I am tired tonight. Worn out. Drained.
I’m not really physically tired though. It’s more of an emotional fatigue. More of a burn out.
I recently read an article about a hospice volunteer who said that, regardless of age, what most mothers want to hear at the end of their lives is that they have done a good job. And that brought tears to my eyes. Because isn’t that all that all of us wants to hear?
I’ve had many different roles in my life. Many jobs, volunteer positions, memberships in groups. I’ve always wanted to do my best. I’m competitive. It’s just who I am. But nothing has compared to the overwhelming desire I have to do good at this mom thing.
There’s the cliche that motherhood is the most important job a woman ever has. But calling it a job… that seems to kind of miss the point. As do all of those articles that tally up how much a stay at home mom is worth financially.
And it’s all because I don’t try my best at mothering so I can say I’m the best mom.
I don’t do it to win the mom award or to have the most perfectly parented children. I don’t do it to see them at Harvard or the Peace Corps or the Oval Office. (After all, we all know that Marquette is far superior to Harvard anyway!)
I don’t do it so I can send them to school and hear reports about how they are the most intelligent or the best behaved or the most popular or the most helpful.
And I don’t do it so that at the end of the next eighteen years I can say that I have done a good job. So I can sit back and relish in the job I did as a mother.
I don’t actually do it for me at all.
I do it because every morning I am woken up by three of the greatest blessings of my life. I do it because I see in them a potential so grand that I can’t help but want to help them pursue it and relish in it. I do it because in them I see an innocence so pure and so perfect that I can’t help but want to shield it from all of the ugliness that will try to infiltrate their lives.
I do it because it’s who I am. I’m their mother. And mothering is an action and a noun and a calling and a desire. And to separate any one of those from the other is to completely miss the point.
It’s not a job that can come with a price tag. Because you pursue a job for benefits. You pursue parenting because of who you are and who they are.
And so all of this leads me to evenings like this. Evenings where I’m questioning everything. Was I too hard on them? Too lenient? Did I give them enough of what they needed? Did I steer them in the right directions? Are we focusing our limited time and attention on what it should be focused on? Am I heading them down the right paths? What is the right path? And where do I find it?
My head has always been like a mass transit hub on fire. People running all over the place, things crashing into other things, everything burning with urgency. But parenting just intensifies that.
I say I’m overwhelmed a lot. And I am. There’s a lot of chaos going on around me – kids bickering and needing things and crying and begging for just another cracker when we don’t have anything.
But those fires can be put out. That chaos is outside.
What exhausts me is the chaos within. The constant questioning and doubting and wondering and caring.
And of course it’s the last one that causes the problems. If I didn’t care so much, if this family wasn’t the defining journey of my life, perhaps I could worry less. I could doubt less.
For now, I don’t know. I don’t have any answers. I just know that I’m tired. And I would like a rest. But not just for my body. For my brain and for my heart as well.
But as I always do on February 16th, I remember one who came before me. One who loved me and loved all who love me. One who is loving my girls from the other side even though she never got to meet two of them on this side. One who my Goosie was named after.
And I know that she got it right. And I know that my mom got it right. So I can only hope that I can follow in their footsteps, and one day on my death bed, my girls will lean over and whisper, “you did it well mama. You did it well.”