The I Nevers

All mothers joke about the I nevers. "Before I had children, I said that I'd never let them sleep with me!" Every parent I've ever met has an I never, and most have a laundry list of them. I nevers are usually funny - statements from naive young people who quickly abandon such silly mandates when faced with living breathing children. But there are other I nevers too, the ones that we can't quite joke about.

Before parenthood, parenting seems like it is all about the parent. We have our ideals, political and personal. We extrapolate parenting rules from those ideals and create a vision of what parenthood will be. This is an important process, I think, this preliminary definition of ourselves as parents. In many ways, it's the first parenting that we do! We sift and sort, prioritize and dismiss, and decide exactly who we want to be. Then we meet these small people and discover that parenting isn't just about who we want to be. It's also about who our partners want to be. It's also about who these little people are. And the I nevers start dropping like flies.

My list of I nevers is long and mostly forgotten. What's the saying? I was a better parent before I had children, or something similar. Most of my assumptions were just plain wrong and really quite humorous. (Did I really think that my children would be potty trained by age two?) There have been a few compromises, however, that were difficult. Over the past week, I have been wrestling with one of the difficult ones.

I want my children to learn my values. I want them to be ethical people. I want them to understand that we are all of us God's creations, no matter how different we may seem, and we are all of us worthy of respect and inclusion. I want them to reject hatred and discrimination. I also want them to have an innocent childhood. I want them to make their own choices, make their own mistakes, and live their own lives. I don't want to make my children into my own political statement, my puppets in the larger world. I don't want them to be limited by big topics that they don't, and should not understand at a tender age.

And so I am the mother of a Tiger Scout.

Looking through mommy glasses

I don't think that being a mother has entirely changed my view of the world, but I do find that it has given me one more perspective. I've got my rose colored glasses, my faith glasses, my feminist glasses, and now I've got mommy glasses too. I find that certain types of stories bring out the mommy glasses and paste them to my face, more or less. Stories about people in pain smack my mommy glasses onto my face so hard that I reel from the impact. I have, I think we all have, been hearing a lot about a couple of very unhappy women the past week or two. When I saw the vulnerable head of Britney Spears in a photograph, I wanted to tuck her onto my lap, rock her back and forth a little and tell her that everything would be all right. It's the mommy glasses. They make me want to cuddle and coo and fix every ouchie with a magical kiss. And inevitably, I turn my eyes toward my own children. I don't ever want my children to feel that vulnerable. I don't ever want my daughter to feel that she needs to be beautiful to be loved. I don't ever want my son to feel that he is alone in this world. I want them to be tough enough to endure. I want them to be able to look into the gaping maw of unhappiness and say, "No thanks. I think I'll find a different path." I want them to feel connected to the world, so that when they feel lonely it will be a passing thing, a mere glimpse. I think that sometimes I need to pry the mommy glasses off my face when I'm looking at my own kids. When they cry, I need to tuck them onto my lap, rock them back and forth a little, and then help them to figure out how to fix their own ouchies. The very thought breaks my heart - but better mine than theirs. What do you think? How can we prepare our kids for the reality that life isn't always happy? How can we teach them to take care of themselves? How can we give them the possibility of happiness?

Oh my. He's a person.

Last night while I did the dinner dishes, Jacob worked on his homework. The assignment was to illustrate and write Q words. Jake was surprisingly eager. "Quail! Does a quail have a feather coming out of its head?" Why, yes! That is a quail! How on earth did he know that? I certainly haven't been discussing quail lately. He drew a passable quail and I spelled it out for him to write. Onward with "quick" and "quill." He drew tiny people running and a plumey feather. I spelled. "Mom, how do you draw a quilt?" I made some suggestions. After a few minutes, I started to spell it. Jake interrupted me and said that he'd figure it out himself. Figure it out himself? What? He's going to spell "quilt?" That's a hard word! There's a q in it! I stood by the sink with a dripping plate in my hand and stared at the child. Then he turned with a grin slashed across his face. "Q-U-I-L-T!" I pasted a corresponding grin on my face and let go with a "That's right, Buddy!" But oh my. He knows what a quail is. He knows how to spell quilt. And I did not teach him these things. He has his own life and his own knowledge that is separate from my life and my knowledge. This child that I bore and birthed and fed and burped and rocked to sleep so many nights will go on to have a life outside of my realm of control. He won't be my little buddy forever. One day, and it really won't be that long of a wait, he will be a man. Yes, I know. The fact that children are people is hardly a newsflash. It's the miracle of procreation, blah, blah, blah. But every once in a while, the knowledge hits me like a pie in the face. This, this child of mine, is a person. A PERSON! What a miracle!