what matters and why

another mother

9/26/02
5:00pm

It's that time again. It's not quite cool enough to open the windows but it's to where it's actually comfortable outside. We can wear jeans again. I'm feeling very excited about the weather this year. Like something good will happen. That I will actually make it through a season without the sad feeling. As each day passes I feel a little stronger for some reason. With the exceptions of dealing with the diffuculties of raising a four year old, I think I'm starting to like myself. When someone asks me how old I am now, I can say twenty three without mumbling or feeling ashamed. I'm allowing myself to accept a compliment without wondering whether it's sincere. I can say that I know I did the right thing and really believe it myself. I see it in my child. I see it in the way things have turned out. I know it, especially after conversations like the one this weekend between my self and the other young mother whose son shares a class with mine. I approached her. I was curious. She was my age, we may have something in common, I thought. As we spoke, I felt like a thirty yr old speaking with a teenager. "I don't have to deal with his s***," she said as she spoke of her ex husband. "As long as he still pays my bills," she explained how they'd divorced yrs ago yet he continued to support her. She obviously did not spend her weekends at home with her son working on a scrapbook. Why did I ever think we'd have anything to talk about, I started to ask myself two minutes into the conversation. Her four year old blatantly informed her, in front of everyone, that "he hated her" and she was a "horrible mommy," things that very possibly may come out of a preschooler's mouth, but at McDonald's in front of everyone. There was a respect issue there that obviously wasn't being dealt with. At that moment, I could not have been more thankful that I would be coming home that day to a man who supports everything about this life. Who I am. Who demands respect and negates authority to his son, who has turned into this ideal child. Who, when I am at my wit's end and think that I can't take it anymore, eagerly volunteers to take over. Who never criticizes the fact that I don't always live up to the expectations that marriage brings. Who works hard and never complains. I couldn't help to wonder about this other mom, who insisted she is ecstatic about the fact that her life is paid for: she has the house, the car, the posessions without having to deal with the trials of having a full time companionship. The child, who only gets to see his father every other weekend, and who expresses his frustrations by telling his mother he hates her, by defying her in public, well aware of his disaproving audience. Why did I ever think that I'm not good enough. It's so easy to fall into that place of self despair, truly believing that no one's ever been where I have when in truth there is so much here right in front of me. Leaving the party that day, and that conversation, I didn't feel jealous this time. Before, I might have envied the time she had alone, the time she would have in her future to figure out who she was and where she was going. So she has that. She may get married, get divorced. She may spend a lifetime alone. She will spend, however, the rest of her life with a son who will constantly wonder why he didn't receive the childhood he deserved. It's been five long long years. I think I'm there. I hope this is the end of the doubt. The what ifs. To move on, to get to the point that I want, to be the mother that I would like to be, I have got to get over it. I do know that. And I think it's getting closer. I want to be my own person, starting now and for the rest of my life.