Category: Parenting

Costco sells big boxes of graham crackers that hold four regular sized boxes — the kind that you can pick up at your local market. These days, my family, well, my boys really, eat enough graham crackers to make a run to Costco for things like graham crackers in bulk both cost and time efficient.

Whether it’s the changing seasons or the shortening days with the barely lightening mornings, I’ve been thinking about this phase in my life as my ‘graham cracker days.’  There will come a day when my boys will no longer want or eat graham crackers, but today is not that day.  With no other little one on our horizon, I am perhaps more acutely aware that this will be our last time at the graham cracker rodeo.

Last week we swapped out our very last latched car seat for a high backed booster.  Diapers are now reserved for night time only for our little guy and are sometimes even dry in the morning.  I no longer think about snacks and drinks every time we leave the house, though I do carry a clean set of underpants and shorts in my purse at all times.  At.  All. Times.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes . . .

I am ready for it.  At forty-freaking-seven years old, I am ready for it.  Lordy, am I ready for it.  And it’s all good.  While so many of my former classmates are sending kids off to high school and college, I am sweeping up Cheerios and wiping bottoms. I am too old for this shit.  Literally and figuratively.

When I see babies now, I smile politely, but almost always think to myself, “Whew, I’ll never have to go through that again.” Yesterday, my little guy, for only the second time, sat on the toilet and made a poop.  Flloooooossshhh it went, down to join its friends at the poop water park.  The last time he pooped on a toilet was in April.  I danced and celebrated and texted my husband.  Finally, maybe, possibly, I see the light at the end of this very stinky tunnel.

My experiences with motherhood have not been easy.  After burying our oldest, having four miscarriages, and adopting our youngest, I know more than most that mothering and motherhood is precious and fleeting and a gift that not all are offered or prepared for.  To mother is sacred.  sa-cred, an adjective:  holy, hallowed, consecrated, sanctified, revered, venerated.

Because I know and truly appreciate the gift that it is to get to mother a human, I sometimes find myself feeling guilty when the thought of washing one more poop stained pair of pants or wiping up one more spilled glass of milk at the dinner table or asking yet again for the dirty laundry to be picked up off the floor kind of, sort of makes me want to scream.  Part of me believes that because I have buried my daughter and because another mother out there literally placed her baby in my arms for me to raise as my own, that I am supposed to value every single second of it.

I can’t.  I don’t.

It’s impossible, isn’t it?  The grandmothers behind us at the grocery store tell us to “enjoy every second of it.”  Other mothers who are waiting for texts from their teenagers warn us that if we blink, even once, we will miss our little ones growing up.  We are told and instructed to be both vigilant and grateful at all times.  Nope.  It’s enough for me to get through my days.

If there are smiles on the faces of me or my boys as the sun goes down, that’s a win.  If my boys are warm and fed and learning and kind and know they are loved, I am succeeding.  And if, during some of those days, I am not smiling, but cranky, it’s alright.  And if, during some of those days, my boys feel a little chilly or experience a moment of hunger or watch too many screens or feel angry and mad at me, like they are the unlukiest boys in the world to have me for their mama, I’m okay with that, too.

In these graham cracker days, I am happy to put one phase of my mothering to rest.  Packing up small clothing and plastic toys and sending them along to the Goodwill for another family to make use of is, for me, a celebration.  Guiding these boys to new adventures in schools and figuring out the intricacies of friendships and responsibilities outside the home are the challenges of motherhood I am preparing myself for now, with no illusions that it will be any harder or easier than what came before.

My beautiful husband and I brought babies into our lives in 2005, 2009, and 2013.  If you do the math correctly, we’re due for another in 2017, but as the year winds down and there is not a whiff of wondering what to expect while we are expecting, I feel so grateful and happy and accomplished for what we have done.  And I am stoked as I look ahead to my next phase of motherhood.  The one with fewer graham crackers.

 

One moment you’re sitting with family eating macaroni and cheese and the next moment your three year old is looking up at you with his wide eyes asking, in all sincerity, for you to save the world.  Oh, oh, oh, if only I could.  “Save the world, Mama.  You have to save the world.”

Yet again, the humbling nature of motherhood almost brings me to my knees.  My beautiful boy, my mischievous wonder, honest to goodness thinks it is within my capacity to save this broken world of ours.  How long will it be until he realizes that world salvation is just a wee bit above my pay grade?  And how crushed will he be when he learns the truth about his mama’s limitations?

When I am faced with one of these moments of clarity — when a child you are raising reveals the naive, but sweet belief that you can fix anything, that you can save everything, that you are the stars and moon and sun all rolled into a mom sized package, my first response is to run and hide, as I become fairly riddled with the weight of my glaring inadequacies when faced with the pure and unconditional awe in which my child holds me.

Sweet boy, if I could save the world, I would, for you and every other child who looks into his mama’s eyes the way you do mine.  No one would be hungry, no one would be sick, no one would be abused, no one would be homeless.  There would be no war, no guns, no politics, no mental illness, no bigotry, no racism, no fear, no hate, and just for good measure, no dirty laundry, either.

Wouldn’t that be grand?  Alas, I am mortal, I am simply mom.

But my boy had a plan that made perfect sense, in a three year old kind of way.  “The sky is where the peace is, Mama.  We can pull the peace down and all be powered by peace.”  I reached up at the dinner table, but my arms were stupidly short.  They didn’t even reach the ceiling, let alone the sky.  That image and idea of a vast supply of peace being warehoused up in the sky is a lovely one, though, isn’t it?

My three year old son loves superheroes and his plea for me to save the world gives every indication that he thinks of his mama as some type of superhero, akin to Wonder Woman.  I am his Wonder Woman.  The time in which my kids think of me this way is fleeting, I know, but as Peter Parker said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”  We must never abuse that love and faith our children gift us with every day.

As a mom, I can’t save the world.  I can’t pull peace out of the sky when the situations calls for it.  What I can do, what is within my pay grade and sometimes meager capacities, is to try my best to protect him, to save him from life’s cruelties, to make his little three year old world one of peace and kindness.

Doing these things is as close to being a superhero as I will ever get.