Frozen fingers churning out pop chords on the cobblestones of Europe. Gathering my tips for a cup of hot espresso and some wi-fi. Hauling gear back and forth on the train, searching around in the cold for the best place to set up.
Long strides and short breaths, pushing through the last ten kilometers after hours spent in the Turkish canyons. Taking buses to unknown locations and getting in cars with strangers. Leisurely slow breakfasts and speed-walking to catch a ferry to another continent.
Wandering around on lazy days with a boy I’m falling in love with. Waking up in the morning and setting off on adventures with nowhere to be. Sharing donuts and pie and happy strolls through the woods and over water. Making promises and knowing we’ll keep most of them.
Crippling anxiety over driving in the snow. Or saying goodbye to my husband for the day. Or going to the grocery store. Quiet breathing on the bedroom floor. Sunlight filtering through the window. Commuting on foot to the library. Finding calm again.
The last few weeks, I keep finding myself remembering the different people I’ve been. It feels like a cast of characters, lined up at a door for an audience, as if to audition for a role, or maybe just make their case heard. They are somewhere between strangers and old friends. Some are odd acquaintances, that I can’t feign to have forgotten, but wouldn’t bring up of my own will. Others are sweet reunions, seasons and styles that embody a “je-ne-sais-quoi” that seems lacking in my current life.
I recently discovered I have a strong distaste for mom-bloggers/authors. Well, not really recently, but this particular bias was confirmed for me. Motherhood is simultaneously so all-encompassing and broad, while also being incredibly unique and specific. I keep hearing the same bizarre dialogue, dressed up in different beliefs and personalities; “You can love your kids and still dislike them sometimes,” “Motherhood is hard but don’t forget it’s still rewarding!” “You should do what you think is right and follow your heart, but also make sure you’re doing all of these different things, but don’t stress about it, just go with the flow!” “Don’t worry, I’m an imperfect mom too, but here’s an incredibly detailed list of how I live my life (and the link’s in the description – wink).”
Motherhood is so personal. Entangled with our own experiences of the mothers in our lives, our own self-perception, the experiences surrounding us as we welcome our littles to the world, the voices whispering or shouting into our ears as we try to figure out, “What does being a mom mean – to me?”
I have only one lens into the journey of motherhood, wildly biased and often cloudy. I know some of my experiences and feelings are universal, at least among mothers of my generation in relatively similar socioeconomic and educational backgrounds. There’s a comfort and a kinship in that sameness, but then our paths diverge, and we must find our own way.
I recently celebrated the first birthday of my second child, and I see a pattern emerging. It would appear passing that milestone coincides with me picking up more personal pursuits. I start working out, more regularly and with more intensity. My writing and other creative projects begin to sprout up again, slowly at first, but gaining momentum as I give them space. It’s not that I haven’t been myself for the last twelve months (or really, 15-18 months) but I have been a very focused, narrow, subset of myself.
I’m filled with questions as I ponder this. Is it wrong that this is the path I took? Was there ever any other path available to me? Will it happen again if I have more children? How does this smaller segment of my identity become integrated with the whole of who I am?
My headphones in as I walk to begin my first month at the gym, Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” starts playing, and I can’t help but lip-sync along. In fact, it takes a great deal of self-control to not start a full dance number on the sidewalk, but that doesn’t seem like the brightest idea. The opening bars awaken a memory of setting out on sidewalks in Istanbul and Waterloo and Parkersburg on gray early mornings, getting a run in before the day starts. As the lyrics begin, I can hear my own voice, worn out from a day of singing in the cold, belting out sassily to tourists in Brussels.
I think about all those people I’ve been, and I wonder: Who am I now?
Maybe I don’t like mom bloggers because they appear to traffic in answers and I think questions are more interesting. Or perhaps it’s that they seem to want to paint the journey of motherhood in black and white, and I love the gray. Motherhood is a little bit of prose, but it’s probably mostly poetry (free verse, of course).
That’s who I am. Someone who loves the song, not because it tells me the answer, but because it keeps reminding me to ask the question. The journey is home, though some days more settled than others. Every morning is a fresh opportunity to wonder, to explore, to discover, to grow and change and become someone new all over again.
I like it.