- We’ve all experienced it, the well-meaning comment from an older woman, another mother whose own children have left her nest and all that remains are memories of tow-headed toddlers, and count-down calendars marking the next holiday to bring their big babies home for a few days. I’m not angry first off. I completely understand, and I am not even ready to think about how you must feel, how there must be an empty place in your day that was once filled with chaotic noise, or an empty place on your lap where squirming bodies once sat as you read a book. Maybe it’s not so much empty as it is that there’s just too much room. There’s way too much empty space in the bed, a huge expanse between you and your sleeping spouse because neither one can become accustomed to the lack of little sweaty, kicking bodies dreaming between you. There’s far too much empty time in the day as you dust a shelf and rearrange a glass trinket, turning it just so, and then try to hold back tears when you see the small crack in its side, super-glued back together long ago from a ball thrown haphazardly. Do you remember how you yelled when it hit the floor, how your finger pointed, and you said, “out!”? Do you remember? Do you?
- I guess that’s where my frustration lies. I can see where you’re coming from, but can you remember where my struggles derive? Can you see that I’m tired? Do you see the bags under my eyes, placed there by a night of interrupted sleep, piled upon another night, a week, months, even years of not enough rest? Can you understand that I have to clean my house? Yes, I don’t expect it to look like it once did, but I can’t not clean. We would end up tripping and breaking a bone while trying to step over a mound of toys and trash while carrying a paper plate of microwave, nutritionally-lacking food that we dripped onto our already stained clothing. It would be anarchy! Were you yourself so tired once upon a time that your memory has left you, that it has been forgotten with the passage of years? I think deep down you haven’t forgotten, you’ve just made the decision to make those things less, and the good things, the pure things, the hugs, the kisses, the face of a sleeping angel be what stands out in your memory, the photo album of your mind that you page through so often. And I get that. I do. Can you somehow let me know that you get me too?
- I see it so often. A tired, frazzled mom will publicly state her frustration, and she is instantly bombarded:
“You’ll get sleep one day.”
“Enjoy them when they’re small. They’ll be big before you know it!”
“They’ll be starting college next week. You’ll see.”
“Don’t worry about keeping a clean house. A house will keep itself. Children will not.”
While we honestly, truly appreciate your advice and expertise on the subject, this is what we hear:
“Your complaining too much.”
“It sounds like you don’t appreciate your children.”
“You are putting your house and your job before your kids.”
“You’re failing at this.”
“They’re going to grow up and hate you. They’ll move away forever!”
While we appreciate your advice to savor their childhood, there’s something I would like to share with you. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re the 1,752nd person to tell us this, and I just mean this week. We know they grow fast. We’re the ones sitting there with wide-eyes and an open mouth, in shock as they shoot up before our eyes, outgrowing pants and shoes. We see them learning to walk, then learning to run, then getting on the school bus, and we’re freaking out enough as it is. What we need is someone to say:
“I understand.”
“Parenting is hard. It’s okay to get frustrated, or angry. It’s okay to complain, to scream.”
“This doesn’t make you less of a mother. It just makes you a mother.”
We want your advice. We really do. But more than anything we need your support. We need you to tell us that we’re doing good, we’re doing really good. We need a hug, not a condescending comment on how we don’t appreciate our children. We do. It’s just tough. We need you to try and remember that part, to remember how hard it was for you once upon a time. Maybe you do remember, and if that’s the case then please, let us know that. That’s all we want to hear, is that it’s okay to be frazzled to the point of crying. We need to hear a “job well done,” because one day they will grow up. One day, and one day too soon I fear, we’ll be the empty-nest mom giving advice to the young mother of a newborn, and we’ll need to know we did our best in the crazy, busy, rewarding job called motherhood.
That is all 🙂