The Day After Mother's Day

Not a Young Mom, Not a Grandma, Just Midlife-ing It

I’ve always felt pretty low-key about Mother’s Day. As a single mom, turns out, you’re pretty much responsible for Mother’s Day. (Like! every! day!)

A woman commented in church yesterday that she always felt inadequate as a mother, like she wasn’t living up to some standard of perfection. Everyone in the room agreed. There was a collective chuckle as women described failed dinners, dirty houses, unwashed laundry. Even though I have plenty of those things, I couldn’t really feel like a part of that collective agreement.

I can tell you what I was more worried about as a young mom than a dirty house or an underdone pot roast:

• Affording food that the kids would eat, like cereal and cold cuts

• Working my tail off to move up from my entry-level position

• Finding childcare with people I could trust

• Pushing through the bleary exhaustion until bedtime

• Putting the kids to bed so I could work another couple of jobs

• Sleeping half-awake, afraid a child would need me or someone would break in

— And this isn’t about how my life as a mom was harder than everyone else’s. Because it’s not. It’s so useless to compare levels of difficulty (unless you’re playing Mario Kart). —

This is about how often, how very often, I felt like I was utterly failing at the part of my life that was the most important to me: Giving my kids a safe and loving home. And I think that is a feeling that most parents can relate to.

But yesterday my daughter (as she does every year), snuck into my room while I was snoring and left a note. She listed things I’ve taught her that my thirteen-year-old self couldn’t have imagined teaching anyone.

• Self-confidence

• Home repair

• Respect for herself

• How to keep dreaming

She’s my baby, almost eighteen. I’m staring down this next year, my last precious moments with her as a child. And then it turns out that she’s no child. Both my kids have had experiences that pushed them to a level of maturity that wasn’t, and still isn’t, fair.

Did I make me and my daughter matching dresses? Yes. Yes, I did.

I don’t think the world owes me any credit for who my children are.

They are so wonderfully and amazingly themselves.

The thing about being a mother is that you get to watch as these souls unfurl and spread and find themselves. And that’s what I want to celebrate. That some miracle of the universe let me be part of their lives.

Can parents mess life up for their kids? I mean, yeah.

But most parents aren’t. Most of us are trying our level best.

Most of us are remarkably adequate mothers and fathers.

And as a midlife woman, not always sure if I did something useful in the world, I think being an adequate mother is enough for me.