Serena

when a mundane moment changes a life

She sat across the room at our kitchen table, facing me as I washed dishes. My back was to her, but I felt her eyes evaluating my work. The rest of the kids had shoved their feet into untied sneakers and gone clanging out the side door to wrestle each other for bikes, skateboards, scooters. One by one the neighborhood had already left my house. But she stayed behind.

“Can I watch you for a while?” she asked.

I’d never had someone ask me such an honest question before. “Of course,” I said, even as the awkward feeling of being observed settled in. I loved having the neighborhood kids congregate in my home. They felt safe there, perhaps unjudged, or maybe they just liked that I had few rules other than shoes off at the door. I didn’t have a lot of food for them, but they were allowed to be loud, to bounce a basketball in the kitchen, to run down the stairs to the TV in the basement. But I’d never been cornered by one before. They moved in packs and preferred to be in the company of my kids, not the adults of the home. But she sat, content to watch me carry out the most mundane of household chores even as I scorned every fork and cup, and secretly longed to escape the domesticity she ached to witness.

**Serena’s own mother had been unable to care for her. While they had visitations, they were all supervised. I didn’t know the half of it, only that she’d been taken in by one of her middle school teachers, a friendly, single woman who also gave off an air of authoritarian vibes. I imagine our home, loud and dirty, and always pulsing with lanky arms and bony knees, and a fluffy dog, felt more alive to her. I’m sure her adoptive mother washed dishes, but perhaps she wanted to see a “real” mother in action. A woman in the wild who cooked, laughed, and shook her head at the scads of mouths to feed, a mother who hid her real feelings in order to give her kids–and the neighborhood–a comfortable place to just be. That part was a joy. I still sometimes miss that pile of shoes at the door, the bikes stacked outside, the kids welcoming themselves into my home. Even the slamming of the side screened door again and again. And I acutely remember how it felt to be lovingly observed as I completed chores I hated, admired while doing the very tasks I wanted to walk away from.

When I first became pregnant, at 21, being a mom was the only thing I thought I would be good at. I’d had little dreams prior: musical theatre, going to college across the country, joining the peace corps. But they’d all been too big–I was a rural kid with very little experience outside my corner of the woods. What did I know about anything in the world? I wasn’t allowed to be “too big for my britches” as my mother would say. Instead I felt I should be realistic, logical, responsible and necessary. And so when marriage and motherhood came much earlier than I’d originally imagined, those were the two things I threw myself into fully, with no outward signs of wanting much else. A month into marriage and about a year into motherhood, I knew I’d seriously underestimated myself by limiting my life to these roles. In each instance, I wrote some iteration of doubt in my journals: This isn’t enough. I was wrong. I am not meant to be here. I can’t be a good wife. And at the same time I fell so absolutely in love with my son, I immediately got pregnant again. And again.

I turned my back on a decade of self-discovery and invested every moment into my family and wondered why I wasn’t happy. What was wrong with me that I felt slighted when I had three healthy children and a perfectly fine husband? Instead of examining the doubt and discontent, trying to understand where it came from, or talk about it with anyone, I stuffed it down. It was wrong to want out, it was wrong to not want to be a wife, it was wrong to want more than motherhood. And so I cruised on, playing all the parts I simultaneously adored and abhorred. I was in pain for years, and emotionally stunted. The stress of my duality wore on my conscience, my heart, and my physical body until I spiraled into a hopeless state. That day in the kitchen I was careening towards the rock-bottom of the first half of my life, with little Serena watching in admiration.

She made me wonder: is this what being a mother meant? Offering a tiny crumb of security to a child’s life while dying to oneself on the inside? I was touched to be admired so delicately, and yet felt like a hypocrite because I didn’t embrace it the simple way she did. At the time, much of my life didn't feel like a gift, it often felt like a sentence. One I was never going to finish serving. At least not alive.

Yet I fear painting such a bleak-sounding picture because I also loved so much of motherhood: conversations with my kids while driving, cheering them on at their games or theatre practice, walking with them to school, being home when they returned, snuggling and reading stories, playing in the snow, exploring parks, and so much more. I would never wish my life to have gone a different way. Perhaps this is why so many mothers get stuck–we’re not really allowed to want something different, and reinventing one’s role as Mom involves significantly more emotional and physical adjustment than reinventing one’s career path. I’ve done both.

It was never one or the other that I wanted–motherhood or no motherhood–it was a balance between living for them and their father, and living for myself that I had no idea how to attain once we were nearly twenty years in. It felt too late. I’d surrendered myself to the roles of wife and mother immediately, and completely, when I myself was barely an adult. I never so much as asked my husband once to wake up with one of our three babies, or take someone to an appointment or stay home when someone was sick. Whenever something had to be done, I took off work since my jobs were not the money-makers. I never developed a true career and instead became the disciplinarian, mediator, chauffeur, cook, maid, and the entertainment while he went to work and returned like a husband who’d stepped out of 1953 and wondered where his newspaper and slippers were. We didn’t take it that far, nor set these expectations consciously, but I’d cemented myself into my role, and he into his, making it impossible for anyone to help, and maybe even to see that help was needed. Or for me to know I needed it.

To Serena’s eyes, a perfectly ticking clock.

It was a moment I cherished and tried not to reject. Moms are so much more than dish-washers, I had so much more to offer her, so much more I wanted to do, so much more I wanted her–and my own kids–to see. But that day, all she needed was a little dash of a familiar comfort, and all I needed was a quiet reminder that one’s worth is not wrapped up in the tasks they complete, or don’t complete. And that it’s never too late to balance the scales.

**name has been changed