A Letter to Mothers Who Have a Hard Time Being a Mother

Remember that post I wrote about how having babies isn’t the worst? This is not a rebuttal, nor does it negate my initial postpartum emotions. I lived in a state of euphoria for weeks after giving birth. I had the easiest newborn ever. In fact, having a newborn baby was probably the easiest job I’ve ever had.

But, when my newborn started moving on his own and stopped sleeping all day, and my hormones fluctuated and period returned, the depression hit. And it hit hard. All of those things that forced me to postpone having a baby became my reality. I couldn’t nap when I wanted to. I couldn’t sleep in anymore. I couldn’t go anywhere alone. Heck, I couldn’t ever BE alone. And then I realized why so many moms complain about their kids on Facebook and why so many women decide not to have children at all.

I reconnected with a few old friends this summer, friends I haven’t seen in almost ten years, friends I had pre-marriage, pre-baby. I found myself drowning in the nostalgia of that single, flat-bellied life where days and paychecks were my own. The rest of the summer was spent in a trance, with me wishing to go back to that simpler time. On top of this, I’d been experiencing an identity crisis. Last Mother’s Day, a cashier said to me as I fished for my wallet while holding Coltrane, “Happy Mother’s Day.” I stopped and thought, “How strange, I guess I’ll call my mom and let her know that ‘Cathy’ says ‘Happy Mother’s Day.’” After a second, I realized what she meant and I said, “Thank you.” “Mom” is the person you call when you’re stuck in traffic and need to pass the time, “Mom” is the person with all the answers about what to do when you only have $20 in the bank, “Mom” is in St. Louis, not here. “Mom” is someone else, not me.

That trance lasted until last week when I went to a wilderness and survival conference in Hibbard, ID, of all places. The whole field smelled of burning wood and patchouli, and I’ve never seen so many beards and cowhide pants and earth tones all in one place. It was pretty magical. I only had the time and resources to sign up for one class on foraging and preparing herbs. I really wanted to leave Coltrane home so that he wouldn’t be a distraction to me and the others in the class, but I had to bring him with me because it was a Tuesday and Dad has a real job now. The class was spectacular, Coltrane was relatively peaceful and happy (thank you, raisins) and I only missed part of the discussion on white willow while I followed him as he explored the outdoors.

Learning to play the guitar is necessary for survival.

 

As the class finished preparing their tinctures, a man came over to me and said, “I just have to tell you, I’m very impressed with you as a mother.” He went on to say that he has observed a variety of mothers like “The Shopping Cart Mom” who is frazzled and on her last nerve as her kids whine at the grocery store, and me, who is “on the other end of the spectrum.” I was so flattered, not just because I often feel frazzled and on my last nerve, but also because he said he could see how much love I had for my child. He believes that is what matters most in a person’s life: the love the mother has for her child and how that child grows up and shares that love with others. He could not have picked a more perfect time or way to share this.

I attended the conference for another couple of days and having Coltrane with me in the cold, damp outdoors was not a distraction at all. I loved having him with me digging in the dirt and making friends with the most awesome, intelligent, relaxed, and peaceful people I’d ever met. I decided to try emulating their attitude and stop criticizing myself as a mother. So what, I don’t sit on the floor and play learning games all day. I haven’t taught him how to do sign language or use a real toilet. So, the word “Batman” comes out as a guttural “Mama” and that’s about the only thing he knows how to say. What-ever. In the end, I really, truly, and completely love my weird baby.

Yes, my life has changed completely since he arrived and I’ll probably always miss aspects of my pre-baby life. But, Mothers, we have a super rad job where we get to stop every so often in our crazy lives and color a picture of Iron Man without it being strange. We get to go shopping for teeny cute clothes that cost almost nothing and have snack time. Kids are stinky and obnoxious, but they’re also hilarious and weird and beautiful. Their little hands and toes and potbellies and wispy hair. 

And my Coltrane’s enormous eyeballs and birthmark.

Photo by Abbey Belliston, A. Lee Photo & Design

As I write this (instead of doing homework), Coltrane is talking to himself in his crib in the other room, most likely reading books he’s pulled off of his bookshelf and I think, what else was my life supposed to look like, but this?

Gender Is Relevant

Do you find this picture offensive? Embarrassing? Uncomfortable? Well, you shouldn’t, because it’s just science. (And, come on, Kindergarten Cop is such a classic!  - “It’s not a tooma” will always make me laugh.)

Disclaimer: The following opinions are by no means a statement about the LGBT community. Like, not at all. I truly love everyone and just want you to be happy no matter who you are inside or out. That said, I do have some strong opinions about biology.

I recently watched an interview where Boy George said that he hopes that one day, gender will be “irrelevant.” While I agreed with the general point he was making, I have to lovingly disagree and say: GENDER IS RELEVANT.

• If gender was irrelevant, there would only be one door to the public restroom.

• If gender was irrelevant, clothing stores would have one department.

• If gender was irrelevant, the debate about equal pay would sound like, “Some people get paid less than other people for doing the same job, and that’s not fair.” (That isn’t fair, but that debate is for another time.)

• If gender was irrelevant, the LGBT movement would not exist. LGBT would mean that people love other people and some people identify as people.

• If gender was irrelevant, Bruce would not have felt the need to become Caitlyn.

Gender matters. There are books and journal articles written on the subject. Some people have a penis, testicles, a prostate, and a tendency towards developing facial hair. In the scientific world, these characteristics make a person male, man, boy. Some people have a vagina, ovaries, a uterus, and a tendency towards developing breasts. These people biologically would be considered female, woman, girl. Animals have gender. Insects have gender. Plants have gender-specific parts. Plumbing and automotive parts are referred to by gender-specific terms (this always makes me giggle). There are languages throughout the world where even words have gender. Gender is relevant.

When Tyler and I first learned I was pregnant with a boy, I stared at the ultrasound monitor in shock and didn’t believe the nurse until Tyler shouted, “LEGOS!” (I would have bet good money that I was carrying a girl. Her name was going to be Juniper.) Now, I have no problem with Coltrane wanting to play with Barbies or other “girl toys,” but, scientifically speaking, he’s a boy. And I plan to raise him like a boy. I wouldn’t send back a doll if he really loved it and it made him happy, but I’m pretty sure Santa is planning to give him Legos and dinosaurs and cars this Christmas.

Maybe I’m misinterpreting the conversation and gender neutrality actually means that we need to treat everyone with the same kindness and respect regardless of gender. If that’s the case, then I wholeheartedly support gender neutrality and we can all disregard everything I’ve just said. But even so…

Gender will always be relevant. And it always should be.

I am woman. And you’ve heard me roar.

Home

Leaving my childhood home after getting married.
One of my least favorite goodbyes. 

Over the last ten years, I’ve had 16 different addresses in 7 different states and 10 different cities. Having been literally born in my childhood home and raised there until age 18, those statistics are outrageous.

When I first left home to go to college in Utah, I had a boyfriend who did not join me. We did the long-distance thing and were (in hindsight, unhealthily) attached to one another, so I spent the better part of my first semester depressed and pining for home. I didn’t bother to make friends, especially after deciding that I would never come back to Utah. Why make friends if you’re just going to have to say goodbye in a few months?

And that was my approach to the next five addresses: Don’t bother making friends. You’ll just have to say goodbye, and goodbyes are the worst.

While in my travel study program at BYU-Nauvoo, I grew close to a small few, but not by my own doing. They befriended, included, and loved me. I struggled to reciprocate because I knew I would have to say goodbye in four months. I cried unattractively and hard while hugging them goodbye, so they wore me down (and we're still friends today), but I can’t say I really enjoyed much that semester. I just wanted to be home. 

After the break-up of the century (in hindsight, thank goodness!), I moved to Rexburg to try out a different BYU. This time, I stayed an entire eight months, but still only opened up to a few. Social life was a distraction from homework and sleeping, and though newly single, I was pretty arrogant and didn’t need “a man” to be happy. (I wasn’t particularly happy without one, either.) Plus, goodbyes are the worst, and I didn’t want to bother.

Our first apartment in Rexburg.

It wasn’t until I was a missionary in Ohio that I started to change my thinking. I knew that I would move around periodically and fellow missionaries would go home, so, goodbyes were inevitable. But, I also knew that not actively making friends made me kind of miserable. I carried so many regrets about college, so I decided to experiment and see what would happen if I treated my time in Ohio as if I was going to stay there forever, as if it were my home.

I started loving people. With genuine, whole-hearted, I’m-going-to-hug-you-even-though-I-don’t-know-you kind of love. The goodbyes were excruciating, but they were meaningful. Everything I did was meaningful. Everything that happened deserved a page in my journal. Did I have crazy anxiety and want to come home by the end? Absolutely. But, when I did come home, I was grateful for the experience rather than regretful.

Tyler and I lived in Las Vegas for the past five months for student teaching. We didn’t know whether we’d be staying for a job or moving to one of the 20 places where he applied, so I decided to make that weird city my home. And, my goodness, I fell in love with that weird city. With the thrift stores and homeless people that dotted every corner, with the palm trees and the fact that we were minorities in our neighborhood, and I fell in love, especially, with the people, my new friends, at church.

Saying goodbye to our second Las Vegas home.

But, alas, we got a summer job in Seattle, and again, I had  to say goodbye. I cried, unattractively and hard, through all three hours of our last Sunday. And I’m crying unattractively and hard right now. But I would do it all again, even if I knew beforehand that I’d be saying goodbye a few months later. I’m not exactly sure how to put into words why it’s so important to jump in completely and invest time in creating relationships except: there’s a richness in a life that’s filled with people you love and have loved. And “home” becomes not just the place that you visit at Christmas, but wherever you are.

Four hours into our drive to Seattle, Tyler was offered and accepted a teaching job in Idaho Falls. So, I’ll add at least one more address and city to my stats before the end of the year. And while that means more goodbyes, I’m going to bother making friends and call Seattle home.

Artsy-farts and Entertainment

I don’t read reviews. Mostly because I think people are stupid. 

But, I recently went to the Redbox website to see when Birdman was going to be available. I glanced down at the bottom of the screen to find that nearly every reviewer gave it less than one star. Again, I believe that most people aren’t smart, and that dumb people are ten times more likely to write something negative on the Internet than something positive, but I was just so curious that so many people would “Thumbs Down” the winner for Best Picture.

This review was my personal favorite: “I watch a lot of movies, and not many I don't like. This was a bomb! Did not care for it from beginning to end, but suffered though it.”

Let us just lay it out there – If someone starts out a sentence with “I watch [listen to, read] a lot of movies [music, books], and not many [much] I don’t like,” you can be sure that whatever comes next is a load of crap. 

I sound cruel, don’t I? Closed-minded? Rude? I know. That’s because when it comes to art and literature, and particularly television and film, I’m a complete snob.

There’s this great moment in Modern Family when Cam accuses Mitchell of being a snob (he’d never been to Costco), and Mitchell responds with:

This is how I feel about how I feel about film. I’m discerning. I’ve probably been this way all of my life (favorite childhood films: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, The Point, The Wizard of Oz, The [Original] Parent Trap), but it got significantly worse in Mr. Timmons' English class my junior year of high school when I was introduced to Paper Moon and The Graduate. He essentially taught us how to watch movies. They stopped being a source of entertainment and became art. I learned that there was so much more behind the story and the script. The director had to make so many seemingly mundane decisions: what color to make the couch, where to place a picture frame, what type of glasses the main character should wear, how a character should be standing, etc. And many of these decisions are deliberate to make an audience feel a certain way about what’s happening or what people are saying or not saying or to hint at something that’s going to happen later. It’s all a little overwhelming to think about actually. But now, when I watch a film, it’s all I think about.

Let’s take the Jared and Jerusha Hess 2004 cult phenomenon, Napoleon Dynamite. I remember when it was released in only a few theaters. I had seen previews on MTV and was so excited that a bunch of Mormons got together and made a movie. I went with a friend to see it, the theater was sparsely occupied, and I was in awe. It ended and I looked over to see what my friend thought - the look on his face said, “That was the weirdest, stupidest movie I’ve ever seen.” It took months before the hype really started, but I like to think that I was on to something really special before anyone else had it figured out. And this was before “hipster” was a thing.

Yes, Napoleon Dynamite was mostly plotless, extremely low budget, and sometimes painfully awkward to sit through. But it was beautiful. The colors were vintage and saturated, the soundtrack was perfect, the relationships between Napoleon and Deb and Pedro were sweet, and when people describe the movie as “stupid” or simply, “funny,” I think, “they just don’t get it.”

Here’s another Birdman review: “WOW - CAN I GET MY MONEY BACK!!!! One of the worst movies I have ever watched. No story, does nothing to make you want to continue watching. They went all artsy fartsy with no entertainment value what so ever. Picture of the year, you have to be kidding me. I knew I should have passed on this 1.” (I'm biting my tongue to avoid also discussing his use of the numeral '1').

Birdman was stunning. Completely deserving of the Oscar for Best Picture. Anyone who disagrees will also disagree with this entire post. And that’s okay. But, to quote my parents quoting someone else, “In my humble, but correct, opinion,” movies and films are two different things. You want entertainment? Go watch a movie, enjoy it for a moment, and forget about it tomorrow. For me, let's watch a film and bring on the farts.