11. 🕜Moms, You're Not "Missing It"🕜
Be honest. How many of your are propping your eyelids open with toothpicks?💤
Hi Friends,
My friend Caroline is driving me home from a church baby shower. We’re kid-free and it’s quiet. I ask her how her week has been, and she says her baby hasn’t been napping.
I’m trying to figure out what to say to this, trying to remember that far back in my own history. I live in this Xanadu now where my kids go to school every day and grant me eight hours of guaranteed time to get my life together and work. But there were days they did not. Hundreds of days. Why can’t I remember them?
I mentally finger through a string of hackneyed motherhood advice that has probably made Hallmark a fortune.
The days are long, the years are short.
Enjoy the little things.
When things get tough, remind yourself that you’ll miss these days.
But I will not say those things. Because what you should not say to a mom whose baby stopped napping is, “Here are a few more things you should be doing,” just as what you should say to a woman riding in the back of a pickup through a hurricane is not, “Don’t forget to enjoy the ride.”
What I actually say to Caroline is, “I feel like all that happened to me in a fog.”
Caroline laughs. She says she knows it’s going to last just a little while.
“But it feels eternal,” I offer, squeezing the sleepy memory out of my brain like suds from a sponge.
Personally, I prefer motherhood well-wishes with some teeth, don’t you?
Sleep when the baby sleeps. Wash dishes when the baby washes dishes.
May your coffee be stronger than your kids.
Oh and, Good moms let you lick the beaters. Great moms turn them off first.
Love,
Chelsea
Chapter 11: Moms, You’re Not “Missing It.”
Bravery and Me at the Beach
The Day My Knee Popped Out
I’m lying under the kitchen table, screaming.
An EMT is twisting the kitchen doorknob. Bravery waits upstairs in her crib, crying for me.
Up until 30 minutes ago, I was having a normal day. Sitting at the kitchen table, writing for work. The baby was even sound asleep—with her, always a feat. I had gotten a marathon work session in during that hour. Hearing her walking call, I stood up suddenly. Because this is what mothers do.
When I stood, my patella decided to take a sudden vacation to the wrong side of my knee. In an instant, I collapsed. Just like when I got stung by a jellyfish as a kid in Myrtle Beach, I was screaming before I knew I was hurt.
Thankfully I had my phone in hand when I fell. I called my mom.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, two hours away in New York. And, “Yes, you should call the ambulance.”
The fruit of that phone call stands at the door now—a team of salt-of-the-earth emergency people. One appears to be an intern, because after entering she looks deep at my knee and asks another EMT, a guy, “Is that the patella?”
You bet your sweet patella it’s the patella, I think. But I can only whimper.
This intern has the open and beautiful face of an angel. She reminds me of the nurse who gave me my first shower after Bravery was born. When she first stepped in, she locked eyes with me and asked about the baby upstairs.
“She’s okay,” I gasped out, thanking God for the sweet security of crib bars.
By now Jonathan has rushed in from work, because under the table I of course also called him.
This moment is an extreme example of a general principle: Life happens at the same time babies happen.
People love to remind each other that children will grow up, as if there was something anybody could do about that. “You only get 18 summers.” “The laundry will wait but babies don’t keep.” Blah, blah, blah.
Later, after an ER doc popped my knee back in and I went to physical therapy, the therapist was a little baffled as to why my knee had popped out. He eventually concluded that it owed to a surplus of relaxin in my body, a hormone secreted during nursing. Relaxin, during pregnancy, helps your joints and ligaments relax to make room for a baby.
Anyway, I’m still learning to relax when strangers give me advice about motherhood. It took me a while, for instance, to realize a stranger in the grocery store who felt the need to remind me “they grow up fast,” was actually expressing grief, not trying to pile on guilt. The grief of nostalgia is real. Look at the Greek roots—nóstos means “homecoming” and álgos means “pain.” I’m pretty sure having my kids is the best and homiest thing I’ll ever do. So it squares that I might grieve when they fly the nest, and that I might see my own ache reflected in the grocery store mom still surrounded by her cherub-faced, candy-begging jewels.
But looking back at infancy days, including the day my knee popped out, I see I did the best I could. I put Bravery in a safe bed and asked for help. Isn’t that the best anyone can do?
Prop Those Eyelids Open, Baby . . .
Years later, when Jonathan and I have a kindergartner and a fourth grader, we’re staring into the darkness above our bed. We persuaded the kids to go to sleep. How many nights have we done this now? A million?
And how many nights, after all the labor of getting them to bed, have I asked, “Can we go wake them up? I miss them.” Probably at least 40.
Tonight is one of those nights.
But I’m not a maniac, so I don’t actually wake them up. Instead I trust in the stunning goodness of God, that He will give me the good gift of waking up with them in the morning for the million-and-first time.
Instead of waking them up, I ask Jonathan, “Please tell me I’m not missing it.”
“Missing what?”
“Their childhood.”
He looks at me in the dark.
“Chelsea. You’re not missing it. No one spends more time with our kids than you do.”
I heave a sigh.
“Why would you think you’re missing it?”
“Because what if one day they graduate and move out? And I didn’t pay enough attention to all these days when they were little? What if I can’t remember them?”
I don’t remember exactly how Jonathan answered this question. Probably, wisely, with silence.
Motherhood happens while life happens. And it is so good you will never get enough. But one of the truest things about motherhood, for me, is I like my kids a little better every year. Every year adds more dimension.
Do you think someday I will live with my girls in the presence of God, watching them enjoying Him perfectly, doing exactly what He made them for?
That’s what I hope for.
Until then, I keep Jonathan’s words in my mind. I’m not missing it.
🍼Thanks for reading How to Have a Baby: From Bravery to Jubilee. This post is public. Feel free to share it. And come back next time for The Magical Maternity Leave.
⁉️A Question for You . . .
How do you react to advice? How do you tell when advice (esp. parenting advice) is worth taking?
💌 More from Chelsea
✍️ I’ve been a writin’ fool lately. So hopefully I’ll have many more links to post here soon. For now, you can check out this pertinent oldie about taking parenting advice— Don’t Let Me Be a Nabal. Or you can just read these three paragraphs:
I am so new to motherhood I have almost no opinions of my own, leaving me—at this point—much more needy of advice than wary of it. But I had to stop for a photo op when I caught sight of an almost-irresistible onesie on a sale rack last week. It said, “My mom doesn’t want your advice.” . . .
We all know Nabals. The extreme examples are men and women with loud opinions who never waver and cannot submit to authority. They find their own ideas the most compelling in the world. They condescend and refuse to be molded. They are bullies in their independence, soapbox-standers, and the nightmares of church leadership.
But we do not all just know Nabals. In our own ways, we all are Nabals. I know that I enter a perilous season in which my pride will either be undone or undo me. In this season I could just as easily resent help as benefit from it. So I ask God, “Please, don’t let me be a Nabal.”
🗞️ Here’s a column I wrote about mom guilt for the Asheville Citizen-Times. An excerpt:
You know how pop dietary advice shifts with the wind? It contradicts itself until you die of starvation because nothing is permissible to ingest anymore but a bowl of reverse-osmosis ice cubes. Mothering advice is like that too, but a few staples never change. Every person you see in the grocery store cries, "It goes so fast! Soak it up! Cuddle the baby! The dishes can wait! Don’t blink!” So, obviously, you never blink again. Then, with burning eyeballs but somehow still alive, you sleep when the baby sleeps, wash dishes when the baby washes dishes, take a coffee break when the baby takes a coffee break. Problem solved. But you still missed something. You forgot to tell the 7-year-old to brush her teeth. How many times did you forget? God knows.
Great moms turn them OFF first! 😂