What makes a good mother?
Reflections on the cycle of motherhood
By the time I get my eldest child to bed, my patience is thinner than the dental floss her brother sprawled across my living room floor.
I grumble, too exhausted to read another book, and instead let the hum of the fan and the echoes of my tired voice begging her to sleep lull her into slumber. When she finally drifts off, I look down at her small body and tell myself I was a bad mother in that moment, but that by dawn, after a night of rest, I’ll try again. I’ll be a good mother in the morning.
Earlier in the week, after one child was asleep and the other played in the bath, the swishing of water lapping across the tub as I quietly prayed it wasn’t flooding the bathroom floor, I watched a wasp bump back and forth against our window’s screen. Normally, a quick shoe to the wasp would end the problem, but this time I remembered my daughter’s words and her recent vow to never eat an animal again. Insects are a low classification in the animal world—but do they count? The wasp wasn’t harming anyone; it was simply trying to get outside. I thought of my daughter, honouring her wish not to harm and the life of the small buzzing creature. Instead, I placed a glass over the top of it, quickly slid a piece of paper underneath, and carried it outside until it flew away free. This is what a good mother does, I thought to myself.
It was timely to read, days later, “A Mother’s Work” in Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer:
There was so much to rake. I could dredge the algae out, slap it into piles, and be done with it. I could work so much faster if I didn’t have to stop and pick tadpoles from the tangle of every moral dilemma. I told myself that my intention was not to hurt them; I was just trying to improve the habitat and they were the collateral damage. But my good intentions meant nothing to tadpoles if they struggled and died in a compost pile. I sighed, but I knew what I had to do. I was driven to this chore by a mothering urge, to make a swimmable pond [for my children]. In the process, I could hardly sacrifice another mother’s children, who, after all, already have a pond to swim in.
I often wonder what my children will remember of their childhoods when we’re all older. Will they remember when I yelled at them for intentionally breaking one another’s toys or will they remember me helping them float in the lake? Yelling seems to be a trait I acquired only after becoming a mother, especially surprising for someone who’s often told to speak up. Then again, I recall yelling at my own mother when I was a teenager. I only remember her yelling at me once. Once. And I deserved it. I now shake my head, wondering how she handled me as a teenager. I wasn’t rebellious, only stubborn and independent, much like the children I now raise. I pray they only remember me yelling once, if at all. I pray they remember the forts we built, the jam we made, and the outdoor sleepovers where only they slept—myself no longer able to sleep comfortably enough to fall into a deep sleep when not in my own bed. Instead, the stars and I conversed, though only one of us wondered about how I’d parent in the morning with so little sleep. It was worth it, though, to see the sun kissing her face in the early morning and her excitement when she realized she lasted the entire night outside. Will they remember these moments? Will they remember the tickles and playing cards and the road trips back to the ocean where they were born?
I’m learning, as a mother, we have to grow thick skin, despite age slowly thinning ours out, the creases beginning to mirror dried-out rivers. No amount of undereye cream seems to hide my dark circles these days, so I smile when my children tell me the skin under my eyes is purple and blue, shades of the night sky reminding me to rest when it is quiet. So much of mothering is taking the brunt of others’ pain so they can thrive—the only burden being that sometimes we can’t lift them high enough. Still, we try, finding another stool or ladder, picking them up and bringing them to higher ground where the sunrise is more visible. Then, in the evening, we water the gardens, reminding ourselves that we, too, need to sit down and drink.
I try to protect my children as much as I can, but I realize, one day, their stories will become their own. Instead, I focus on teaching them all that I can—some of the lessons stories I don’t fully understand myself. Who made us? What happens to us when we die? Will we always be together? The latter, I answer with an authoritative yes, and I find myself discussing tales of heaven in hopes of soothing any fears away. I’ve learned the word heaven is less a place and more a feeling of hope and comfort, so it becomes the birds and the skies, the wind and the gentle rain watering the flowers, the lakes and the rivers that flow in and out of each other, reminding us that we are all one, together, connected to one another in ways we’ll try to understand under microscopes but not fully comprehend with a conscious state of mind. For only the unconscious fully know, but unable to speak, they speak to us through the trees and the soil and the stars. A good mother speaks of heaven. A good mother waters the earth. A good mother teaches her children to water the earth, so that when she one day speaks to them through heaven, they’ll feel her presence as they pluck carrots out of the ground, feeding their own children.
So it is my grandchildren who will swim in this pond, and others whom the years will bring. The circle of care grows larger and caregiving for mt little pond spills over to caregiving for other waters. The outlet from my pond runs downhill to my good neighbor’s pond. What I do here matters. Everybody lives downstream. My pond drains to the brook, to the creek, to a great and needful lake. The water net connects us all. I have shed tears into that flow when I thought that motherhood would end. But the pond has shown me that being a good mother doesn’t end with creating a home where just my children can flourish. A good mother grows into a richly eutrophic old woman, knowing that her work doesn’t end until she creates a home where all of life’s beings can flourish. There are grandchildren to nurture, and frog children, nestlings, goslings, seedlings, and spores, and I still want to be a good mother.
I don’t think I fully settled into being a mother until my second was born, my first only a few weeks shy of four. I loved becoming a mother, but there was a constant push and pull between my old self and the new self I was becoming. I held tightly to my past, to the sense of self I had created for just shy of 30 years, only to realize that those first 30 years would become merely a whisper to who I now was. Once I kissed her goodbye, I began to realize that I could still honour her roots by nourishing who I now was above the soil, and I could see that I was becoming a strong stalk, able to brace myself against the storms. My petals close back up at night, caressing my children to sleep. In the morning, we’re all reborn, the sun waking us and the gardens we tend. New air cycles through our lungs, the challenges of yesterday fading into the background.
I remind myself that motherhood is cyclical, like the seasons, coming and going in its potential. But through it all, there is growth—the understanding that while my hands may no longer hold the small bodies of my children as they once did, my love and lessons will root deep within them, blossoming in ways I may never fully see.
I close my eyes, breathing in the scent of their skin and their messy hair, before scooping them up and taking them to the window where a doe and fawn graze. I hush their squeals so as not to disturb the other mother. I pour them cups of milk and drink my tea. Together, we dance in the rising sun.
And I see that I’m a good mother.
