mom drinking tea
Popovers, French toast, bacon and salad. That was the Mother’s Day menu at my house one year when my daughters were small. That was the year I abandoned my family for the day, walked away from responsibility for five hours, and let them fend for themselves.
My children, ages three, six and nine, were determined to prepare a surprise dinner in my absence. Already, as I headed for the door, they had pulled our collection of children’s cookbooks from the shelves and spread them across the kitchen floor. My husband, his repertoire limited to baked potatoes, chicken breasts and steamed broccoli, eyed the cookbooks with a mixture of apprehension and resignation as he kissed me goodbye and shooed me out of the house.
Snug on a couch at a coffee shop twenty minutes later, I cradled a cup of herbal tea in my hands and watched the steam swirl up and disappear. The tea tasted faintly of guilt. For Mother’s Day my most fervent wish was to get away from my children. True, I didn’t require flowers or an elaborate family excursion. Reservations for a river cruise were not on my wish list. I also did not want to be left alone for a quiet afternoon in my house where the voices of laundry, dishes and dust bunnies would call to me irresistibly, not unlike the voices of my children.
I’d spent the past nine years as a passionate adherent to all things attachment parenting. My children had clung to me, hung from me, swathed in vibrant slings. They had snuggled close in my bed at night and nursed until they each finally gave it up shortly before the age of two. Now my breasts were my own, and the littlest one had given up both diapers and sleeping in our bed. The endless days of rocking and nursing and carrying, wondering where I ended and my children began had come to a close. But each of my days and most of my nights were devoted to meeting their needs and creating a nurturing and engaging environment for them. My life revolved around my family and there was scant space for anyone else, including myself. Parenting experts talk about newborns being unable to differentiate themselves from their mothers. I was only beginning to rise out of the mist, stumbling my way toward being more than a mom.
Mother’s Day became my day off and was my first step on a path of finding me again. I needed to remember who I’d been before children, and discover who I wanted to be. Not that those thoughts were in my mind then. I only knew a strong desire to escape, yet here I was at a coffee shop, worrying that I should miss my family more.
Later in the afternoon, I looked up from my tea and knitting and saw a woman sitting across from me, on the other side of a low table spread with newspapers. Two young men sat on either side of her. When they got up to order at the counter, I spoke to her.
“Are those your sons?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, glancing toward them with a smile. “They’re home from college.”
“I look forward to the day when spending Mother’s Day with my kids will be a treat.” I said. “Now they are little, so the treat is in not being with them.”
This woman, older than me, younger than my mother, nodded. “I remember when it was like that.”
Some of my guilt lifted away like the stream from my cup. Each day as a parent, circumstances are changing. Just as my children move through different developmental milestones, so do I. Single-minded devotion has given way to a more balanced parenting style as I’ve grown and as my children’s needs have changed.
I arrived home at dinner time to a meal I never would have prepared. The menu made up of foods my husband felt safe creating with three miniature chefs. The girls danced around me and pulled me to my seat at the table, eager for me to share in this repast. I was glad to be home, my family had survived without me and I realized there was space in our relationship for me to grow alongside my children.
Heather Lee Leap is a freelance writer, wife and mother. She remembered who she used to be, decided who she wants to be and dove into writing. She has yet to make popovers.