It Doesn’t Get Easier When They Get Older

There is a hand-painted frame on our family desk that reads “You’r the Best mom ever.” Inside it sits a heart-shaped hole with a black and white photo of me with my oldest son. He is wrapped in my arms, and we are smiling, both looking as joyful as we were in that time – a time that feels like yesterday and a different life completely.

The woman in that photo is young and happy. She plays hide and seek with that little boy, sings songs, and reads him stories. She laughs at everything he does, naughty or nice. She writes journals to him, so he has a picture of those simple, sweet days when he is grown and forgetful. She is the best mom ever.

But in that photo, there is another baby growing in her belly, one that will arrive a little too early, turning her life down a different path than the one she thinks waits for them. This path will be expansive and rewarding all the same, but it will come with challenges and loneliness she is not accustomed to. It will bring guilt and resentment that will devour many of the days ahead. She does not know this as she smiles for the camera. She thinks the lightness will continue. She thinks it will multiply as the children multiply.

She hasn’t stopped to realize that the laundry will multiply, too, as will the expectations set upon her, the bills and cooking and onslaught of appointments and school emails and arguments between brothers requiring constant mediation. The sadness and anger will multiply also as her family stretches to welcome children who were meant for other mothers but have landed in her arms instead. Her nearly empty calendar will be filled with things mundane and, yes, sometimes magical. These items will demand her time and attention, things she has so much of in this smiling photo but will wane with every child.

This past weekend was filled with these calendar items, some fun, some necessary. Household chores devoured the hours between volunteer events and Halloween festivities. Mind-numbing negotiations with my oldest consumed an entire morning as he tried to decide whether he was too old to trunk or treat. I offered advice, weighed options, gave additional options, and constructed a pretty spectacular last-minute costume. None of it was good enough.

The smell of Snickers in the air ultimately determined he was not, in fact, too old for candy. Head down, eyes hopeful, he sheepishly apologized and requested the bag I had tucked in my purse knowing he would need it. Dressed in his go-to hoodie, he collected treats while I recalled the little boy peeking out from inside a pudgy T-Rex suit or hand-me-down skunk costume, always delighted with whatever we dreamt up together.

Sunday brought hours in the kitchen to prepare for the week ahead, followed by the cleaning of that kitchen, endless laundry, the checking of homework, parental refereeing, and pumpkin carving. This last beloved family tradition, quite naturally, turned into tears and jack-o-lantern guts on my hardwood floor – two more things to tidy and set right, the tears taking substantially more time than the floor. I missed the days when a pumpkin could just have a face.

By Sunday evening, I was done with all of it. How I missed when my kids were younger and easier. Defeated, I wrapped myself in a robe and climbed into bed, only to be sniffed out a few minutes later by the smallest member of my brood. Somewhere before dawn, another climbed the stairs seeking refuge, as well. The nighttime hours bring back the faintest echo of those early years, and I often trade sleep just to watch them rest. I know they need me now more than ever, but how they resist in the light of day.

The woman in the photo did not understand what was waiting for her around the bend. She knew, but somehow didn’t know, that as she added little humans to her family, they would grow into bigger, more complex humans whose foot size and stubbornness would soon match her own. The basic needs so easily met in infancy have been exchanged for time-intensive mental and emotional needs. Instead of food and rest, their care now requires food and food and more food and rest and hours of listening, reassuring, and talking down from the rafters when adolescent anger threatens to burn the whole place to the ground. This work is exhausting when done well, and, as I am finding, even more exhausting when done poorly. We recently installed a 70 lb. punching bag if that is any indication of how we’re doing.

I propose no answers. I have a punching bag in my garage. My husband and I are finding whatever balance we can as we trod through the unknown together(ish). What I do have to offer is a recognition of the impossible manner in which mothers are expected to give of their time, bodies, and self in ever-expanding ways as their children grow. I thought the sleepless nights of infancy were the hard part, but as I lie awake now, watching them sleep, rehashing all the ways I could have done it better today, preparing for what new troubles will come tomorrow, I am realizing that the hard part is just beginning. My children’s blossoming independence will not mean my own as I had originally imagined. I forgot how difficult growing up really is.

I knew the day would come when I longed for the baby inside that makeshift frame, but I didn’t know I would so deeply miss the woman who holds him with joyful tenderness. She thinks she is in the very thick of it, that the early days are the hard part, and she is really good at the hard part. On days like today, when I feel like I can’t quite get it right anymore, like these children actually should have come with a handbook, I really miss her, the best mom ever stuck inside a heart-shaped hole.

Ashley, Woman of a Certain Grace