and people live in the physical world and the physical world forces us to make choices everyday and each of those choices has a ripple effect of consequences. And some of those consequences can be foreseen and others cannot and hence they will take on a life of their own and set you on a path you had never expected to be riding on.
And so as I stand in my dark bedroom, slow dancing around the perimeter of the queen bed with my son, my sun, sniffing his head for what feels like an eternity, I feel the weight of my choices on my shoulders and I hear the imaginary sound of the ticking clock in my ear. Asking me, reminding, what will I do with my one wild and precious life? Who will I become? What choices will I make and what effects will those choices have on me and on my children?
It’s all to be seen.
Happy belated Mother’s Day. All my love.
Jane
So beautiful, I feel so much of this ❤️