12 of 40

This is kind of a parenting blog though I write less and less about parenting. Although I think about my kids and about how I parent them quite a bit, I also think a lot about myself, the problems in the world that I want to try to help fix, my marriage, my work, my writing, etc. Last week in a phone conversation with an old friend, who is also a relatively new parent, I said "I always wanted to have kids mostly because I wanted to experience myself as a mother." He held back his laughter for a minute or so and then said "Someday soon I will make fun of you for that statement." Rightfully so.

The reasons I don't write much about my actual children are as follows:

1) The internet still feels new to me. New in the sense that I did not grow up with it and I have a hard time imagining/understanding the impact on my children to have details or stories about them published on the internet for anyone anywhere to read whenever they want. It makes me nervous and feels intrusive even though I love other writers' children unabashedly from afar based on the blogs they write.

2) It has taken me decades to understand that my mother does not know me better than I know myself. Not just my mother, actually. I am still stepping into the truth that I don't have to rely upon others' observations in order to know myself. I know myself. My mother is a writer and an observer. She started and kept a journal for each of the three of her children from birth until we each turned eighteen when she gifted us, one after another, with our books. I loved getting mine and still like to read it, seeing new details each time. I thought I would do the same for my children and actually purchased beautiful diaries for each one, kicking myself every now and then for how infrequently I have written in them. It felt like and was such a gift to get words about myself. I was and am grateful for her time and attention. My mother has made the three of us feel so special and important, not just with her love but with her noticing. It is nice to be seen like that. And. It has sometimes been hard to put certain descriptions down with a "No, that does not say how I really am." It can be hard to feel separate, able to self-define. This is not her fault, not something she has done to me. It a puzzle piece that fits into how I see myself and how I am re-learning to know myself. And I feel afraid to put into words the things I notice about my own children because more than anything I want them to find and know who they are in their own hearts.

Addendum to this is that as I write it I see how hard it is for me to claim my space. To allow myself opinions and beliefs, even if they aren't "right" or definitely true or without fault. It is easier for me to make space for others to be themselves than it is to make that space for myself. I am in process.

3) I often worry that I don't even really see my children. I am an observer too and I thought I would be a much more intentional parent, Instead its like standing in a hurricane, head spinning, waiting for a moment of peace. This is probably one of the most painful parts of motherhood for me--that I don't take the time to soak up who these individual little people are. That I am missing it. And yes I know I need to give myself a break in so many ways. This one is persistent.

More often lately I want to sit down and write descriptions of these wonders who live with me, who I had a hand in making. But these are the reasons why I haven't.