Image: Gustav Klimt: Mother and Child, 1905
Being a mother is a big deal. Not that it shouldn't be, because it is just about the hardest thing there is to do. There are about as many kinds of mothers as there are children to parent. I'm going to be a foster mother again very soon, and that brings up all sorts of feelings. Bear with me while I sort them out in writing.
Yes, being a mother is a big deal. Our culture idolizes mothers to the point where it is generally accepted that being a parent is by default just
better than not being one. It is assumed that until you have had a child, you are incapable of feeling or expressing unconditional love or deep empathy or protectiveness for other people. Women who are unable for whatever reason to give birth or choose to not have children are creatures to be pitied.
I'm pretty sure being pitied is one of the worst feelings there is. Being pitied when you have suffered a great loss such as losing a child is so dis-empowering. For as long as people pity you, you are pitiful, no?
We have pictures of Little A all over our house, reminders of when we were her proud parents. She was a beautiful daughter and adding Little J to our family will not make me stop missing her or wondering how she is doing with her family.
I have been not-a-mother yet, a foster mother, a former mother, and now a foster mother-to-be again. While being a mother (and I was that in almost every sense to Little A) taught me many things about myself, it didn't make me better than anyone else. I am proud to say that I already knew about love and empathy before she became part of our family. I am a purposeful person and examine myself and my motives on a regular basis, so there was no big a-ha moment there.
It is a little hard for me, around holidays like Mothers' Day, to not feel a little annoyed at the cult of the Mother around me. That in-club that I have both been included and excluded from. It is a rite of passage to be a parent, and it is almost like I am not considered fully a woman unless I am a frazzled mother.
But having a functioning uterus doesn't make you a woman any more than having a functioning appendix does. All sorts of people have babies that have neither the coping skills nor the interest to parent. As a foster parent, I see that side of it and just can't wrap my head around it.
I will say that I have known people who have suffered illness and loss and personal tragedy, and not one of them would trade places with me for a million dollars. I carry my loss of Little A like a piece of secret shame, even though I lost her due to no wrongdoing of my own, but to a court system that places a higher value on her biological mother's rights than to what was clearly making Little A happy and healthy. I can't tell that story out loud without being like a black raincloud that brings unwanted sadness to anyone who hears it. So most of the time I just gloss over it, or say nothing at all, even though to do so makes me feel like less of a mother, like it was all a dream that ended badly. I'm like the mother that other mothers must not touch for fear of my bad luck rubbing off. I honestly try hard not to touch pregnant women, just in case.
In a few hours I get to meet the little boy who will hopefully be my forever son one day. He is his own person and is not coming into my life to heal my hurts, but to have his own soothed. He has his own issues and cannot bear the burden of my anxiety. I have to teach him that I can be trusted to provide comfort, as if he were a newborn. Today I will start slow, like a first date, hoping for love but not letting a show of it overwhelm. I cannot merely claim him and expect him to fall into my arms in gratitude. In fact, at first, he may reject me for moving him away from his current foster mother or the even more distant figment of the woman he never sees but who gave birth to him.
Being a Mother is a big deal, but not in the ways popular culture would have you believe. It means being a whole person and showing a child how to rise above pain and still have an open heart. It means accepting a child as a person with flaws like any other. And ultimately, it means eventually saying goodbye to that child, hopefully because you have successfully raised them to adulthood and not some other, sadder reason. It means becoming an archetype in the life of another person, expanding beyond yourself into mythic proportions before you even have your morning coffee. It means dead-lifting cars and making healing food that, if you are lucky, will be remembered long after you are ash in the wind.
