Love Song (To Nate, on his fifteenth birthday)

First off, Nate-- let me say that the Lego Grand Emporium building set, with its 2,200 little Lego pieces and little Lego people and its great big Lego price has been ordered and -- so the the online store assures me -- is on it's little Lego way. Please note that, this year, I am totally on top of it: it's still weeks before your birthday.

This essay is something completely different. Call it my love song to you, my beloved boy, a pre-birthday present and my Valentine's day gift to you, all rolled into one.

I know, I know-- stop rolling your eyes. It's a mom thing. After fifteen years - fifteen! - you shouldn't be surprised. My guess is, you're already halfway expecting it, and please (consider it your gift back to me) let me persist in the belief that deep down (maybe really, really deep down) (I'm a sappy mom, not a complete fool) you are secretly pleased that I am writing you this love song. Or at least, will be, in some distant future when weird mom things like this seem much less weird, and much more, well, loving.

Fifteen years ago, I was cranky and bloated and out-of-sorts-uncomfortable. I couldn't sleep. Not enough, anyway. One thought kept twisting through the hazy fog, of my pregnancy-cursed forgetfulness: "I don't know about this whole motherhood thing, but I do know that I don't want to be pregnant anymore."

Not much has changed in the last decade and a half. I'm still cranky and bloated and out-of-sorts-uncomfortable. I still can't sleep much; I fall asleep ok; it's the staying asleep that proves to be problematic. I still don't want to be pregnant. I still have absolutely no clue about the Motherhood thing. At all.

Frankly, I don't care much about the maternal instinct that I swear I still don't have. I much prefer looking at babies to actually, you know, having them. Or holding them. Or playing with them. Certainly not changing them. Toddlers? They're cute, mostly, but they're also generally covered in fluids I'm not particularly fond of. They also get caught in that endless loop of repetition - "Again, mommy!" times infinity, until you just want to pound spikes through your forehead. It may bring comfort to a toddler; it is an endless, trackless void of madness for me.

The elementary years are somewhat better. If personality development and such are not quite on the right track, at least we're in the car in the parking lot looking at the right track (sometimes only looking at a track, which, let's face it, will do in a pinch for those desperate enough, and there were more times than I care to count that a track was close enough and better than no track at all).

I tried. I tried really, really hard. You asked questions. Sometimes incessantly. Your voracious curiosity demanded to know why, or what or when. Problem was, when I told you, your immediate response to my answers was always "No. That's not it. That's wrong." For a while, when you were very young, I could get away with "Because that's the way God made it," which was a close cousin to "oh dear--the gumball/sticker/fake tattoo/cheap plastic toy machine at the grocery store is broken..." but you are a smart child and those answers didn't hold for long.

I despaired that you would never make the leap from linear thought to abstract reasoning. Metaphors? Ha! Don't get me started. You lived in a world of straight lines and unbending rules (never mind the monsters under the bed that were apparently (mostly) vanquished by the glow of a 25 watt bulb that seeped from the six inch crack left by your open closet door). You seemed to demand that I live in the straight and narrow with you.

There were times, my darling child, that I wanted to run away. Or hide. Or beg "Five minutes, baby. Please-- just give me five minutes." But that proved to be nearly impossible for you to give. What saved me  were these occasional flashes of incandescent brilliance-- leaps of fancy and abstraction that dazzled me and startled me and fairly took my breath away. You so clearly "got it."

At six, you declared that when you grew up, you would "build houses for all the poor people, and make sure that they had enough to eat." At ten, you burst into tears - not because Representative Gabby Giffords had been shot, and not that there were a handful of others (including a young child) caught in the wake of those senseless bullets -- but because there was no outcry for the young boy who'd been murdered (also by senseless bullets) on the south side of Chicago only a few days before. You cried out: Where was the justice, the attention, the president's speech for the poor black child lost to urban warfare? Why just the richer, white people in Arizona? At twelve, you chose your the Torah portion for your Bar Mitzvah to be Sh'lach Lecha; the one about the giants and the spies, yes-- but you chose to talk about the commandments we were given on how to treat "the stranger"-- the outside-of, the kept-apart one, the Other.

Oh, may darling boy-- you so clearly get it. You have no shyness in telling me you don't believe in God. But you believe in kindness; I'm good with that. You so clearly have a sense of righteousness and compassion that I swear will heal the world. I have no doubt that you will build the houses, fight for justice, demand that we treat one another kindly and with love. You are that boy, and I am so amazed at the grace and the gift I have been given in being your mom.

Don't get me wrong, beloved-- you will have your struggles. You know that already. And I won't be able to heal your hurt every time. Or even any time. You know that, too. I will not always have words of wisdom, sage advice, or answers (easy or cryptic, take your pick). There will be moments of speechlessness and hurt, and a heaping pile of seething anger. On your side. And mine. We are who we are, right? 

But given all our faults and humanity, I can promise you forgiveness. I can promise that nothing you do or say will ever make me love you less. I promise open arms and comfort. And love. Ever and always-- love. What you taught me-- that there is love, unconditional, infinite and filled with grace. 

A decade and a half later, I still have no clue about a maternal instinct. Frankly, at this point, I could not care less about maternal instinct. I'm your mom. For good, forever, learned or innate, messed up and glorious and neurotically anxious and trying to keep up -- I am your mom. It's the most important truth of the universe. I can't imagine a life, a world, a minute, a day where I am not your mother.

And for that, I am forever grateful, and will be forever blessed.

Mom enough - story for Mother's Day

I am willing to admit, with only a brief round of arm-twisting,  that I received a handful of blessings when I came into the world. I like to think that I'm kind, have a bit of compassion, can do multiplication in my head and can make a mean brisket. I value these qualities and truly feel quite blessed. What I am sure I did not receive, in any way whatsoever, was maternal instinct.

Even as a kid, I did not get that whole mommy thing. I didn't play with dolls. Hell, I barely played with others; why in the world would I play with dolls that did, well, nothing? They didn't talk (not really) or walk (unless I moved their feet) or eat (unless it was one of those strange little magic baby bottles of chemically liquid that was (apparently) supposed to be milk and disappeared when you tipped the bottle one way and reappeared when you tipped it the other). They weren't real, and they certainly weren't clever enough or independent enough to be mistaken for such. They were, in a word: boring.

So, no dolls for me.

And in case I'm being a little too coy and understated: I didn't play house, hated babysitting, shuddered at diapers and felt at a total loss when it came to miniature creatures who would one day, with an incredible amount of luck and training I couldn't begin to comprehend, grow up to be actual people.

But they would do it all without me.

So you can imagine my surprise when I learned I was pregnant. I'm sorry-- what? That can't be right. I'm not cut out to be a mother. I have cats. I barely remember to feed them on a daily basis; how in hell will I remember to feed a baby? Relax, they all told me. You'll remember to feed the baby. It's different when you're a mom. And then they'd snicker (though they'd insist it was gentle laughter, meant more to commiserate with my cluelessness than chide my ignorance). Pregnant. Apparently with a baby. Some poor soon-to-be-human who had the poor prenatal intelligence to choose me as his mom.

Thirty some-odd years (and then some), and I still didn't play with dolls.

Panic gripped me, and the angst almost ate me alive. I lived, for nine long months, playing an endless loop of "what-if? in my head" What if I drop him? What if I break him? What if he doesn't like me? What if I mess him up? What if aliens conquer the earth and separate us and he grows up to become an ax murderer? He could be unpopular; worse, he could be popular, and what the hell would I do then? Oh God- what if he's a Republican? There were a hundred things - a thousand things - an infinity of things, real and imagined, that my child could be, and what if I fail him?

Ah. There it is, the secret shame, the real fear, named at last: what if I am not up to the task? What if I fail?

My son, and not a mothering bone in my body.

And then I held him. They placed that small body in my arms- warm and swaddled and wrinkly. His head fit perfectly in the palm of my hand, his body curved into mine as if he were the piece of me, of my heart I didn't even know was missing. My son. My child. And I held him. cradled him against me, and felt the presence of God, knew that God lived in the space between our breaths, between the beat of our hearts.

There, on the fringes of my panic, driven by doubt and fear, I prayed to every god I could think of, including the one I'd finally made my peace with not too long before this miraculous instant-- I prayed; no, I demanded "Now what?"

I mean, really: now what? I learned, just in the nick of time, that I had, if not a maternal instinct, then at least a connection to my son. It was profound. It was more than love. It bordered on magic, and certainly on a miracle or three. It filled me, this love, to the very edges, and then overflowed in small waves, until I felt like I was drowning, or maybe breathing for the very first time. There was this life- tiny and fragile and innocent and our hearts, our breath, were woven together, an inextricable bond, and now fucking what?

So, I loved him. So what? Bad pop songs went spinning through my head, a calliope of the banal. The world needed a helluva lot more than love. I needed a helluva lot more than love. I needed, at the very least, an instruction manual. They were sending me home with this infant boy. Did They - whoever They were - some omnipotent They, related to the Editorial We and the Royal Plural, those power broker rule-maker mavens - did They not realize how little I knew, how unprepared I was? They gave me a diaper bag, a handful of glossy pamphlets, some samples of formula and some other tchotchkes, my son and a fare-thee-well.

We were on our own, and I was still waiting for that maternal instinct to kick in.

I guess I was waiting for the bolt of lightning, angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin kind of enlightenment. I wanted to be infused with that mommy glow of knowing, quickly and painlessly. What I got was something else entirely.

I got the disorganized mommy gene, the one that had at least one major item missing from the traveling circus diaper bag that it was necessary to carry any time we left the confines of the house that was now a cross between a padded baby prison and a toy store. Other parents showed up with extra bottles and binkies, a change of clothes, little Tommy's favorite toy, crackers and cheerios in environmentally safe packaging, and their infant, clean and calm and smiling. I was lucky that I remembered the baby. Extra stuff? I'd be happy with enough stuff.

Birthdays were celebrated with joy and merriment. Parties were hit or miss. We did them most years. They had no themes. I didn't realize babies and toddlers needed themed parties. We almost always had cake, and a present that showed up, sometimes wrapped, within 48 hours. Almost.

Calendars and school vacations were mostly theoretical. There were a couple of times I took him to school, only to find that there wasn't any that day. Pulaski Day. Really? I don't know that he can spell it, let alone know who the hell Pulaski was. But apparently, he's important enough to close the schools around here as a show of honor and respect.

Forget Little League and after school activities. Apparently, these were all designed and scheduled in a wormhole from 1957, an era in which both parents didn't work and kids could walk willy-nilly and unsupervised across town to get to the ball field or wherever said activity was being held. And there were carpools and gangs of neighborhood kids and you knew people and other parents who could step up every so often, except your "every so often" was every time, because you work full time and you're a single parent and you barely know your next door neighbor, let alone the parents of your kid's classmates. So you die a tiny little bit, when that kid, that not-quite-so-small and still defenseless and slightly older kid looks at you as you drive past the ball field with practice going in full swing and says, in his most grown up and understanding voice "That's ok, mama. Maybe next year."

Then there were the days that you prayed to everything that was holy that your child stayed this side of not-quite-sick long enough for you to make the meeting that you just couldn't miss. Those were the days that you cringed every time your phone rang, hoping it wasn't the school nurse letting you know he'd gone from not-quite-sick to sick enough, please take him home. Worse were the days you were out of town and you couldn't be there at all, had to depend on someone else - anyone else - to fill in for you. Good God, those were the days you had to depend on someone, and come to think of it, they were probably a helluva lot more organized than you, more focused than you, more mom than you anyway, so what's the big deal?

There are meds to take and doctors to visit and shoes that leak water and buttons that fall off and homework that needs to get done and teachers to correspond with and you manage, barely, to feed him every day and put on clean socks every day and make it to school every day and love him every day. Every day, you do those things. Some days are better than others. Some are more organized. Some, you swear there's not enough duct tape in all the world to contain him and give you just a minute of quiet, so you can catch your breath before the next round. Some days you want to crawl into a corner and weep because you know, you just know, that you have failed him. And every day, you love him, just a little bit more.

Every day, again and again. Every day, in an endless succession of over and over. And you can't imagine living your life without it. Thank God (or whatever deity in which you currently believe) you have been given this gift, this miracle, this awesome and fearsome and breathtaking boy, to care for and comfort and learn from and love. Every day.

And then you pause. You think: That maternal instinct, that thing I've been aching for since the day I first knew that I carried another heartbeat, another soul-- is that the feeling of dread and guilt and annoyance that fills me? And the feeling of bursting-at-the-seams pride when he achieves and creates and laughs and sings and brings you a flower and makes something out of pasta and glitter and spray paint? And the dread you feel, wondering if you will break him, or ruin him or can't fix his hurt or heal his heart?

Could it be that sure and absolute knowledge, before anything else-- before everything else-- the idea that the only job you have, the only one that matters, is to love that boy, that now-kinda-large and suddenly adult boy, and make sure that he knows, with his every breath, without doubt or hesitation, that nothing he does or says could ever make you love him any less, that he is loved and he is, ever and always, enough?

Is that maternal instinct? Is that being mom enough?

One of my favorite stories: a woman is bemoaning her single status to a friend, wondering why she can't find the man of her dreams. So her friend, being wise, asked her to make a list of all the characteristics she wants in this perfect man. The woman sets about her task with enthusiasm, taking a week or two to compile a list of everything she considers a prime quality in this mythical-but-hoped-for man. Finally, she is satisfied that she has everything covered. She returns to her friend, hands over the list and waits for her friend's words of wisdom and advice. The friend glances at the list (which covers several pages), barely seeing a single trait, hands it back and says, quite gently, in a voice filled with love and kindness: "Now become all those things."

I wasn't looking for my perfect man; I was looking to grow a boy, to teach him to be a person - a mensch. But-- maybe yes, become all these things. Become them, because how on earth could I teach him forgiveness if I did not learn to forgive? How could I expect him to understand the strength it takes to ask for help if I hid my fear behind a wall of pride? I have not become all those things, not by a long shot. But I try. He, marvelous boy that he is, has learned every lesson I have ever taught him, intended or not. Trust me, I have spent much time apologizing. "I'm sorry; I didn't do that well (or right, or kindly, or patiently, pick an adjective, any adjective); I will try to do better next time. We need to learn this better, ok?" 

My son is smart and funny and annoying and sarcastic (in spades) and kind and self-absorbed at times and curious all the time. He splits hairs until I want to scream. He challenges the powers-that-be in politics and religion and science, both their reasoning and their conclusions. He has a moral compass set to JUST, and is finally learning to temper his judgement with mercy and compassion. He tastes life, in great gulps and with much passion.

He has become... himself. He steps through his life, sometimes faltering, sometime boldly. But he walks through it. Every day. He succeeds, he tries, he fails, he stresses, he questions, he knows -without hesitation - that he is loved. He knows, without doubt, that he is enough.

And that, forever and always, is enough for me.