When the flowers are all neatly tucked in their vases, the brunches cleared away, the massages paid for, the platitude-plastered mugs, cards, and coasters placed in the cupboard – we wake up to do the same thing we do the other 364 days of the year. With or without the thanks and pampering, we still mother.
I find Mother’s Day a strange thing. It’s like Hallmark knocks on your door and, without being invited, comes into your living room, anyway, vomits all over the place, and leaves you to clean up the mess. I don’t get it.
Every other day of the year, mothers are expected to clean the house, grocery shop, cook, manage bills, keep fit, look good, blog about their wild successes, and, oh yeah, mother their children. And often they hold down full-time jobs while not letting go of any other responsibilities. The teacups, cards, and waffle breakfasts are almost insulting. Is that really what culture things mothers want?
Because, being a mother, there are a few other things I’d like to put on the list.
I want to get paid as much as my male counterparts at work.
I want my labour at home to get as much respect as my partner’s work in “the office”.
I want my health to matter more than a clean house.
I want to be recognized everyday for my intelligence, compassion, endurance, and strength.
And, maybe most of all, I want to be allowed to be human.
Mother’s Day has this idolatrous bent to it. It makes moms into superhuman heroes. We recently moved into a new apartment and I was startled to open the closet door and find this little gem of a placard taped to the inside: “A mother is she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take.” Seriously? Not only is it remarkably untrue, it’s downright creepy. “She who can take the place of all others?” Yikes.
I bet you anything the previous tenant got this as a mother’s day gift. It’s the perfect example of how Mother’s Day creates an unattainable, unsustainable image of motherhood, heaping outrageous expectations and setting us up for failure before we even try.
I am not a superhero. I am a mom. A very gritty human having my every selfish ambition exposed to the world for judgement and my every shred of privacy stripped away. My sleep is taken from me. My individuality lost in this other little human who needs me constantly.
I love my daughter. I love her with a love I didn’t know was possible. I love her with a love that is powerful, ferocious, uncompromising, and sometimes quite frightening. But the day-in and day-out of this love doesn’t look like an epic love story. It doesn’t look like a storybook, or a mom blog, or a squishy Hallmark movie. It looks like…normal.
Even boring.
Loving my daughter is pushing myself to be more tenacious than a three-year-old. To sit her out while she refuses to eat dinner. To lead her back to bed time and time again as she escapes her room to jump on the couch. To insist that she pees before going to sleep even though every time I tell her to go to the bathroom elicits an inexplicable meltdown. It’s “playing babies” with her day after day after day until I want to put my head through a wall. It’s staying calm when she screams at me and hits me in her toddler fury. It’s submitting my emotions and needs to one that is littler than me.
It’s not glamourous. It’s not superhuman. In Christian language, it’s just what we call “discipleship”. In less religious terms, it’s character development – hard core.
But it is not platitudes. It is not sepia-toned precious moments. It is love.
And because it is love, it is also not heroically martyring oneself for the survival of the other. Love is not a zero-sum game. Love is not scarcity. Love is abundance. Being a mother isn’t stretching yourself to snapping because culture wants you to be a superhero. It’s learning to lead in such a way that you create an environment where both mom and child can flourish. And this requires saying no.
No to the mom blog culture that wants you to market your mothering like it’s fucking Coca-Cola. No to your boss who wants you to put in overtime. No to the home décor gurus who want your kitchen to look like Joanna Gains stopped by for tea. No to the church leaders who want you to teach kids Sunday school. No to your spouse who expects you to manage all the childcare and household chores.
It even means saying no to your child sometimes. No, I can’t play babies right now because I have to cook dinner. No, I can’t lay with you to fall asleep because I really need to just be alone for an hour. No, I can’t take you to the park because I need to finish a piece of work that did come home with me.
Creating an environment where both mom and child can flourish will mean saying no. But it also means saying yes.
Yes to the fellow mom who needs a coffee and a listening ear because she’s drowning at home. Yes to going to work and enjoying it. Yes to exercise because it’s healthy for you. Yes to telling the truth about your mental health. Yes to cooking because you love it. Yes to playing tea party. Yes to books and playdates and adventures at the pond. Yes to dancing in your underwear and singing in the shower with that three-year-old who thinks it’s hilarious. Yes to being fully present in this moment even though it’s excruciating dull because it’s the stuff that will form your child’s anchor for a lifetime.
And yes because it’s forming you into a human being that looks more like Jesus than all that Mother’s Day shit can ever comprehend.