the hard, hard business of mothering

I have a pre-preteen that I really hope will make it to his preteen and teen years.  Honestly I just did not ever think that mothering could be this hard. I mean I knew that we'd have some tough days or even years during his teenage years, but I didn't know how early this change would start.  Sometimes I feel like a creature has inhabited his sweet little 10 year-old body and I just want to silence that creature.  I keep telling myself that if I can survive these teen years, I will have earned my Good Housekeeping seal as a "good mom".

But several bits of news over the last week made me realize you don't ever stop earning Mother Badge of Courage.  This mothering business is a lifelong endeavor.

Last Monday and again today, I attended a women's Bible study at the church we've been attending.  The fall series is on prayer.  At the end of these sessions, people can name their prayer requests.  The group is made up of women my age and younger (with children Mac's age and younger) and women who are older with children that are college-aged up into their 30s and 40s.  The prayer requests that were spoken have been specifically for children college-aged and up.  It wasn't the "young" mothers who expressed concerns about their school-aged kids; it was the mothers asking for prayers for their children who have already flown the coop.

And then last Wednesday, we learned our very dear friends' 18 year-old daughter received a diagnosis for a disease that she will fight for the rest of her life.  I'd never heard of this disease, but from my limited research, it appears to have ALS-type symptoms that, like ALS, progressively worsen. Again, you think the histrionics of toddler temper tantrums and teenage hormones are behind you and boom! you're blindsided by something in your adult child's life.

Our friends are great parents and have raised great, well-rounded, successful girls. They were our first close State Department friends who had teens and preteens when we met them.  I distinctly remember how surprised Jimmy and I were when we'd go to their house, and the girls, instead of pitching fits to be away from their parents, really wanted to hang out and have good conversations and play board games.  They were completely content to be together as a family.  Make no mistake - these girls are really popular and have always had many and close friendships since we've known them, but sometimes, many times, they chose hanging out with their parents over their friends.  They truly seemed to enjoy each other's company.  This was a novelty because at the time we met them, Mac was about 4 years old and I couldn't imagine we'd ever get past the point where I had to take Goldfish crackers with us everywhere to keep him happy.  Would we ever get to a stage of life where Mac grew up beyond his needy preschool self and actually chose to be with us?  (As a side note, Mac is now roughly the age that the 18 year-old daughter was when we first met them.  It's looking highly doubtful that he would actually choose us over really anyone else on most occasions, now or in the foreseeable future, but I remain ever so hopeful.)

Our friends are going to be fine.  They're going to learn everything they can about this disease and how to live with it as their new normal.  Their daughter is going to continue to enjoy her freshman year of college and then her sophomore, junior and senior years.  They're going to learn to adapt as necessary, make concessions when appropriate, and put one foot in front of the other to fight the disease's progression as much as possible.  Surely there will be hard days that feel tougher than they have the energy to endure. When life seems unfair.  When they just want to stay in the bed with the covers pulled up. When it feels like they got the short end of the stick.

Why is this family going to be fine?  Because they're going to fight the good fight together.  And that's what I need to remember on these difficult days of surly pre-teen-hood, when I'm pretty sure that Mac and I can't both survive until sunset. We are in this together.  We.are.in.this.together.  As a unit.  As a team.

Mothering is not for the faint of heart.  It is not a sprint to the closest finish line, but rather a long, drawn-out, sometimes messy marathon where you can't see a rest stop anywhere.  There might be flashes of instant gratification, but those flashes can be few and far between on the marathon's run.

We joke that we need to only get through 18 years and then we send them off into the world.  But the joke's on us.  As parents, we get the good, the bad and the ugly for a long time.  A really long time.  For better or worse.  Until death do us part.

If we're lucky, we get to see our children grow into versions of their very best and most authentic adult selves. To be great mothers and fathers themselves, great partners to their significant others, great employees and bosses, great community members.  Great human beings.  If we're lucky, we get to see all that.

But life is messy and complicated and not tinted by the rose-colored glasses every day.  It's completely impossible to avoid seeing your child suffer.  Maybe it's just the childhood garden variety of suffering - not picked for the team or fights with friends, high fevers and skinned knees -or maybe it's the more adult version of divorce, money problems, substance abuse, illness, and lost jobs.  If we're fortunate to live long enough in the presence of our children, odds are that we're going to see some of this awfulness.

So what I've got to do is put on my big-girl panties and be a mom to a little boy who needs to know that I will love him for always and forever and then some more on top of that.  I can be his safe place to land, even when he hurts my feelings with his sullenness and angry outbursts. Because we're in this together.  We are Team Story and we're in it to win it, if "it" means a family that genuinely enjoys each other's company and wants to spend time together.   The long haul isn't often pretty, but it's worth it.