The Midday of Motherhood
A reflection as my oldest turns twelve
Our pediatrician is a bit of a running joke in the family. He is a good doctor, old-school like my father was. He enters the exam room with his paper chart, sitting cross-legged on his stool, waiting and watching silently. He misses nothing, inquiring about every scrape and bruise. “Good thing we don’t have to see Dr. B-,” we laugh every time any child has a noticeable blemish.
I take the boys together every October for their “birthday appointment.” My middle son immediately fills the silence with a running narrative of things I might have preferred to leave unmentioned to our crusty, aging pediatrician. The day before their appointment there was a minor incident with a pickaxe. “We probably don’t need to tell Dr. B- about the pickaxe,” I warned him.
He didn’t. Instead, he launched into a narrative about playing in the swamp with friends and all the water moccasins that they saw and the gator slide where gators slid in and out of the swamp. Dr. B- look at their permanently dirt-stained feet with cuts and scrapes. “So, they’re kind of free-range,” he said. Maybe his grumpiness is fading - no disapproving glances at all. I think he was charmed by children who can talk to adults and do things other than stare at a screen.
As we opened the car doors, my oldest slipped into the front passenger seat. He has been waiting desperately for this moment. Though he has been the size of a small adult for over a year, by state law he must be twelve to ride in the front passenger seat. Only yesterday he rode in the backseat, big and bald, with a goofy grin. I thought that he might never grow hair (or walk) - but then a curly, red tendril grew above each ear. Now he has enviable auburn hair and sits beside me, suddenly half peer, half child.
The burdens that I bore in the early years were physical. There was sleeplessness and restlessness, constantly consoling and carrying and chasing. When pregnant, my body was not my own, and he began battling me for territory in the womb. I had to completely give up all spices in my food until he was born - not because of pregnancy indigestion, but because he would war within me each time I ate something that he did not prefer. Once he could talk, he would say, “It’s very too much. Very too much for James.”
His growth is very too much for me. When the nurse laid him on my chest newborn, I thought that his heft might have broken a rib. He was over ten pounds and had well-defined back muscles hewn by uterine territorial disputes. “That baby is the size of a turkey,” declared a cashier at the Winn-Dixie.
In some ways, he is the easiest. Our minds run on similar tracks - I catch his glance, evaluating my response, knowing that we are thinking the same thing. His mind is not a mystery as are the minds of the younger two. He is careful and organized, always planning five steps ahead. He is also stubborn and unyielding, always masking what lies beneath. He is the mirror that I needed to see.
Now we are side by side, and the burdens I bear are burdens of the heart. I am in the midday of motherhood. The baby gear and the garish primary-colored toys are long gone. The stakes are not what they once were. When he was two, we had a ten-day battle of the wills when he refused to eat anything other than grapes. Now I begin the slow release of my child into a wicked world.
Towards the end of the pediatrician visit, Dr. B- announced that he was the standard age for the HPV vaccine. I tilted my head, confused. Isn’t HPV a sexually transmitted disease?
He presented it as an act of “women’s health.” Just a quick injection and he won’t be at risk of spreading a cancer-causing disease to all the women with whom he has sex. This is the madness of the world into which I release him. The world calls this charity - inoculating twelve-year-olds so that they can use women for casual sex, consequence-free. Why not set them up for success for a life of fornication?
If he is of an age where he could conceivably spread sexually transmitted diseases, then he is of an age where he can conceivably break my heart. Thus, midday prayer has become my favorite office of the day. As our school day ends, I sneak away with a cup of tea to the chair in my room. The Psalms included are those of trouble and comfort, captivity and deliverance. These are Psalms for mothers who watch and think, “So soon?”
One of the closing collects reads:
Blessed Savior, at this hour you hung upon the Cross, stretching out your loving arms: Grant that all the peoples of the earth may look to you and be saved; for your tender mercies’ sake.
At midday, Christ hung on the cross and Mary could but watch and weep. Her fiat is the way forward. As St. Irenaeus wrote, “The knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by Mary’s obedience.” Motherhood is the slow remission of a life that I created. Will I seize like Eve, or surrender like Mary?
Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
The HPV vaccine is a topic that comes up with us too given the ages of our children. Mine are older and so we have had years between my husband and I to discuss. I think the struggle is that our children, no matter how we raise them, are their own. Their actions, including any dreadful missteps, are theirs. There will be consequences, and indeed, these are things that will break a mother's heart. Relinquishing control is a practice that comes with true faith. And prayer is the answer for all things that happen--whether good or bad.