Dragons, Krakens, Good Moms, and Other Mythical Creatures

This is Take Five. A do-over. The DeStupidification of a thought I had when I woke up one morning with an epiphany.

The first epiphany sucked. It was stupid. The revised epiphany is ok.

Ready for it? Here it is.

I’m a good mom.

*

With my first child I was so worried I’d ruin him, break him, or teach him wrong things. I was also ticked off that I’d gained, like, a pound over Christmas and was certain I was fat. I could punch myself in the face when I remember that. I was incredibly tired and clueless. What do moms do when they’re nervous? How do I make important decisions on the fly? What does one wear to a well-baby appointment? How acceptable is it to want to be alone and for how long? Do babies understand grammatical contractions or does my child think I’ve just learned to talk as well? Was there any research on the link between too little “tummy time” and street gang recruitment?

I was playing T-ball with him but when it was time to come in, he wasn’t having it. He pulled on one end of the plastic bat and I pulled on the other. “You have to let go. It is time to go inside,” I said in Parenting Magazine tone of voice. “If you keep pulling I am going to let go and you will fall down.” My toddler had not read Parenting Magazine. I let go. The bat flew back and smacked him in his little rubber face. He cried as I explained how this was a lesson and he would remember next time to be a better listener so he won’t get hurt.

We lived in England where spanking in public isn’t really the done thing. Spanking in public probably isn’t the done thing in general, but whatever. In the gym parking lot, very conscious of the grandmotherly woman in the next car, I was putting my little boy in his car seat. You know that thing they do where they arch their backs, infused with superhuman strength, so you can’t get the 74-point harness clicked?

“You have to sit down!” Struggle, struggle, meth-induced toddler rage, struggle, sweat… “What will happen if you are not a good listener?!” He deflated.

“I know,” came his resigned baby voice. “You will hit me with a bat.”

I felt Grandmother pause in her glacial gathering of supplies.

“Ha ha! No! Remember that was an accident because you would not let go?!”

“And my nose had blood.”

“Because you did not listen.”

Grandmother closed her car door. I darted a furtive and not at all guilty or terrified glance over my shoulder.

Two hundred years later, he was secured in his seat eating a squeezy applesauce, Grandmother had taken her judgment inside, and I was sweating in the driver’s seat more than the entirety of my workout.

I was a terrible mother.

*

My fake epiphany was that to choose myself was different from being myself. That’s some deep shit, 5am-Self said. I’ve joined a Facebook group which asked how I identify myself in the previously scantronable terms of White, Female, and Straight. Pre-Coffee-Self found this fascinating.

(I want you to know: the original draft of this was very high-brow. It was politically sensitive. It tried really hard to appeal to everyone because I really do love pretty much everyone. It was lame. It was disingenuously insincere. It quoted Bonjour Tristesse. I wish I was kidding.)

Post-Coffee-Self is legit. Post-Coffee-Self knows some fluffy placating garbage when she sees it. Post-Coffee-Self was pretty depressed the rest of the day because she did not identify as a Good Writer. She was also intensely irritated that she was thinking in the third person.

*

My daughter was born mid-adolescence to, ya know, save us all some time. Somewhere around her first birthday she figured out I really was going to tell her what to do the rest of her life and she learned to roll her baby eyes at my onesie selection. I was not only doing a mediocre job but also destroying my kids’ identities.

I put syrup on top of waffles instead of the side.

I refused bouncing up and down the hallway at 3 am and thus put my baby girl at a distance from motherly affection that would undoubtedly scar her psyche and give her no other choice but to join a gang.

They ate pre-packaged processed food! They’d be fat and never go to college! I was a selfish rat.

Then I had two miscarriages and suddenly: who gives a rat’s ass about college? You want to watch Power Rangers again? Here’s the remote. Click allllll the buttons. Macaroni and cheese from the box with a side of Pixie Sticks? As much as you want, Baby. Just be alive. Just smile and ask me for an iPad. You won’t get an iPad, Baby, no chance in Hell, but come to me with your adorable cheeks.  You’re a 6-year-old girl and smell like a 58-year-old hairy man who’s just mowed the lawn in August? I’ll snuggle you and kiss you. I’ll hold my breath, but I’ll also hold you on my lap. Just live. Just be alive where I can see you.

I had another baby and now my motherly advice stance is official: I know nothing. The only thing I can say with certainty is “I know who I am.” There’s no “just” being a stay at home mom. We’ve all heard that, I’ve heard it, but I’ve only just accepted it. Once I started to believe it and found PERSONAL VICTORY in my Too Old For This son finally pooping independently in the toilet, I turned a corner. That corner was to the living room where I sat myself on the couch and read a book in broad daylight with all children at home because there was no chance of anyone silently soiling themself on the carpet.

It was a big day. I was a Mom, capital M. I’d guided a small human to the next level. But leveling up is difficult.

*

Facebook, with its flashbacks/Swords That Pierce My Heart/Timehops, likes to show me my youngest learning to walk, tasting his first cake, playing with sand, the two older ones hold the baby between them, all with dragons in their hands. I’m the mother of dragons now, mythical creatures who are unpredictable and magical and have inexpressible power over me. I’m not the mother of babies anymore. It’s enough to make me cry like a K-drama girlfriend.

One night my daughter asked me in a hesitant soft voice if I would die before her. Sweet chickie, I thought, tears welling up in my own eyes. I held her closer and assured her that even if I did, that she would be alright because she knew how much I loved her and that I’d be with Jesus and she would be such a wonderful woman when she grew up. She smiled slightly, then with more confidence, and burrowed closer to me so that the song in my heart grew strong and glorious, and then said, “Good. Cuz I want to go to your funeral.”

Sleeping with one eye open that night I tried to make her assertion positive, as I’m “sure” she meant it. I kept circling back to this though: Perhaps she felt in my shadow and stifled already at the age of seven and couldn’t be free to find herself until I was dead. Was she someone I did not know? Was I someone she couldn’t be herself around? Was I overthinking this? Had I left the oven on? Was the dentist appointment tomorrow or Thursday? We should all take vitamins. Good moms make their kids take vitamins…

*

We all want to be good moms. But I’ve found being a mom isn’t about Letting Go like Elsa, twirling about in braid-tossing, song-belting freedom. This is a Release The Kraken situation-- liberate the unpredictable, probably dangerous, very likely terrifying creature you’ve managed to have custody of for a short time.

There’s only so much I can do, and it’s sure to be different from what other moms do. As I Momsplained to my daughter: The reason you can’t bring Death-Bringer the dragon to the restaurant is the same reason I can’t judge other moms:

Your little brother will want to bring his Iron Man blaster arm thing, he’ll lose it, and you’ll still have your dragon like some kind of mountaintop- dwelling overlord.

Just As:

If I look down my considerable nose at a mom handing her 2 year old an iPad I don’t get to feel righteous indignation when I get Nose Looked for swatting at my five year old as he reaches for my lunchtime whiskey while my kids fight and spill drinks and complain about missing Minecraft while I demand they say grace. It would only end in more yelling, injustice, maybe a little blood, and one of us would end up joining a gang.

*

I make all the big choices for my kids. I choose for them hoping it’ll shape who they become. I don’t have a magical item to discern right from wrong—I’ve had to use the shaped being my mom made and the choices I made for myself after that. We’re like blobs of Play-Doh: bright, moldable, a little smelly, we dry out and crumble if left unprotected, and pressing us into any crevasse or device will result in a new form. If we don’t know who we are then who we are will be chosen for us.

It’s a stupid huge amount of pressure on a mom of young kids, and it’s a petrifying level of trust for the mom of older kids.

I’m not a mom of teenagers yet. That Kraken is still contained and I’m sure my prayer life will be greatly enriched in the years to come, but here’s the magic: I can go from soul-crushing parent-guilt over a disrespectful freak show of shame at the new orthodontist months ago to incandescent pride at an overheard kindness between siblings. I can put aside the feelings of a wasted day of domestic drudgery long enough to celebrate a Lego creation that “has working claws and everything.” I am truly useless at common core math but I can love like nobody’s business.

*

My daughter planned a “family fun night” to include charades and a Chipmunks movie which is at odds with my plans to drink a bottle of drugstore wine and watch Outlander on my laptop in another room entirely.  But I love my kids and I love when they want me with them.

And they know me well. Cuz I’m their mom. And I’m good at it.

Christina Rauh Fishburne is a writer, Army wife, and mother of three currently living in England. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Waterwheel Review, Porcupine Literary, and others. She blogs at www.smilewhenyousaythat.wordpress.com and is at work on a novel.