If I'm Doing Okay, Why Am I Trying So Hard?

[This was written years ago when my children were young]

When the baby eats the dog's food, my first thought is, "If I were a good mother, this would never happen!" When I realize I have forgotten my daughter's fourth grade class concert, I think, "A good mother remembers things like that." Many times a day the "If I were a good mother...." refrain plays in my mind and I feel inadequate and frustrated as a mother.

If I were a good mother. . . .  

I would know instinctively what to do,

From the day they take their first breath

To the day they take their marriage vows...

And beyond!

          I don't remember my mother agonizing about motherhood. She didn't read Dr. Spock, child development manuals, or take parenting (or even Lamaze) classes. Yet she seemed secure and confident in her identity as A MOTHER! She just assumed that she would know what to do and she did. I recall her saying that the most important thing about parenting was loving your children and enjoying them, and everything else would fall into place. She also said that knowing how to be a good mother was instinctive and that when I had children I would automatically know what to do.

          I didn't! I worried and fussed from the first minute, armed not only with my sister's child development manual, but the most popular Baby and Child Care book I could find. I recall the overwhelming inadequacy that hit me as I looked down on my new firstborn and thought, "What on earth made me think I would know how to take care this?" Is such an awesome feeling of responsibility for another life normal or even common? Years later, I still worry that maybe I'm not doing my best and I'll pay for it with delinquent, drug-crazed, undernourished, unhappy, unloving or, heaven forbid, maladjusted children?

If I were a good mother

I'd always know where my kids are at l0:00 p.m.!

And before--not after--I hear a crash,

Or blood-curdling screams.

          Did television give me unrealistic expectations? I grew up with Claire Huxtable and Carol Brady of the Brady Bunch as my examples. Did it brainwash me into believing in an ideal mother, who always solved the problems of her children with a smile and in less than half an hour. Am I trying to live up to the mother in the TV ads who always has home-baked cookies warm from the oven for her children along with the perfect retort! Television not only gave me examples of "perfect" mothers, it also countered by showing me, every night on the 5:00 news, all the things that could go wrong if I failed as a mother: the delinquency, drug abuse, murders, gang wars, mental illness, kidnappings. And it instilled a feeling of guilt as it declaimed sententiously, "It's l0:00 p.m. Do you know where your children are?" even when they were in bed asleep.

If I were a good mother...

My home would always be spotlessly clean

With floors you could eat off and

Plates you can see yourselves in.

          Did commercials that sang of shining floors and shinier plates convince me that cleanliness was the embodiment of motherhood? Did it depict "mother love" as smiling when the baby threw the cereal on the floor or the dog tramped mud in on the new carpet? Did sitcoms that never showed clutter make me feel uneasy if my daughter cut out in the living room? When I bought a toy that wasn't "educational" or the latest fad, did I feel I was depriving my children? If they weren't computer whizzes, was it a reflection on me? Did it subconsciously (or consciously) influence me that love is giving your child all the toys, computer games or designer jeans he sees on TV? Or giving him only the "right cereal?

If I were a good mother...

I'd buy only organic food,

Serve only low-calorie, fat-free, high fiber

Peanut butter snacks carved in animal shapes!

           Was my generation the first to feel that there was a "better" way to do things? We wanted organic food, nutritious snacks, low-cholesterol breakfasts, sushi, Quinoa, tofu and bean sprouts. But our children still became junk-food junkies! Did we feel that if we bought the "right" food, they'd avoid all the obesity, heart-attacks and cancers that have plagued the earth for generations? Did we feel that supervised exercise and fun activities would make our children thinner and happier than we'd been?

           I must have subconsciously felt that my parent's generation must have been ineffective or our world wouldn't be in the mess it was in. I wasn't the only one I'm sure that wanted to show we could do a better job doing things "our way", but not even child psychology books could agree what the "best" way was. There has been free love, more welfare, living together, more "friendly" divorces, more single parents and same gender families, but has our generation done better than our parent's generation? We wanted to save the world with peace on earth and universal love, but our children are still unhappy, faced with greater problems, not only physical but sexual abuse, different wars, more dangerous drugs, expanded crime, increased poverty and homelessness, not to mention plagues like AIDS, than our own generation!

If I were a good mother...

I would help my kids with the "new" math,

So they'd become the class valedictorians

Or Olympic champions and make me proud!

          Do I try to live vicariously through my children? Because I was a full-time mother do I equate success or failure by my children's achievements? Or when I work outside the home, do I rationalize that I am giving my children more responsibility and opportunities to garner awards? Do I claim my children's honors are bonuses earned partly by me? How responsible am I for my children's successes or failures? I recall the tongue-in-cheek song, "Officer Krumpke" from West Side Story where delinquency is attributed to failure of the parents, the schools, society and the child itself. Just as the song comes full circle in putting blame for personal problems on everyone and no one, we can't pin down absolutely why children fail or succeed. We try as parents to do our best, but more often than not we succeed or fail in spite of ourselves. I am too apt to take credit for my children's successes and blame their failures on anything or anyone else. And is that fair to them or me?

If I were a good mother...

I'd be my child's best friend

And we'd have meaningful "raps"

In our quality time together!

          Was my generation too idealistic?  The disillusionment when I realized I was not an ideal parent made me feel not just inadequate but a failure. I was not a "good" mother, whatever that meant! My mother on the other hand never expected to be the perfect mother; but she felt she was a good mother. Would I worry less about how good a mother I was if my own mother could have shared her insight and failures with me as I raised my children? Do I see her as a more "perfect" mother that I can't live up to because she died before I made her a grandmother? Because I can't recall the times she yelled at me and got angry do I worry when I lose my cool? Was she more like me than I realize?

If I were really a good mother....

I would realize the raising a child

Is not always easy, but it's worthwhile.

The rewards are not always tangible,

But the most important thing is to keep trying.

          I felt the same overwhelming awe and fear with my fifth baby twenty years later as I did with my first when I was young and fearless! "Now that I know how impossible it is to be a good mother, why do I think I will succeed as mother this time?" To the awe and inadequacy I had felt many years ago when my oldest was born, was added the knowledge and sad experiences of the intervening years when my youngest was laid in my arms. I know now what I only suspected years before-- that raising a child is the most challenging and difficult job on the earth today! And that no time, or person is perfect.

          My mother once told me that she realized she was pregnant with my brother on the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. She was saddened to think that this new babe inside her might only serve as fodder in some war to secure peace in the world. The day that the my pregnancy test came back positive with my youngest child, I looked at the world and wondered if things could get worse. There were still wars, poverty, crime and pollution. I wondered what dangers my unborn child would face in this imperfect world. I am aware of the dangers that lurk hidden within each new day-- accidents, illnesses, failures, arguments, disappointments, wars, sociological perils, plagues, radiations, global warming and air pollution. But I also know the joys and delights, the revelry, the accomplishments, companionship, fun and excitement that lie behind each new day also.

          I laugh when I recall how I woke up my first baby continually to see if he was wet! I was so naive and innocent then! Now I don't worry if I will know what to do, but if I will have the energy to do it! And I realize how different and unique each child is and I know I can't treat them the same or expect them to react even similarly.

          There are many days when I feel very inadequate and a veritable failure as a mother; when I am late picking up my son from soccer or too busy to notice my daughter is unhappy. On those days, my "If I were a good mother" inner tape plays repeatedly and I feel like declaring maternal bankruptcy. But there are far more days when I feel good about how I'm doing as a mother and pat myself on the back. It may be something as simple as taking the baby to the park or fixing a special picnic supper that brings a glow to my heart. Or it may be that we survived a family dinner without a disaster or phone call!

          On those good days, I realize that I worry about how I'm doing as a mother because it is so important! I recall my mother's long-ago words that it's the loving and the enjoyment that counts and her advice to never quit trying! And so, although motherhood may not be instinctive and I'm far from perfect, I begin each new day vowing to be a not just a "good" mother (if there is such a mythical creature) but only a better mother than I was the day before.

          I try to learn from my errors and keep my head above water as I travel along the bumpy road of motherhood. But the scenery is always different and the road is filled with fun and excitement as we go along! And motherhood is one venture where the destination is only one part of the journey!

Looking Back at “Back to the Future”

October 21, 2015 was the date Marty McFly went to in his journey to the future from 1985 in the iconic “Back to the Future” film of 1989. As the world celebrates this “Back to the Future Day,” and compares all the things that were and were not foretold, I’d like to go back to 1985 and compare how my life was in October 1985.

In October 1985, we were living in Vicenza, Italy, with our three children. Marlowe was at Utah State (in Logan, Utah), Athena and Marc were teenagers attending the DODS (Department of Defense School) in Vicenza. Diana was an eight-year-old. In the movie, Marty McFly goes back to the future to save his son from being arrested, and it is ironic that that year I was always worrying about Marc, my 14-year-old teenager, who it seemed was always getting in trouble.

Marc, 1985

This was our second year of our three-year tour in Italy; Marlowe had graduated from Vicenza High School, received a four-year scholarship to Utah State University, so we only had three children in Italy with us. Athena was a popular junior in the high school, school officer and performing in gymnastics. Marc was a ninth grader, class president, and wrestled on the high school team. Diana was in elementary school, and doing well.

I was in my second year in University of Maryland, attending night classes on base. It was very ironic that I, who had waited over 20 years to complete the college education I had interrupted when I married Ed in 1963 so I could be home with my children, now attended night classes, when the children were home and I wasn’t.

Athena, my prize-winning gymnast

My classes started about 5:00 p.m., so I can remember the “hand-off” when I arrived on base to attend school and met Athena and Marc, who would tend Diana that evening for me. I felt like I was handing-off Diana for their care, but of course, we were comparing plans as we traded places—me to school and them to home (or activities). Ed usually took care of Diana while I was in school, except for when he was TDY (away on temporary duty) and out of town.

I wasn’t gone every night, but usually took classes Monday through Thursday; however I also took a Saturday Cultural History Class where we went to visit the places we had studied about that week. It was a wonderful way to study history and I took at least four of these classes, visiting all the areas in Northern Italy. We studied Rome, but never visited there as a class. We would study the history, art, music, culture of the city (for example, Ravenna); then on Saturday, took a chartered bus to Ravenna to look at and discuss all the things we had studied!!!

Angela Buvoli, Conversational Italian teacher

I took Italian language classes through the University, (two full years), as well as attended a “conversational Italian” class on base to further enhance my use of the language. The conversational Italian teacher, Signora Angela Buvoli, told us about every-day life in Vicenza, its history, and how to understand things in a foreign country—how to take a bus, where to find things we needed, but didn’t know where to obtain; I recall I broke my sewing machine foot and she told me which marketplace I could most likely purchase a new foot for my machine; she was right. She taught us “how to get along” Italian, not the rigid grammar I learned from my university professor. I was always trying to practice my Italian, though I spoke it with a German accent (because I had studied German in college—or that was why they said I sounded more German than American).

I always spoke Italian with an accent, unlike my older children, who picked up Italian and spoke it without any accent (especially Marlowe). But Marlowe, who took Italian language classes in college in Utah and who always sounded like a native Italian, did not know his grammar as well as I did. Because of my English major, I studied English grammar and could compare it to the complex Latin grammar of the Italian language. But what I learned about Italian and practiced, although I was never very proficient), got me around. In fact when Ed and I traveled to Spain for a creative writing class taught on the “Costa Blanca,” I was able to speak enough Italian to help us though France (and of course, they thought I was German because of my accent), and never were quite as prejudiced as they would have been if I had spoken English and been a terrible American.

Ed in Germany 1985

I wasn’t as bad as my husband, Ed, who had studied Italian for six months in the Army’s Monterrey, California language school, and couldn’t seem to understand it. Once he stopped at a fruit market and asked for a “kilometer” of grapes. Of course kilometer is a measurement like miles and he meant to ask for a “kilo” or a thousand grams or approximately 2.2 pounds of grapes. He gave everyone in the market a good laugh at the ignorant American who couldn’t compute measurements.

Hitler's Eagle's Nest

That fall we went to Germany with Ed for meetings and were able to visit Hitler’s “Eagle Nest” at Berchesgaden, in Bavaria. The 20-minute “adventurous” bus ride along the steep rock walls and gorges to an altitude of 5,000 feet gave us a breathtaking view of one of Hitler’s favorite places. I recall buying a drink of “hot chocolate” there and I got a demitasse cup of thick, bitter, dark chocolate syrup without milk or sugar and couldn’t drink it. America’s idea of “hot chocolate” is definitely not the same as Germany or Italy’s.

The other thing I remember about that trip was that we were trying to help Marc be more responsible about his grades. Marc failed to turn in his assignments, or whatever, so he could not miss school to go on the trip, so Ed, Athena and Diana drove to Germany during the end of the week. Then Marc and I had to take the train after school on Friday afternoon to Germany to meet them.

I recall being confused in Milan when we had to change trains to go to Munich, Germany, and the signs referred to Munich as “Monaco” (Monaco di Baviera); it took me a while to determine that “Monaco” was the Italian name for München (German for Munich) and where I wanted to go—and that I was not headed toward the Monaco principality on the French Riviera. It was late that night when Ed met Marc and I at the train station and drove us to the hotel.

Athena and Marc were also very active in the base community theater program that fall, and I remember Athena was rehearsing for a musical that would be performed in December.

Diana

When I look back at October 1985, I think of it as the calm before the storm, because in December 1985 Ed was got a bone infection in his left arm, was medevacked (medically evacuated) to German and would spend nine months of the next year and a half in hospitals in Germany and Walter Reed Hospital (Washington, D. C.) before he was finally well again.  Ed spent that Christmas in the hospital at Landstuhl Airforce Base. I had flown with him to Germany as he was so sick, and arrived home on Christmas Eve. Diana had been staying with friends while I was in Germany, and I picked her up and Athena, Diana and I had Christmas together. Marc was skiing with friends in Austria that Christmas holiday and Marlowe stayed in Utah with Grandma Chambers in Burley. It was a lonely Christmas. 

Ed in the hospital at Landstuhl, Germany Christmas 1985

"For Such a Time as This" (Esther 4:14)

She was ten years old when she was captured by enemies and carried away into captivity. There she was raised as a servant, learning the language and skills of her new people. At the age of sixteen she was sold to a white trader who made her his wife. 

  It was at that time, when she expecting her first child that she met two white men whose lives would change the course of the new American national’s destiny. It was the winter of 1804-1805 and these American explorers, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were wintering on the Missouri River near the villages of the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians where they had built Ft. Mandan. Sacagawea, the Shoshone Indian girl who had been captured as a ten-year-old girl and who was now the wife of Toussaint Charbonneau, a French Canadian trader living with the Hidatsa Indians met the two explorers who were exploring the new American continent.

On February 11, 1805, Sacagawea gave birth to a son, Jean Baptiste; when the explorers left in April for the West, she, Charbonneau (and the baby) went along as guides to the unknown territory. 

All summer the group followed the Missouri River west across what is now Montana. When they reached Three Forks, near the mouth of the Missouri, Sacagawea recognized she was in Shoshone area where she had been kidnapped years earlier. When they reached the end of the river and knew they needed horses to continue, they approached a tribe to purchase horses; it was the tribe Sacagawea had been kidnapped from years earlier, and the chief was her brother. 

Not only were they able to trade goods for horses, they were given a guide who knew the way through the Bitterroot Mountains to the Clearwater River which emptied into the Snake and Columbia River and eventually drained into the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and Clark and their company were able to map and open the whole area for western expansion of the United States.

Sacagawea played a central role in helping Lewis and Clark blaze a trail across the western part of the American continent and made the “Louisiana Purchase” an integral part of America. Without her help, it may have taken the expedition much longer, or they may not have been successful. Sacagawea was truly prepared for her

“mission” in life—leading these explorers across the unknown territory. Sacagawea’s kidnapping, her knowledge of life as a Shoshone and a Hidatsa and her relationship to the chief of the Shoshone was priceless. Sacagawea was carefully prepared for her important mission in life, and she fulfilled it.

Another valiant woman who was prepared for a special role in her life—to save her people, the Jews—was Esther in the Old Testament. Esther was a righteous young Jewish woman who along with the other Jews were in captivity, but King Ahasuerus of Persia and Media had chosen her as his queen.  A wicked man named Hamman was jealous of the Jews and wanted to destroy them, so he made a law that on a certain day, all Jews throughout the 20 providences of the king would be killed.  When Esther heard about this decree, she asked her uncle and all the Jews to fast and pray for three days that she could influence the king to cancel the degree. 

 

Her uncle Mordecai told Esther “who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”(Esther 4:14)

Of course Esther saved the day, even at the risk of her own life—she went into her husband in his chamber without being asked (which was punishable by death), but he spared her life, and granted her request to cancel the wicked decree to kill all the Jews, and killed Hamman instead. Esther had been preparing all her life for this mission--to save her people, the Jews, from death.

I know each of us came to earth with a mission, great or small, to fulfill. I’ve often contemplated what my mission in life is. I know my mission is not a great important mission like Sacagawea or Esther, but it is important for me to understand my mission, prepare for it, and then do it. 

I think one of my most important missions in my life has been to be a mother. This is not easy in this day and age when motherhood, especially a stay-at-home mother, is denigrated, devalued, and careers are seen as so much more significant in a woman’s life. 

Although I stayed at home with my children for 25 years, I also worked for most of the years of my youngest child’s school years, while my husband who had retired from the military became the “primary caretaker.” 

During those years I often prayed and struggled to understand what is the best thing to do--best for my family, my child, me? 

Life isn’t black and white; our mission in life isn’t clear-cut or crystal clear as Sacagawea or Esther’s was. Is it to be a good neighbor? Involved in community service? Involved in government service? How much time do I devote to volunteer work? 

 I read about women who have organized service projects to help hundreds of people in Africa, and I wonder if that is what I should do. I see women who write books and hold down full time jobs and still have six children and are wonderful mothers. I see women whose musical voices touch hundreds or millions of people, but I know that is not my talent or my mission.

All I can do is to live each day the best I can; to pray for guidance to know what I should do TODAY. Then I can listen for inspiration and look around every day to see what I CAN do. It won’t be earth-shaking, world-notable things that history will record that I have done in my life, but the words of my favorite poet has been my touchstone all of my life. 

“If I can stop one heart from breaking, or ease one heart the pain, or put one robin into his nest again, I will not have lived in vain.” Emily Dickenson.