Mom in the Mirror

Refusing help a weakness, not a strength

I trimmed 10 minutes off my commute by listening to my husband, who insisted there was a faster way I could get to work.

So why didn't I take the route he suggested sooner? Why did it take me several months to give it a try? Why did I insist on taking the long way, even though the only one I hurt was myself?

Maybe because I'm stubborn. Maybe pride is more important to me than time. And maybe I'm not very good at letting others help me.

My son is 7 years old. He is a walking war between dependence and independence. He wants us to do everything for him that he's too lazy to do, too busy to do, or too important to do (like something say, walking to the refrigerator for a juice pouch when he'd rather be in the living room watching TV).

Everything else he wants to do by himself, whether or not he's capable. And trying to guide him in the process is frustrating and fruitless. He has inherited my stubbornness gene.

I expect we'll resolve these growing pains as my son's skills develop. I have a harder time explaining or excusing my reticence to accept help, particularly because I am surrounded by genuinely supportive people offering to do whatever they can for me.

One of my favorite things about my husband is that he often asks, "What can I do for you?" And I am doubly blessed, because I have a boss who asks, "How can I help?"

He asks when he notices I'm becoming overwhelmed. He asks at the end of the day when he's about to leave the office and I'm still hunched over my computer. He asks conversationally when we're talking about something and I express concern.

Most of the time I respond, "I don't think there's anything I need, but thanks."

Sometimes, that's a truthful response. The rest of the time I either lack the problem-solving ability or imagination to see what he could do for me, or I just don't want to give in to my urge to let someone else take care of me.

I'd become too dependent, I fear, and then too lost if he's not there when I need him.

I'd be in his debt and owe him some intangible I'd have to repay at some point in the future.

I'd be giving in to weakness, admitting I'm not strong enough to handle everything, inadequate.

I'd be shirking my responsibilities.

Ironically, I love helping people. It's my passion. Any time I can nudge someone closer to their goal, I'm thrilled. So why do I deny others the satisfaction of helping me? Why do I deny myself the assistance, especially when I need it most?

Because I'm stubborn. Because I like to be right. Because I like to be in control. Allowing people to view the gallery of my vulnerabilities gives them power. If they know where my soft spots are and can see the underbelly of my needs, they can use that information against me at the most unexpected times.

I have had former friends do so, even family. But the weakness was theirs.

Just as it was weakness that drove both my father's refusal to depend on anyone for anything, and my mother's overreliance on the kindness of friends and strangers.

Over the years, I saw the error of their ways and forced myself to find some middle ground. I've learned that knowing when to ask for help, and being able to accept it, take strength and courage. And there are new signs of progress. Traveling the roads my husband recommended gives me 20 more minutes a day to think about all of the ways in which it is truly better to receive than to give.

This LifeFiles column originally appeared on about 70 TV station websites managed by Internet Broadcasting Systems.

To all mothers, male and female

A few days before Mother's Day my son gave me an early present, wrapped in hand-painted paper with pictures of flowers.

Inside the wrapping was a homemade white board with a dry-erase marker velcroed to it. On the board he'd written, "Happy Mother's Day! Love, Colter."

In previous years, I'd received ridiculously impractical gifts considering my parenting style: recipe holders, aprons, planters -- all accessories for conventional motherly tasks I don't enjoy, like cooking and gardening.

But this year's gifts -- designed by a working mom (his teacher) -- made me realize how much the state of motherhood in America has changed.

My son's other gift to me (via school) was a book he made called, "Hats off to Mom." The book honors the many hats a mother wears: teacher, nurse, sanitation worker, cook. It begins with pre-printed sentences like, "My mom is a teacher. She taught me to ..."

After that one, my son had written, "read and now I can read chapter books all by myself."

It reminds me that my mother taught me to read and was herself a working parent. She was in college when I was in pre-school, and then she taught elementary school while I was going through it myself. I used to go to her college classes with her, and to the teacher supply stores, and to the classrooms where she taught when my own school was closed for the day.

Like her, I am a working mother. Last week, a Newsweek magazine article captured my life completely in a cover story titled, "She works, he doesn't." I spend much of my energy focused on a job that supports my family, with less time and attention devoted directly to my husband and son.

On Mother's Day, I thought of the males who made me a mother: my father, my husband, my son.

My father and husband each functioned as single parents in different eras for different reasons, enabling the women in their lives to make independent choices. Because they were up to the challenge, their relationships with their children benefited.

My father and I shared a strong bond, and my husband and son have an amazing bond which I am grateful for, even if I sometimes feel like an outsider.

On Mother's Day, I thought of the single mothers I know, like our downstairs neighbor.

Laurel has two boys close to my son in age and temperament. We take them to school and they spend hours with us most evenings and weekends. We treat them like they are our own and then are occasionally reminded that they're not.

My husband tells me that being raised by a single parent is the most significant predictor of whether a male will end up in jail.

I think of the mothers without children, like Marguerite Kelly, whose only son Michael (a journalist) was killed in Iraq last month. She wrote, "I feel no denial. No anger. No bargaining. No depression. And this makes me wonder if I'll ever get to peace and acceptance."

"There is no right time to lose a child," she says. And now that her son is gone, is she not still a mother?

I think of the other mothers who lost sons and daughters in Iraq and Afghanistan and places far from home. I think of other mothers without children, who lost them to drugs and various dangers, predictable and unpredictable. I think of my own mother, who lost her 4-year-old son to a fire and then 13 years later lost me, her baby girl, to a custody battle brought on by her own negligence.

On Mother's Day I thought, "Why should this day be any different?"

My son woke me with a hug, we cuddled, watched TV, and 45 minutes later he had forgotten all about me.

As soon as the phone rang and I was occupied, he was poking, prodding, and generally seeking my attention. Work beckoned, my husband started doing the dishes, and my son returned to his Game Boy.

We put so much pressure on these holidays -- official days set aside to recognize who we are for one another -- and then wait for them to live up to our artificial expectations.

And why should they? I spoke to five mothers on Mother's Day and only two of them were enjoying the day. One missed her son -- my husband -- horribly, and everyone else was occupied entirely with other matters.

There is no way I can possibly express in one day all of the gratitude I feel to the many people who have raised me and helped raise my son: my own mothers -- biological and by marriage; my sister, my sister-in-law, aunts, cousins, friends. The women who have helped teach me about my son from the time he was in day care through kindergarten and 1st grade. All of the neighbors, people at temple, total strangers whose empathy I could see in their eyes while waiting out a temper tantrum in line at the grocery store.

The day after Mother's Day, my son woke up with a fever. He was hot all over, complaining of head and body aches. My husband was getting ready to go to Boston for a few days' work. I left them together, but then was drawn back home only a few hours later, like a magnet being pulled hard toward true north.

Two days later, I am still home with my son, missing meetings and relinquishing other responsibilities so that I can help him build Power Rangers and have Pokemon battles. I am reminded that the world outside goes on without me, while the world inside is changed by my absence.

This is not Mother's Day, a day for us individually to be celebrated. It is Mothers' Day, a day for all of us, collectively, to celebrate what we have created together: our children and our lives.

This LifeFiles column originally appeared on about 70 TV station websites managed by Internet Broadcasting Systems.

Bittersweet birthdays

My son just turned seven. On the same day, my father would have turned 73 if he were still alive.

He's been dead for nine months now, which means I've been carrying this grief around for as long as I carried Colter, my son.

To ease the pain of honoring these two births -- which occurred 66 years apart -- my stepmother is visiting us for the week, soaking up the Florida sun and my son's love as we face another first in this year of mourning.

At breakfast, Colter opened his present from my stepmother, Sandra June, his Nonnie. As he read the card out loud, I realized it was the first time he had received a birthday card from her that wasn't also signed from Papa Sam. The simple absence telegraphs her loneliness.

She is so grateful just to be around us. She doesn't need anything but to wake up and know we're in the next room, ready to listen and care.

She carries a picture of my dad in her purse and puts it on her nightstand before drifting off to sleep. Does she dream of him? He used to have terrible nightmares. Once, he lifted his arm and pointed an imaginary gun at some dream figure who was haunting him, then shot. Does she miss even that?

In the morning, she puts the picture in her purse. Is it possible to store our memories outside of ourselves, so we can retrieve them but not hold them so closely?

She has a word-search magazine by her seat at the dining room table to keep her company while she sits. This woman -- who inherited me from an unstable mother and raised me along with her three sons -- was always home after school, baking sweets for our friends and preparing well-balanced dinners for us.

She barely eats now. And she almost never cooks. The weight of the leftovers is too much to bear. At the grocery store, she can't stop herself from shopping for a full house, and still makes meat loaf for 15, whole chickens, and fresh vegetables.

When we visited for Thanksgiving, I was able for the first time to open the freezer freely, without fear of being found out or of having something fall on my foot. Only tape residue remained around the door to prove that it once held more than it could contain.

She lived to feed and care for others, and now there's no one left to attend to but her 93-year-old mother, who is in a nursing home nearby.

Sandy moves more slowly, suddenly less motivated and more aware of her own needs, not distracted by mine (the baby) or my father's, which became all-consuming over the years.

Soon, she will pack and move out of the lakefront home they shared for 23 years. She'll miss the moments that trigger even the trivial memories of a marriage: the puzzle they did to help minimize his Parkinson's tremors; the Legos he built with his grandchildren; the chocolates he wouldn't leave for guests to eat and she wouldn't remove from the coffee table.

They read the newspaper to each other. It used to wake me in the morning, annoyed, as they laughed loudly and talked about events over coffee, from one room to the next. They bickered about business, retiring too late for them to enjoy much of the time together. They watched television -- "Hill Street Blues," "Dynasty," "Cheers."

In her new home, there will be no remnants. Nothing he was last to touch or sit on. Nothing with his fingerprints, his imprint, his smell. Only the lingering awareness that something is missing.

Colter doesn't seem to notice the empty seat at the table. He doesn't remember that his Nonnie and Papa Sam were in the room when he was born. Or maybe he doesn't feel the loss because he knows my father is a part of his very DNA, that they share more than the same birthday and always will.

We spend the day at the beach, and let the heat burn away the sadness, the waves wash away the tears.

Though celebrating this day without my father is bittersweet, it reminds me that after the cake, presents, and party, birthdays are about family -- the ones you choose, the ones that choose you, and the ones who remain, always.

This LifeFiles column originally appeared on about 70 TV station websites managed by Internet Broadcasting Systems.