I’m not going to say anything new. Nothing revelatory is going to come out of my brain, through my fingers, and onto this page. My sister used to read tarot - she may very well still do that, but I haven’t spoken to her in a couple of years - and she would always tell her client, “I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know,” right before giving them a reading that would blow their minds. I found this particularly helpful, as anyone claiming to see the future gets instant side eye from me. Cause…*gestures at everything* you coulda…said something.
Anyway, onto unoriginal thoughts taking up too much room.
The topic of Mother’s Day is a touchy one for…well, basically everyone except Hallmark, flower shops, and chocolatiers. The rest of us come at it with a sense of obligation, hurt, anxiety, and loss. I don’t care who you are, this shit is conflicted.
Maybe you don’t have kids. Maybe you don’t even want them, but no one will let you be ok with that. No one will accept that you can, in fact, be a complete human being without them. Or maybe you do want them and you cannot have them - even if it’s a temporary “can’t” - and that ache is only exacerbated by ads for floral bouquets and tennis bracelets. Maybe you’ve lost your own mother or have a strained relationship with her, and you really don’t care to be reminded with the forced glee of Hulu repeatedly showing children serving a (likely terrible) breakfast in bed to a delighted matronly figure who hasn't put on a pound since birthing the wee Iron Chefs. Maybe you’re a stepmother who would really love to be seen for who she is and what she gives instead of who she isn’t and what she cannot possibly provide. Maybe you’ve lost children, and there is absolutely nothing that any card, sentiment, or human can offer you to ease that pain. Only time, and even that is a gift with a steep price, robbing your memory while it eases the fathomless sadness just a bit.
Or you have kids. Or just the one kid because you had her so very late and your body has railed against you since, eating away at your cartilage and shredding your ligaments to bits. You love your child more than you ever thought you could another human being while simultaneously wishing you could have a moment of silence as your name is being called every one hundred seconds to be told the entire plot of the latest episode of Bluey. You try and do everything you can to give this human all the love and support you have within you, reminding her that she is smart and strong and special. You work endless hours to give her what she needs and a few things she wants. You sacrifice career, independence, sleep, health, and time for her and you don’t regret a bit of it. And yet, somehow, any mom posting a pic of their kids out and enjoying the world can make you feel like soft, steaming dog shit in about 0.4 seconds. Any human without children on a vacation or shouting, “Happy Friday!” sends tears streaming down your face with the speed and force of a rollercoaster, which you’ve coincidentally been on since a person was growing in you. This is not to say you don’t have moments of pure, unprompted joy. You do. You laugh harder than you ever have, and you tear up with the possibility of everything wonderful this small person is becoming. You just prefer that joy to come when it comes, and not be frog marched into being on a Sunday when the Google Doodle spells, “Mom.”
Because we’re in the middle of a pangoddamneddemic, everyone is collectively losing their minds. I don’t mean just the conspiracy theorizing relatives you try not to speak to outside of big holidays, I mean all of us. We’re either stir-crazy indoors or we’re trying to figure out how to work and avoid pants. Some of us have been trying to get through to unemployment for the last month, wondering how much longer we can keep our landlords at bay. Some of us are working at two in the morning because it’s the only time the house is quiet. Some of us are sleeping in small chunks, bolting awake at the smallest sound, ready for flight because we’ve been on “fight” mode all day. On top of all of this, we have now added teaching to the mix. That’s a sound proposition for sanity, right?
As I type this, I am eyeballing the time because a very loud alarm will soon startle me, my kid, my husband conducting therapy sessions in the other room, and my elderly cat so we know it’s time to go back to schoolwork. I have been logging on and off of the various platforms and networks necessary to do my seventeen jobs, while I wonder when I will get to the creative obligations also awaiting my attention. Last night, for the second time this week, my child’s response to a surface-level innocent request (“let me wash your pajamas” or “let’s do your reading assignment”) was to break down into sobs, taking in breath only to exhale ear-shattering screams of frustration before sobbing again. I’ve never seen such a pure expression of what’s going on inside my head. Both times, we just held her and let her get it out while the neighbors likely dialed, “9-1,” and waited.
I am not patient enough to be a teacher. I’m barely patient enough to be a parent. Who am I kidding, I’m not even patient enough to be a functioning human in society. A friend of mine just said that this isn’t home schooling, it’s crisis schooling. That’s pretty damned accurate, but even when I think I’m doing my best and on my game, someone’s social media post with their perfect white board schedule and their children doing crafts and reading on their own is enough to send me spiraling into failure self talk. This is all while I’m cooking food for everyone, washing the clothes, and wondering how the floor got dirty again so quickly. We live in a courtyard building, so the need for silence in my job as a voiceover artist is compromised severely by children playing outside our windows. This serves the dual function of making me feel terrible that my child is indoors AND not being able to record any work. While I’m breathing through my teeth to soothe my nerves, my kid asks me to listen to the joke her reading program just made, insisting it’s funny, her negotiation entirely unabated by my pleas to get more work done. It isn’t funny. But I have to pretend like it is, lest I give her the impression she’s continually wasting my time. Which she is, but adorably, and with the fragile ego of a human you’re entirely in charge of. No pressure.
I should note that I’m not special. Moms are ruhl common - we all have one. Plus, many people have it much harder than I do, with no steady income and more kids. Kids with special needs, partners who are of little to no help. I am very, very lucky. That said, I am also a ball of anxiety, sadness and rage, fueled by coffee and an inferiority complex strong enough to power the sun. When I say I’m not special, I say it with a special kind of contempt.
When people without kids take a break from their thirty-seven hour nap to say, “I don’t know how you do it,” right before going back to day drinking and freely swearing out loud, I am overwhelmed by the urge to throw a jacket on them, for the sole purpose of grabbing them by the lapels and shaking them. It’s like getting offstage after a performance you worked on for years, only to have a patron tell you they don’t know how you memorized all those lines. They took only the most basic component of your effort, the doing, and marveled at its existence. it isn’t about doing. It’s about surviving. You do it because you HAVE to. That doesn’t mean you’re doing it well. My parents worked 14 hour days and smoked three packs of Winston reds in the house with the windows closed while running our finances and mental well-being into the ground. They did their best, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t mess us all right up in the head.
This holiday interrupts my regularly-scheduled anxiety and delivers A Very Special What Are You Doing episode that no one should watch.
My husband asked me what I wanted for Mother’s Day, and I almost asked him to leave, with my kid, for a few hours. Normally, that would seem somewhat selfish. In our current environment, that would almost be a death sentence. “Go outside where no one is wearing masks or practicing social distancing and take our child with you while I nap. Lick a park bench while you’re at it. Be free.”
What I want is some fresh air on a nice day, an easy quiet that comes without guilt because quiet means people on devices, and the courage to take a three hour nap and not feel bad when I wake up from it. I don’t want this to be on Mother’s Day. I want it to be on any day I decide I need it. I guess that means I need to drop my own guilt off somewhere so I can have that time, unburdened by it. Maybe I’ll send it to the park.