Teach your children well

By Mindy

Want to hear something funny? It took the verbal dissolution of my marriage last night to make me really examine what it means to be a wife and mother. There is no single word in the English language that describes both. Essentially, you are a wife to one, mother to another, and daughter to a third. You can be a married mom, a single mom, a widowed mom, a childless wife, a stay-at-home parent, or a working spouse. Nowhere is there a term that conveys one's status as a female who is married and is also mother to the offspring of that marriage (or any other combination, too numerous to list here). It sort of put me in my place (at least emotionally, if not figuratively).

It also made me look at my intentions as a mother against the backdrop of being a wife. My husband and I both strongly believe that the children would be worse off in a divided household, and, having grown up in one, I can attest to that. They say that if you give a child a choice between a deliriously happy mother off in another place, or a miserable one under the same roof, they'll have you weeping in the next room every time. I know mine would, except that they'd be happy to be snuggled in my lap, handing me Kleenex every few minutes.

I've often wondered how other people ranked allegiances to spouse or family (or if many did). I have seen it go both ways—parents who chose their children in some dividing battle with their spouses, and parents who chose peace with their spouse over a close relationship with their children. It made me wonder each time what quality drove the choice—was it the intensity of the instinctual devotion to one's offspring, or the mystical bond between true soul mates (read: blistering hot sex), or, barring that, the external parameters set by one's faith designed to help make difficult decisions?

For me, I choose both. My family is not intact without every one of us, and my children are not whole without their father. They are definitely not whole without me. Some of you may disagree. Some will argue that we all need to find the dividing boundaries of ourselves, and rejoice in the places where they abut with other loved ones' boundaries, but I believe that there are thin places in the shells of ourselves that merge in and through those of our loved ones'. At times, you are bouncing off of one and then the other, just passing by, and at others, we may merge into almost one sphere, suffusing ourselves in the glow of shared love and shared memories, and those are the anchors that keep ourselves and our families intact.

I don't really know how ours will shake out, but I will always try to provide a safe and happy nest for my children. They don't yet know what it is like to be unsure of a parent, to feel lonely for one or the other, to be disappointed or challenged to consider that maybe, just maybe, they don't occupy the center of the universe (there will be plenty of opportunity for school and adolescence to knock that into them). I prefer not to age them prematurely, as I was, or to give them reason to pine for one parent or the other, as I did. I don't want loyalties to be divided, and I don't want them to feel guilty for loving or preferring one in the presence of the other. I don't want them to feel they have to parent us by choosing words and actions carefully when talking about the other, and I don't want them to be ashamed of strongly inherited traits that might remind one parent of why the other is so annoying. I will never, ever forget as a child of eight, walking down the stairs in my father's house, wearing an old robe of mom's, greeting him for the morning, and seeing him put his hands to his face and muttering, "I can close my eyes and hear your mother." Since that moment, I have examined and cataloged my various quirks and features, trying to assign each one to the maternal side or the paternal, emphasizing or hiding each one as necessary to optimize interactions with each parent. That is one thing I truly don't want to teach my children.

Comments

[zeno]

I grew up in a single parent family because my father died. I never knew what it was like to have two parents so I always had a semi subconscious jealousy toward those friends of mine who did have two parents.

because of that I have difficulty bonding with other men, as an adult, but that's a cross I'm aware of and try to deal with as best I can. We all have neuroses that we inherited (Phillip Larkin expressed the notion really well) and we all, as adults, have an obligation to face and overcome, or at least endure those neuroses.

I don't know how to be a father, I have no frame of reference, but I try to love my noisy brood as much, as heavily and as often as I can. I know they will have issues with me when they are grown, I just hope that I can encourage them to be sufficiently open to try to understand my fallibilities and to forgive me.

As a husband I am petulant, immature and selfish but, again, I try to love as passionately as I can.

What am I first? I am the caretaker of my children's future and that is my main responsibility and desire.

Mindy, I have a wee lump in my throat.

[robin]

That is one of the most touching and well expressed pieces I have read on the web in a while.

Just had to say that.

(And I'm on e-holiday.)

[Julie]

I have often felt that I'm a mother first and wife second. Gary feels that he's a husband first and father second. I guess it works for us because we both know where we stand and because Colter is flourishing.

I very much had the same experience with my father hating any reminders (in mood, looks, etc.) of my mother after their divorce. It definitely limited the way I allowed my identity to grow and the way I perceived myself.

[Helene]

Wow! What an exceptional and thought provoking post. I'm definetely going to have to read this twice. And, coming also from a broken family... I couldn't agree with you MORE!