Being a mother is like constantly looking into a mirror of your soul. Not just any mirror either, one of those pore-magnifying mirrors where every virtue – or lack thereof – is magnified to sometimes frightful proportion.
I’d like to tell you that being a mother has brought out the best in me and, in some ways, it has. But it has also reflected back some glaring deficiencies.
For example, being a mother has shown me that I have the potential for violence. Now, let me be clear (as a lawyer I should know that these words can so easily come back to haunt me and whatever jury they get put in front of will fail to see the irony that I intend by the statement), I am not nor have I ever been physically violent with anyone, including most especially Pumpkin. My hyperbolic statement was intended only to jump start my story about the park last weekend. Let me back up by saying Pumpkin loves the park – any park. She especially loves slides and steering wheels (“dwy-veen”).
So there we are at the park on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Pumpkin is having the time of her life when I see a little boy approach her. My mama-bear instincts kicked in and I walked a little closer to the action, positioning myself right next to the boy’s mother (keep this positioning in mind as the story progresses). I arrive at the slide just in time to see Pumpkin relinquish the steering wheel to the boy and turn for the slide. As she sits down to slide, the little boy, despite now being in possession of the steering wheel he was after, balled his little fist up and hit her right on top of her head. I saw red. Literally. Pumpkin looked up at me with the biggest, saddest, most confused eyes. I gave her a quick hug before turning on the little brat.
I need to digress here for one more caveat – the photo above is NOT the little boy that hit Pumpkin, but it was the only picture I had of the scene of the crime. While this tot looks menacing, he was actually a sweet little boy. I didn’t get the culprit, but wait around for 14-years and I’m sure we will have a decent mug shot to include.
Before I make my move, I look at his mother waiting for some reprimand and NOTHING. Keep in mind she is standing RIGHT NEXT TO ME. Finally, when I realize she is going to do nothing about the situation, I stick my little pointer finger right in his face and tell him not to ever hit her again. I used my scariest mommy voice, but at just over 5 foot tall and hardly able to reach up to the top of the slide, I’m not sure it had the intended effect on him. In any event, his mom glances up from her text message to say “yeah, if you hit one more kid we are going to have to leave.” Pumpkin has long since moved on and down the slide but I continue fuming for the rest of our afternoon at the park. It was then and there I reconsidered having her birthday at a public location.
Being a mother has also made me realize that I am a liar (again, hyperbole). I’m no ponzi-scheming shyster by any means, but I am a white liar. See, since Pumpkin has gotten verbal and can actually carry on conversations, repeat things, and most importantly REMEMBER everything I tell her, I have learned to be very careful about WHAT I tell her. I always want Pumpkin to trust me. I want her to believe me when I tell her things – whether it is that she can have a sucker after school or that whatever is breaking her heart at the moment is going to be okay. I have tried really hard not to just shoot off at the mouth in an effort to pacify her unless I REALLY mean it. But let me tell you – telling the truth all of the time is HARD.
Judge me if you must, but I can’t tell you the number of times a day that I just want to tell her what she wants to hear to stop whatever tangent (or tantrum) she is on. Sure, we’ll go to the park later. Yes, you can watch Mickey later. If you stop crying you can have (fill in the blank). But I stop myself. I have to. Partly because she is going to hold me to it, but mostly because if I screw everything else in her life up, I want her to look back and say “at least I could trust her.” I don’t know why, but that is incredibly important to me. My parents were always real with me. I want her to have real too.
The worst part about that is that I already know that there are going to come some hard times (harder than “no you can’t have any candy”) when I am going to have to be honest and it is going to hurt. One day (hopefully only ONE day) she is going to be hurt and it won’t be truthful of me to say “it’s going to be okay.” The one thing that will remain the truth then, now, and always though, is that mama will be there through whatever it is.
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