becoming "mom"

it's official. i now have three different names- in a stage appropriate way. zoe has now dropped the "y" and i have become "mom". to jude, i'm "mommy", and to bryn, i'm still mama. (thank God). i'm not ready to just be "mom" but i know it's coming soon.

we just got back from camping in north georgia- it was beautiful- filled with kids and fireflies and freedom and marshmallows and tents and all that stuff that unites us. grownups, kids, nature.

but on saturday morning before we left, i was not feeling that. i was so stressed. we had so much to do, to pack- you know, kids and travel. but mostly, honestly, it was because of zoe. of where she already was. of how she almost always is with her best friend lily, the daughter of one of my oldest and best friends. it's so ironic. that my sister-friend, zoe's God-mother; and her daughter, who is the closest in age to my daughter of all my friends kids; are the people that zoe has the hardest time with. maybe its the passion- the intensity of loving someone who you feel competitive with, loving someone you're jealous of, loving someone who you feel you should be able to so closely relate to, yet your differences are palpable. maybe it's likely looking the mirror and seeing what you're not.

i can totally relate.

because a similar dynamic existed between her mother and me when we were growing up.

heather was my closest friend. we met at church when we were six, lived about 45 minutes apart and spent as many friday afternoons as we could convincing our mothers to meet at the 'half way point' and let us spend the weekend together at one of the houses- until sunday morning. pretty much, all we did was laugh. a lot. we turned everything into funny. we never had stress or competition with other friends because we didn't go to school together, or live in the same town. things were pretty great for us for about 7 years. then we hit puberty, or atleast heather did. and thus began the great divide.

she was tall, blonde, beautiful and had breasts. i was short, brown haired, flat chested and had braces. it was pretty bad- for me. it was also the summer that we decided to travel across the country together-to visit our grandparents houses, both couples lived on the beach and so we spent our time in bathing suits. me, in my swim-team-style speedo one-piece, and heather in her much more flattering filled out teen suit. we were literally a foot apart in height, and i looked like her much younger cousin. this was the first summer of about the next 4 that i felt invisible. and it's a bad feeling- to not exist.

the next summer, we went on a missions trip to peru with our youth group. we were 2 of three girls and 17 boys. our youth group leader had a major crush on heather, as did at least 16 of the 17 boys. it was an intense 3 weeks and we all got really close with each other. heather was nicknamed "mona lisa" by the boys. because she was 'perfect, but not likely to get any better'. i was nicknamed "potential". (which i guess is better than "hopeless").

what i remember, is feeling incredibly conflicted. i so loved her and just wanted things to be the way they were - when it was us with out all the externals. i hated how deeply jealous i'd become of her- with her height and her boobs and her newly acquired ability to flirt. i hated the annoying way everyone oogled her where ever we went, and how she seemed to love it but deny it all at once. i hated most of all- the distance that i felt from her- because i didn't get her, and i knew she really didn't get my perspective. we laughed less and we fought more, but we still laughed more than most people- and that was something.

i think the third summer, she had a boyfriend. while this entered in a whole new level of envy, it was somehow better- because she'd become comfortable in her new skin and suddenly i was thrown into the world of boys- which really, with out her, was unlikely at that point. i was the cute little friend of the girl with the boyfriend- a step up from "potential".

it was hard that most of the boys i was interested in, were much more interested in her- which of course, didn't make me want to introduce her- but again the conflict- because of course i wanted them to meet- she was like my other half.

by the next summer, i'd finally grown several inches and some breasts, had my braces off,and had a boyfriend too- and the playing field was even again. of course, before, there hadn't even been a game.

this is not unique- everyone goes through the teen years- everyone feels jealous and left out and competitive. but it is kind of funny and painful- to relive a much more magnified version, with our daughters in there early 'tweens.


this is a tricky thing about parenting- separating your junk from their junk- and not assuming you have the same junk.

last week jude had his first t-ball practice. (this deserves it's own blog post) but it was the same issue for me- snipping my baggage from what is his life. basically, he hated t-ball. he felt bad, stressed, miserable, afraid, guilty (like he was supposed to like it), and any other negative emotion you could drum up. it was so sad for me to watch, because i love that kid so much! it didn't help that i was the only mom there with a bunch of overly enthusiastic dads, that my kid didn't even know how to get his glove on, and that i had the other two kids distracting me. i didn't help that i happened to be wearing a miniskirt and a white wife beater- so i couldn't sit down in the grass and looked questionable- in an erin brachovic sort-of-way. but what was really awful was that i felt that jude- my old-souled child, felt pushed when not ready, felt that his dislike was somehow a disappointment (which is wasn't) and it was the first time that i ever saw him with that 'shamed thing. like recognizing he had no clothes in the garden of eden.

and i wondered at what point in our parental consciousness do we become 'self-aware' for our kids. at what point as parents do we think differently of our children- in an 'i remember that feeling- yuck' sort of way. when a 1 year old is scared to try something new at the playground and starts to cry and reach for mom- everyone laughs and comforts him and says, "oh, it's ok- he must not be ready!" and life goes on and no one even remembers it- or writes about it! but a few years later- it carries all this meaning- drama. jude at t-ball was like the flying practice scene from rudolf the red-nosed reindeer.


so watching our children grow up and become people is hard- fun- and full of beautiful agonies. now we have moved away from the business of making babies and into the world of making people. how we respond to those yucky, shamey feelings at t-ball or with the jealousy of beautiful best friends especially in the setting of social learning challenges, is so much bigger than what stroller to buy, whether we should have an epidural, or how much preschool TV is appropriate. and it's that much harder, because lets face it, we don't remember exactly how much TV we watched as kids, but we know how deeply felt are those feelings of becoming real- finding ourselves- forming our identities. we remember the words our parents said, or didn't say; what they felt or what we interpreted that they felt, we took it all in, digested it, and added it to our person. now- as parents- we start to re-live it and sometimes to go back to those places in us that can even still be tender if we're honest. but we have the opportunity to know this and filter our our junk before we help them interpret their worlds, and we have the blessing of being able to relate- and to share our stories.

so maybe four years of being the flat-chested short girl was worth it. maybe watching my little blonde brother struggle with little league was valuable too.

maybe becoming "mom" from "mama" isn't so bad after all.