Unravelled: Life as a Mother

I should have known better.

Thirty minutes into playgroup, before my second cup of coffee had cooled, a piercing wail rose from the playroom. Seven mothers, including me, shot out of their chairs. Even with Hannah in my arms, I managed to be one of the first on the scene. It wasn’t pretty. As we burst into the room, Will, a plastic knight’s breastplate strapped to his chest was standing over a bawling Eric, waving his arms triumphantly over his head.

Will turned to me. ‘Eric was being mean to us!’ he cried as I glared at him, trying to assess the damage.

I helped Eric to his feet and knelt in front of Will, my back to the others so they couldn’t see my face.

‘Tell Eric you’re sorry,’ I said to Will through clenched teeth. Eric was looking at his feet, wiping his nose with the sleeve of his shirt. The other three and four year-olds were standing in a circle, solemnly watching what was happening.

‘No. He was the one being mean!’Will retorted, stomping his foot on the floor. ‘Eric should say “sorry” to me.’

Just then, Hannah, who had been asleep in my arms, woke up and began screaming. Eric started crying again and ran to his mother. I felt the other women’s eyes on me, imagining them, accusing and smug, outraged on behalf of their innocent ones. It was, I realized, a situation that could not be easily remedied. Deciding to cut my losses, I handed Hannah to Karen, picked Will up and carried him, kicking and thrashing, out to the car. Both kids screamed all the way home and anger swelled inside me. I was outraged at having had to abandon one of my few opportunities to spend time with people who didn’t need me to help them to the potty. More than anything, though, I was furious with Will for ‘outing’ me as the bad mother I was.

Now, an hour and a half later, the two of us were facing off. Will was refusing to change out of his Robin Hood costume before going to the grocery store. As I stood there, I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the sweet little boy whose slippery form had slid out of my body three and a half years earlier, the baby who had slept on my chest every day in the warmth of the afternoon sun. In a little less than four years, I had managed to ruin the perfect little being who had been entrusted to me. I suddenly felt exhausted and my anger at Will vanished. Overwhelmed by my complete and utter failure as a mother, I sat down on the floor and began to cry.

As I wept helplessly, my face buried in my arm, I heard Will’s footsteps approaching and then felt his arm slide around my neck.

‘What’s the matter, Mommy?’he asked, bending down to peek at me.

I lifted my head, wiping the tears from my cheeks.

‘I’m sorry, Will.’ I said. ‘I just don’t feel like a very good mommy right now.’

‘Why?’ he said, adjusting his cape to keep it from slipping over his shoulder. ‘Is it because I want to be Robin Hood at the grocery store?’

In that moment, I saw something I had never seen in the same way before. As Will stood there, looking at me, waiting for my answer, I realized that he was a completely unique, intact human being in a little person’s body entirely separate from me. Yes, he was dressed like a bad Western’s version of Robin Hood, but what did that matter? I was dressed as a bad soap opera’s version of a suburban housewife. Together, we made quite a pair.

I began to laugh and pulled Will into my arms. I understood then that I had been pouring so much energy into trying to make us and our lives look the way I thought they were supposed to look, that I was missing all the wonderful, unique things we already were. Just because I would never consider going to the grocery store dressed as Robin Hood, it didn’t mean that Will couldn’t. In fact, it was inevitable that there would be many, many more things that Will was going to like to do, to eat, to try, to be that I would have no interest in. His preferences for this or that had little or nothing to do with me.

And as for my frustrations with his behaviour earlier in the day, of course Will was going to have difficulties learning to get along with other kids, managing his angry feelings, deciding what he liked and what he didn’t – at age 29, I was still struggling with the same things. But the important distinction I had not been able to make until this moment was that I was not Will’s difficulty. My responsibility as a mother was to have compassion for Will, while at the same time trying my best to teach him skilful means of dealing with his feelings – and the situations he might find himself in. His behaviour, good or bad, belonged to him; what I did in response to it belonged to me.

Our differences and difficulties were not personal to each other; they were simply part of who we were. And the truest way I could express my love for Will would be to respect and celebrate both our connection as mother and son and our separateness as two, unique human beings.

‘Come on, Will,’ I said, holding his hand as I got to my feet. ‘Let’s go to the grocery store dressed exactly as we are. After all, even Robin Hood has to eat!’

First Steps

The mid-July sun was hot on our faces and shoulders, but the water along the stretch of isolated beach on Lake Superior had risen from the icy depths of the deepest of the Great Lakes, so our bare feet were red with cold. Hannah, 10 months old, asleep in the infant carrier strapped to Claude’s back, had a yellow pacifier in her mouth and a rumpled white sun hat on her head. She had spent much of the morning pushing her stroller around our campsite, Claude and I cheering her on and congratulating each other that, like Will, she was going to be an early walker. I knew that anyone watching us would see that we were the perfect family, especially if they knew we also had a handsome young son.

My parents had invited Will to spend a week with them at the Cherry Festival in Traverse City, so Claude and I had decided to continue north after dropping Will off, and spend the week camping and hiking along the National Lakeshore. It felt great to have stepped away from the busyness of our daily lives. Now that we had become used to juggling the needs of two children, it felt easy to take care of just one. Almost a week before, we had pitched our tent on the sand, under a stand of pines, but although we had begun to feel more and more relaxed as the week progressed, the decision we had to make still hung in the air between us.

Claude and I were at a crossroads in our life. For too long, now, Claude had felt unhappy at work. The most progressive and experimental cellular technologies were being developed in companies on the east and west coasts, not in the midwest. As a design engineer, if Claude wanted to work with the best, we would have to move. But, to me, the thought of uprooting our family at this time in our lives didn’t feel like such a good idea. In the past year, we had already experienced a number of significant changes. I had quit my part-time job soon after Hannah’s birth, and although it was a dream we both shared that Claude would provide financially for our growing family so that I could be with the children at home, it seemed that neither of us felt happier or less frustrated, despite our new arrangement. The arguments between us had been growing louder and more hurtful, and more than once I had allowed myself to flirt with the idea of a divorce.

I couldn’t help thinking of a story I had recently heard about Picasso. After sitting in front of Gertrude Stein for more than three months, painting her portrait, one day Picasso stood up and asked her to leave. ‘I can’t see you anymore when I look,’ he said.

For some time now, I had felt as if I were experiencing the same thing. After eight and a half years of marriage, I felt more distant from Claude, rather than closer. Our love for our children was one thing we unquestionably shared, but no matter how much that meant to me, it did not feel enough. The life we had constellated together felt more like a fantasy than a reality, much less familiar and comfortable than either of us had expected it to. I was afraid that a move might leave us both feeling even more vulnerable, and further compromise the already frayed connection between us.

Now, though, watching Claude pick his way along the path ahead of me, moving carefully so as not to wake Hannah, the contrast between the glum, frustrated man who left the house each morning to go to a job he did not love, and the sun-tanned, smiling man ahead felt too great for me to ignore. This, I realized, was the adventuresome, curious man I had fallen in love with. Perhaps Claude was right – a change of life and scenery were exactly what we needed. And, as his wife, it was up to me to support and encourage him to make the best decision for our family.

Running ahead to catch up, I grabbed Claude’s hand and smiled at him as he turned. ‘I think we should go for it,’ I said. ‘Your career is important, and you deserve to feel good about what you do. Besides, no matter where we move, with our kids and each other we’ll be able to make any house a home.’

Claude’s wide grin was the only response I needed. Throwing our arms around each other, I realized that Hannah wasn’t the only one taking her first steps. I felt happy to have made such an important decision with Claude’s interests at heart, and I couldn’t help hoping that I was finally on my way to being the wife I had always wanted to be – the wife Claude had always wanted to have.

Shades of Gray

I waited in the silence of the examining room, listening to the sound of Claude’s footsteps pacing outside the door. I breathed deeply into my lungs, trying to collect my thoughts and steel myself for what might come next. Despite the anxiety I felt, I was thankful that I had been able to think clearly enough to ask Claude not to come in. The terrified look in his red-rimmed eyes would make it difficult for anyone to believe the story I had decided to tell.

My thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door.

‘Come in,’ I said as confidently as my voice would allow. The door opened silently and a white-coated doctor entered. I felt surprised and relieved to see that she was a woman, and then a flash of panic as I wondered if a woman might sense my fear more easily than a man.

‘Hello, I’m Dr Martha Gray,’ she said, advancing towards me, tucking her clipboard under her arm while extending her other hand. I felt my sense of panic rising as I became aware that my hands were shaking, and my heart was thumping in my chest. Dr Gray’s expression didn’t change. She shook my hand and then glanced briefly at the notes the nurse in the triage area had written on the piece of paper fastened beneath the board’s clip.

‘It says here that you sustained some sort of injury and now have blood in your urine.’ She looked up from the clipboard, directly into my eyes. ‘I need you to tell me exactly what happened.’The doctor’s gaze was steady on me as I blinked twice, swallowed and then took a deep, shaking breath.

‘I fell. I slipped and fell on the concrete steps outside our back door.’ My voice sounded fine, stronger than I expected it to. I cleared my throat again and continued more confidently. ‘It was icy,’ I explained. ‘I caught the corner of the step as I fell, on the left side. I think the corner of the step bruised my left kidney.’

Dr Gray continued to look at me quietly. I couldn’t tell from the look in her eyes whether she had believed me. I opened my mouth to say more and then closed it. I had said enough. She reached for her stethoscope and I willed my heartbeat to slow. I took a deep, shuddering breath. Dr Gray listened for a moment to my chest, and then gently raised my sweater to look at the left side of my back. Struggling to stay calm, I tried to erase the images in my head of what had happened in our family room less than an hour before.

Already, it seemed as if it were only a dream. I couldn’t even remember what we had been arguing about. What I did remember was Claude ignoring me, his eyes staring straight ahead at the television, his lips pressed together, refusing to acknowledge me. I was yelling, begging him to answer me. Both of us had forgotten that Hannah was witnessing all of it, sitting halfway up on the carpeted steps.

Even if Dr Gray had asked me to tell the truth, I could not have remembered exactly how the moment had happened. All I saw was the image of me screaming into Claude’s face, and him rising up from the couch, arms bent at the elbows, flailing. Somehow, his left elbow had slammed into the lower left side of my back. I could remember falling hard on the carpeted floor, and on my way down, seeing Hannah watching me, impassive, as if she were waiting.

I had lain there, for the longest moment. The next thing I recalled was that Claude had helped me up, and the two of us had stood, facing each other, eyes glazed over. Both of us were stunned. Becoming aware of Hannah, without speaking I had turned away from Claude and started up the stairs. Picking Hannah up, I had carried her to her room and sat in the rocking chair with her, rocking and crying softly, apologizing over and over to her. Hannah had eventually fallen asleep. I had then put her in her crib and gone to the bathroom.

It was at that point that I discovered my urine was pink. I went downstairs to tell Claude, who was sitting on the couch in the dark.

‘There’s blood in my urine,’ I told him, woodenly. ‘I think I should go to the emergency room.’

Looking now into the doctor’s eyes, I held her gaze. I knew that the man waiting outside was not capable of the things these people might want to accuse him of. Telling the truth about what happened would only do more damage than good. Our heightened emotions, both good and bad, were undoubtedly due to the fact that in a little more than a week we were scheduled to move to our new home in New Jersey.

More than anything, though, I was certain that what had happened was not one person’s fault or the other’s. It was a warning to Claude and me that the problems between us were more serious than we had understood. And far from wanting to run away from them, I had seen today, in Claude’s concerned, frightened eyes, a man I could love, a thoughtful man capable of caring for me.

Tuesday (#ulink_aa220542-5785-5116-abba-23476a592a6d)

I HELD THE BURNING MATCH CAREFULLY BETWEEN MY FINGERTIPS, and lit the three white votive candles on the altar. Sitting quietly on one of the straight-backed chairs arranged in a semicircle in the barn’s small chapel, I stared at the large wooden cross hanging from the ceiling and watched the sunrise through the stained glass window. The room was silent except for the occasional sputter of a candle flame and muffled footfalls from the floor above. Already, my third day there, I felt closer to God, not only as an idea but as a presence, a source of guidance that knew, even if I didn’t, who I was and what I needed to do.

I was no longer alone in the barn. The night before, while Mary, Gene and I ate a dinner of homemade bread and warm stew, the sound of tyres on the gravel drive had interrupted the silence. The elderly couple had risen without speaking and gone outside to greet the visitor. I had heard the soft hum of voices, the opening and closing of a door, and footsteps on the stairs. Mary told me later, while the two of us washed the dinner dishes, that she had settled the new arrival, a writer, in a room on the barn’s top floor. The four of us would be eating lunches and dinners together in the dining room, and the silence at meals would continue to be observed.

At the time, I had felt no curiosity about who the new arrival was. Now though, listening to the sounds from above, knowing that they were the footfalls of a writer, I began to wonder. I had always imagined myself a writer, ever since I was 12. But I had imagined myself many other things too, a pioneer woman, a painter, a world traveller, and I hadn’t become any of those things either.

Watching the flames of the candles dance in the gusts of breeze coming in from an open window, I realized that all of those things, like the retreat I had once only imagined, were possibilities, opportunities to be something more, that only needed a breath of attention in order to come alive again. And if that were true, the first thing I wanted was the presence of this writer to inspire me to return to the book about Hannah’s life and death that I had started, and then stopped writing, two years before.

A light, misty rain was falling, damping down the dusty road as I walked towards the mailbox, carrying a stack of postcards I had written to Claude, my sister and my kids. Although I was still missing Will, Margaret and Madelaine terribly, it was comforting to know that the three of them were together. I had grown up loving the fact that I had two younger sisters and a younger brother; I knew from own experience what company and fun siblings could be.

Despite the rain, dragonflies and bees continued to flit and buzz between flowers alongside the road, and ahead in the distance, streaks of sun pierced through patches of grey cloud. My hair was pulled back, caught in a large barrette and covered by a wide-brimmed straw hat. I was wearing a long cotton skirt and leather boots. Holding my head high, I was aware of the length of my stride and the swing of my arms. Smiling, I realized this was how I used to feel when I pretended to be a pioneer woman as a young girl.

Already, after only two nights on my own, I could feel my body unlearning its usual routine, reorienting itself to the track of the sun across the sky, to the rhythm and heat of the summer days. Reaching down, I slid a long blade of grass with its heavily seeded head from the stem of its root, rolled it between my finger and thumb, and inhaled its sweet scent. I felt a heightened sense of awareness, a deeper, more natural relationship with everything around me. Here, although I felt as far from my other life as I could possibly be, I felt much closer to the woman I’d always been.