Tingling-ling-ling, tingling-ling-ling… tingling-ling-ling, tingling-ling-ling…” my phone’s alarm chimed loudly.
“Mama! Mama, where ARE you?” my 6 year old daughter Lily asked dutifully from across the room.
“Tingling-ling-ling, tingling-ling-ling… tingling-ling-ling, tingling-ling-ling…”
“Over here honey.” I responded with a weak smile and a slight chuckle. I knew what was coming next.
“Tingling-ling-ling, tingling-ling-ling… tingling-ling-ling, tingling-ling-ling…”
She saw me on the couch, curled up with my hands in braces, a heating pad under my neck, and a blanket over my lap and brought me my phone and thrust the screen to my face. Along with the blaring wind chime ring tone, it also displayed a message, “Take pills”, on the screen, the same message it gives me 4 different times in the day.
“Tingling-ling-ling, tingling-ling-ling… tingling-ling-ling, tingling-ling-ling…”
“Mama, you need to take your pills.” She said with all the authority of a highly trained nurse, “Where are they?”
“They’re over on the kitchen island, hun, next to your homework.”
She promptly turned around and skipped happily to the large pill box with its 28 different tiny compartments, each neatly labeled with the day and time of day I was to take my pills. She loves the precise order of this pill box. The controlled predictability of it makes her older child personality feel at ease. I, on the other hand, being a wild and free youngest child at heart only see it is a death trap, both figurative and morbidly literal. These seemingly simple pills are taken in a dull predictable order throughout the day, but the illness they were meant to treat is anything but.
She batted her 2 year old brother away as she promptly walked back to my little throne of comfort on the couch.
“I know which one you need, it’s right here, ‘MON EVE’, because today is Monday, and it is evening time because the sun has gone down, and it is almost dinner time.” She opened the tiny compartment and skillfully took out the 3 pills inside and handed them to me. “Here you go mama! Oh! you need water too don’t you? It’s ok mama, I know you’re hurting a lot today, don’t get up, I’ll go get it!”
I hate that she knows this routine. I hate that my 6 year old daughter is so very familiar with pill boxes and knows with a glance what level of pain I am at that day. I hate that she is familiar with words like “surgery” and “cancer.” I hate that these statements are a part of her daily life- “Mama has a doctors appointment.”, “Mama is hurting today and we can’t go outside to play.”, or “Mama is in the hospital and Nana is going to take care of you until she can come home." I hate that they may be bleakly joyless statements that etch themselves into her childhood memories.
I wanted her childhood to be carefree and thriving, not a never ending state of “survival mode.” I had made such ambitious plans for her to attend ballet and art classes. I had determined to set aside a time every week to teach her my blissful craft of artisanal baking. I dreamt of the future (like many moms before me have done and will continue to do) and had visions of myself volunteering for every girl scout meeting, school fundraiser and function, and of course promptly attending every single meeting. Now I am lucky if I can simply make it to a parent teacher conference, and the one function a semester that I volunteer for.
I had hoped to be in charge of my family’s story, but alas my medical history is what shapes our daily lives. A chronic illness called hypoparathyroidism that resulted from the cancer treatment I underwent, treatment which ultimately pronounced me “cancer free," a result I would never want to erase from my history. Yet, the consequent chronic illness now rules not only my own life, but that of my tiny family’s as well. So this leaves me to daily, hourly, by the minute, ask those horrific questions that every mother faces-
“Will they despise me when they grow up?”
“Will they understand that I tried my best with the cards that I was given?”
“Am I failing them if I focus on myself today?”
“Will they despise me for not giving them all that I wanted to?”
“Will they ever be able to know that I wanted so much more for our family?”
“Will they ever know a childhood that is blissful and carefree?”
“Have I ruined my family?”
“In years to come, will this childhood story, with all its bumps and twists and turns and heartbreak, still reveal how much I love them?”
“Will I even be there to tell them in the years to come?”
She looked up at me with eyes reflecting a profoundly rooted love and said,
“Mama, I love you so much, you are the best mama I could ever have. You make me so happy, I love you.”
Then she planted a slobbery wet kiss on my cheek, turned, and skipped away with my pill box in hand, happily returning it to its place on the kitchen island.
I wrote the above piece a few months ago for a friend who reached out to me asking if I'd like to contribute to a book she is working on that is a collection of short stories written by mothers about motherhood. While it was written a while ago, I wanted to wait until Mother's Day to share it with you all so as to give you my very personal tiny peek in to this crazy, horrifying, and wonderful world of motherhood. I also made a little collection of pictures that capture the messy joy that surrounds me daily as a mom to two incredibly passionate kiddos. To all my fellow moms out there- let's keep loving those crazy kids with all we got, not let the weight of "what if's" consume us, and know that it is a magnificent accomplishment to simply do your best with the hand that life has dealt you. Happy Mother's Day!
