Confessions of a Daughterless Mother

Much of raising babies, toddlers and even young elementary kiddos is simply survival. Surviving crying, pooping, puking, ear infections, coughing and croup. Managing day care and nursing and bottles and biting and teething and crawling and sassy toddlers who shriek with independence and shrivel with fear. You try and survive with your marriage in tact and maybe a friendship or two. There were days, probably weeks that grew to months, that I believed that if we made it through the day and no one died it was a success.  It's on those days where I would lay my head in bed at night exhausted from filling sippy cups and changing diapers and watching Bear in the Big Blue House and singing "I see the Moon" 13 times before bed that peace and contentment would find me. The fatigue of the day's work, mixed with relief from sleeping babies (albeit knowingly temporarily sleeping) was the perfect cocktail. Sure, there were nights when anxiety snuck in (many of them), where I w...

I drive down the street where he's been staying since Saturday. The duplex is small, practically the size of his bedroom and bathroom at home. My car moves slowly, I search the windows looking for shadows. I see none. He's supposed to be at school, but I don't know if he is. The landscape of my life looks surreal, something out of the Dr Phil show. Not the life I imagined, or the life we have worked so hard for.  This is the life for someone who didn't care, someone who didn't try, someone who didn't give their kids everything they needed. My secret is out. For two years we've been fighting depression, anxiety, ADHD, substance abuse with this kid. For two years we have fought and begged and pleaded for a change in behavior. Some days it worked, never for long. I have lived day to day, hour to hour, moment to moment, text to text. Waiting, always waiting, for the other shoe to drop, for it to turn around, for it to fall apart. Never knowing what was aroun...

Last night E and I were driving into town to pick As up from football, we stopped behind a school bus and watched a little boy hop down off the stairs, wait for his cue to cross the road, and then run with his backpack bouncing off his bottom (his bag was so big compared to his little legs!) across the street toward his driveway. His smile turned my head, and I saw his momma waiting, bent to his level, arms open wide, her smile just as big. My favorite part of the day has always been Come Home Time.  The late afternoon/early evening when all my ducks (E included) wandered back to the nest for the thin part of the day.  Right as the sun dip her toes into the last hours of work, my family would come home.  Meeting them at the end of the driveway after school was always the apex of that time, the anticipation of them coming home, hearing their stories, seeing their faces and hugging them was a reward for the silence and work of the day. Of course, it wasn't always grea...

I thought that doing this a second time my feelings would be muted, like a serene water color landscape instead of the crisp, clean lines of a realist painter capturing my freckles and the wrinkles you gave me around my eyes. I was wrong. Eighteen years. For eighteen years you have blessed my life and tho we struggle, no one, no one is more proud of you at your best and loves you more at your worst. In all my life, I have never met anyone like you. You were born to be different, push buttons, disregard rules and look at boundaries as suggestions, to live life on a frequency most people can't handle. Your compassion and loyalty are fierce, in your life you will become someones hero. In many ways you are already mine. Your love of adventure captures my imagination, it focuses my fear as well, but I am learning to turn a (kind of) blind eye. Your path is your own, and I admire that. Happy birthday, baby blue, 18 things I love about you. 1) Your passion, compassion, empathy a...

I have been up four times already.  I had good intentions. I laid my head down at 9:30.  I took two melatonin and began reading - my third book in two weeks - and I waited. Sleep never came.  Restlessness did. The first time I got up was for chap stick. The little cup that I hoard my favorite sticks from the boys, hidden behind a picture on my bed side table, is empty.  I venture all the way thru the house, put up the garage door head to my car parked outside, and find a blue raspberry stick that was a favorite until it melted in the heat of the sun. I scoop some out of the cap and carry it with me back to bed. The second time I was up I had to go to the bathroom, or at least I thought I did. The third time, I thought I might die without water.  The fourth time, I was so hot I had to change clothes. Now I am cold. I'm up again, this time searching for a the perfect sweatshirt - not too hot not too cold not too heavy not too light not too small not too big. I...

Wind whipped our hair and froze our noses as we scraped our way through the fallen snow as we skated on the pond. Mucking through the soft, marshy edges to get to the hard ice in the middle, the ice so rough it chattered your teeth with each stroke. Long tendrils of branches camouflaged the nook in the willow tree where I went to read, dream or write. My imagination carrying me away, the gentle swish of the leaves a back drop to day dreams. The back bedroom was mine for a spell. I loved falling asleep with the windows open. Hearing the crickets and bullfrogs serenading me to sleep from the pond, hidden in the darkness.  I was safe, nestled in, cradled by my blankets and the warmth of my bed. We built Homecoming floats in my barn. I never felt included in the activities, I skirted around the edges. Hovering around the edge of the crowd for small jaunts of time before heading back inside, happy to have my class mates there, unsure of how to join them. An ice luge was cons...

Aiden sailing ahead of me There are times the universe speaks to me, lands in my lap the lessons I need to learn, what I need to know to grow. This week I had an email, a book and a conversation that conspired together to get me thinking. Raising teens, and young adults, has been the most trying time of my mothering journey. I look backward when they were babies and toddlers, in elementary school and I know the struggles were significant, the feeling of being bone tired was real, the panic and worry when a fever struck, or a bully challenged their days kept me awake many, many nights. But this. The physical work is so much less. My boys can feed themselves, wash their clothes (although I still choose to do it for them - don't judge me please), take themselves to practice.  They are independent in their physical need of me. The toll I pay now is one of mental clarity and emotional peace.  Of sleep in a way that makes me crave a newborn crying and needing to nurse. ...