All tagged motherhood
I am sitting at Theo’s soccer game when I hear a mother’s voice. It says: “There’s no such thing as girl toys or boy toys. You just like what you like.” She was talking to her young daughter, a spirited little girl with blonde hair. Her name is Ruby. Ruby’s mother’s words have stayed with me.
There were goats. Three of them in all, a set of twins included. Sophie took it upon herself to feed them snippets of leaves through the fence, chatty and happy.
As soon as I woke up, nearly naked, I immediately closed my eyes in defeat and remembered the night before. I had intentionally tried to draw blood. I was antagonistic and aggressive and mean. I had meant to initiate sex, thus why I was naked, but I was tired and annoyed for a reason I can't explain; so I initiated a fight instead.
It was a normal Sunday in October. The 22nd, to be exact. It was gorgeous out, which is to be expected in October. It's the month of perfect weather. I know adults shouldn't have favorite colors and months and numbers, but mine are as follows: green, 8, October. Evelyn and I both share green and, true to stereotype, Sophie loves pink and Theo's favorite hue is blue…
I unknowingly made the mistake of telling Theo that today he’d have a substitute teacher.
He seemed fine the entire car ride to school, but once we go there, he refused to get out of the car. Like, really refused. I subliminally was getting more and more angry and frustrated and mean, making whispered threats through clenched teeth because you can’t lose it completely in the middle of carpool line…
I'm writing. Obviously doing something. Matt is sitting at the table next to me, just sitting. Sophie comes over with a carton of chocolate milk, looks at me, and repeatedly asks: "Can I have chocolate milk momma?"
I have been trying to run away from it, this motherhood thing. Not in a literal sense. Geez. What kind of a mother do you think I am? I don’t believe I would ever actually leave my children. But that’s not to say I love every minute of it. I don’t.
I guess that's the kind of mother I am…
I got out of bed shortly after I heard my kids emerge from their room. I had failed, yet again, to get up before them to write, to run, to read. For the past year almost, I have felt defeated, rarely writing, running inconsistently and never reading as much as I probably should be. One day turns into two and two to four and so on and so forth, and the longer I put it off the scarier and harder it becomes. But as I heard my seven year old begin her work on her poster, which she decided would read: "Stand for what's right, even if you're standing alone," I suddenly found a little bit of motivation I didn't previously have…
My oldest daughter loves to tell us that she is brown—she takes a lot of pride in the fact that she is half of her father, who is British and Afro-Caribbean, his biological father being full Jamaican. His biological mother was a red head, and I can sometimes see a stray auburn hair amidst his tight curls. My girls get their beautiful and often commented on curls from him, while my son has my hair…
And what I’ve come to is this: it can matter, or it can’t. It’s up to us. We have a choice—much like joy is a choice, and kindness is a choice—to say that memories matter, that people matter, that our legacies do matter, regardless of surrounding circumstances and our mixed up, messy motives.
