Success. It’s what we all strive for. I was thinking this morning how one word can mean so many different things to different people. Money. A promotion. The purchase of a house. A completed education. Those are the obvious ones. But success can mean other, much smaller things as well.
The other day, for example, I unloaded all of my garbage from my cans and from the basement, and got it all ready to go with my Father-in-law, who was making a trip to the dump. When I was done, I felt satisfied, like I really had accomplished something quite great, clearing that space out. And for a moment, I felt really silly for feeling that way. After all, we were talking about garbage, for Pete’s sake. And it wasn’t like there was an insane amount that I had been collecting for ions; I had been to the dump myself just a few weeks prior. And besides, next week, there would be more bags in the empty spaces anyway.
Life as a Mom is full of this kind of small accomplishments. You scrub the bathroom floor of the missed aims, you find the straggler library book you need to take back, you fold and put away the last piece of dirty laundry, you weed the garden, you teach the sound of a letter to a small child… the list goes on and on. The point is, nothing is overly grandious. I can’t come home from work and say “Yes, I saved three patients today”, or “I hired 7 new employees who will now be an asset to the company”, or “I finally got those drawings together for the new bridge”. Everything you do as a mother is routine and temporary. Nothing will ever be accomplished in the truest sense of a word, because as soon as you’re done with something, it needs doing again. It is a job with a beginning but never an end.
And this is where I struggle at times. What major accomplishments have I achieved? Even, what mediocre accomplishments have I acheived? If I died tomorrow, what would they say in my obituary? My name, my age, the year I graduated highschool, and then what? It’s not as though they would say, she washed the toilet a million times, escorted her children to three thousand playdates, and hung at least 2 loads of laundry out on the line every day of her life while trying to be sure her children were healthy and well and had a relatively balanced diet. I asked my husband this when I was struggling with my decision to further my education. I am not sure if I want a full-time job outside the home but I want to be aknowledged for having a brain. I want to be considered having been successful in life. When do they acknowledge your hard work, even if you never built a bridge or became a manager or saved a life?
Then this morning, I was reading an obituary in the paper. Yes, I’m one of those people. An obituary reader.. And it said “She was the Mother of 4 children”, and listed their names. And to the average reader, it might be just a fact about some old lady’s life. But today, good old Caroline’s obituary said a lot more to me than that one sentence. It said to me “Caroline went through at least 4 pregnancies and child births, she tried to be cheerful through her morning sickness as she made the tiny ones breakfast, she rocked and nursed four babies, and she held them as they had fevers, and fretted as they vomited. She potty trained them. And she took them outside to play and taught them the words for the sun and the trees and the colors of the flowers. She gave them their first bite of food and she taught them how to clip their fingernails. She had to close her eyes hard as she held them as they got their immunizations and she delighted in each pound those tiny babies gained. She held their bikes as they wobbled along, she drew hopscotch squares with chalk and through that taught them the joy in jumping and how to count. She taught them what it was like to be loyal and polite, and she showed them what it meant to be a good friend. She held their hands tight in hers as she walked them to their first day of school and she smiled bravely but her heart was aching and as she turned to walk away, a solitary tear escaped her eye because her loss meant their gain but it still hurt. She had to make them brush their teeth so they didn’t get cavities and she had to tell them no to another piece of cake, amidst wines. She packed lunches, she peeled bananas and she baked chickens. And she hung out wet bathing suits and handed out twin pops in the summer’s harsh heat. She had their friends over, even when she didn’t feel like it, because all she wanted to do was make them happy. She always had Tylenol on hand and knew the number to the doctor like the back of her hand. She taught the boys about face wash for acne and the girls about tampons. She always made sure the house was well stocked with milk for breakfast cereal and toilet paper. She read ten million books and learned to do algebra with her son as she helped with his homework, even though she was never that good at it herself. She hosted birthday parties, tirelessly looked for the birthday party goody bag loot and taught her children the art of a good thank you note. She tried to hold in her tears at middle school graduation so her daughter wouldn’t be embarrassed but she could not believe that it all went by that quickly…… and on, and on, and on….
See, no, I don’t know Caroline. And maybe she was even a dreadful Mother, who knows. But I am making her the face of every Stay-at-Home Mother I know who is forced to question their identity because the world so often doesn’t ackowledge us as contributing to society in any beneficial way. Or perhaps *we* don’t acknowlege ourselves for having benefiting. Whichever the case really is, the job is greater and more vast than anyone not having been there can imagine and it really and truly is someting magnificent and worthy of being. And today, I am once again reminded of the beauty of it’s vastness. Taking out the trash and washing sand out of someone’s hair? Yes, it really is a true success. Even if I’ll have to do it again tomorrow.
“Motherhood brings as much joy as ever, but it still brings boredom, exhaustion, and sorrow too. Nothing else ever will make you as happy or as sad, as proud or as tired, for nothing is quite as hard as helping a person develop his own individuality especially while you struggle to keep your own.” — Marguerite Kelly and Elia Parsons
*post published thought: I feel like I should balance this post with saying that I passionately believe that no mother should ever become so caught up in mothering that she forgets herself. While it should be a large portion of your identity, it should never be the only. I will always continue to strive to be a better Carrie and embrace whatever that brings.
When traveling long distances with children, there are a few things that will be your saving grace. The first thing is snacks. Gummy fruit snacks, peanut butter crackers, juice boxes and the like. Nothing to shut a whining mouth as fast as a snack. And even better, a snack that involves sugar. You just have to decide if the immediate gratification is worth the aftermath later, though.
