My Mae has been sick for a few days now. It’s a bit unclear what the etymology is, but I’ll spare you all the details. All I really need to say is that she needs me. Every second of the day and night. If I walk into another room, she starts to cry. She falls asleep on the couch until I go upstairs with her. She wakes in the night calling for me even though I’m right next to her.
And there’s no one else who can take that place. It’s that beautiful thing about motherhood – you are their first home. And as such, the greatest most compassionate, caring, empathetic person in the world simply will not do. She’d rather have tired, stinky, stressed out, cranky mom over anyone else in the world.
And I take that responsibility very seriously. It’s a sacred commitment written into both our dna and our souls. She and I belong to each other, and I cannot do anything less than everything I can to honor that commitment.
And yet…
Goosie made her First Holy Communion on Saturday. We have spent the last couple of weeks debating whether it was the second or third most important day of her life. I say second to Baptism. She says third to Baptism and birth because without birth she could not have had either of those two sacraments.
We still are fighting that one out.
But she was so very excited for this day. At her rehearsal, she was jumping up and down. When it was time to process down the aisle during the actual Mass, she practically flew. You can see her dress slowly floating in the breeze of her trot.
That’s my Goose. It’s her greatest quality. She is all heart.
And this was her day to shine.
And you know who needed to be there? 100%? No distractions?
Mom.
I needed to be the biggest cheerleader. I needed to give the biggest hugs and smile the biggest smile. I needed to focus every single moment on her and let her know how very special she was. No distractions would fit. She deserved this.
So how do you reconcile the two? Serving two totally different purposes for two very important people at the same exact time?
I don’t think I did it well. I tried, but all I could think was that I was not enough. At my very core, I simply was not enough to be what I needed to be.
And yet I don’t know how I could have been. What I could have been or done different.
And that’s possibly the most heartbreaking conclusion that I can come to. I just simply cannot be everything to them.
And I prayed for them. I prayed so hard for them.
At some point, I guess that’s all we can do. Do our best and then ask God to fill in the gaps. And trust that they are more his than ours and that in ways that are utterly incomprehensible to me, he manages to love them even more than I ever could.
But man. Don’t we wish we could take away all the pain? Don’t we wish we could be it all? Don’t we wish we could never fail them and never let them down?
They say motherhood is hard. What I don’t think I ever knew was how much our own inadequacies would hurt.