The One Hundred Mothers

 

The mothers glide through the dusty shelves of my mind. They are my past selves, and I am them.

They lean against photo albums, offering advice. They frown bringing up a memory of a playground mishap, wondering why I let my daughter play alone in the backyard; or why I was not more involved in the school mom group charities. “I’m busy!” I cry. “Things are different now that they are older.”

Some of the mothers are curious, others overwhelmed. Once in a while, one of the mothers — the kindest, most forgiving one — settles down next to me. She takes my hand. We sit in an empty room of my imagination and remember.

The Expecting Mother

She’s listening, to advice, uncalled for mostly, still listening because she wants to do the best possible for this little life she holds within her. Her husband has bought a hundred toys and a hundred baby clothes and one very important book. Both read it together every night. It jostles for space with the advice in her head, every night. Together, she and her husband fold tiny newborn clothes that the baby will never wear, because she’ll be a whopping 3.5kg at birth.

They have decided on a name, an impulsive but fond decision. The one decision that can be solely theirs, unapologetically.

“Don’t forget a single thing,” everyone tells her “The days are long, but the years are short. Only 18 summers till she leaves home.”

She laughs, naïve. Of course she won’t forget anything. This is the thing she’s wanted most in her life. Who could ever forget a second of motherhood?

The Over the Edge Mother

She’s in a bathroom, this time at 2 a.m., breathing, trying to calm herself.  The mother can’t get her baby to stop crying. She has tried everything. The baby is fed, burped, walked around, sung to and yet she cries, shrill, urgent, unwavering. The mother chokes on her own helplessness, it’s been hours of this. Her husband needs to rest the night as he has work next day. So he uses the guest bedroom. She, on the contrary, is “jobless”, stuck, alone, scared.

“Hello lovely,” her husband greets the now joyful, gurgling baby. It is 7am, peaceful. She pours her heart out about the terrible, terrible night she’s had. “It sounds like she’s fine. Sometimes babies cry,” he says waving goodbye as he leaves for the day.

“She’s not fine,” the mother hisses. the baby’s cries so desperate, still fresh in her ears that the mother wants to tear her own heart out of her chest. Motherhood, she thinks, is a giant sham.

“Have you heard of colic?” the doctor asks, gently.

After they come home, she brings the baby into the bathroom, where the fan creates white noise. She reads too many articles. Rocking and reading, reading and rocking. Once, she escapes outside to scream at the sky.

Soon, the baby gets a prescription for colic. The mother gets a box of chamomile teabags.

In a few months, they both stop crying so much, though the mother remains haunted by the sound of the baby’s phantom wails. The baby seems to study her mother as if remembering the flood of tears between them. How they almost drowned.

The Gushing Mother

Over and over, she counts her six-month-old’s fingers and toes. She kisses them until the baby laughs. She tells her son that they are soulmates, connected through lifetimes. He resembles her dad who has passed way too soon. He is her anchor, her raw spark, live, beating, precious and fragile. People often marvel: “That baby just transforms when you are in the room.”

The mother is tuned in to her first born, now three. She goes by the rule book, loves to a fault, cherishes every milestone hit, dresses her up in satin and silk, reads her a story every night. They have pretend tea parties and visit friends. With her son, she becomes a child. She is mired in a season of spiritual pause.

The Mamma Bear

The mother watches her toddler stomp wide-legged through the playground in sandals that sink through the mulch.

“Be careful,” the mother calls. More often than not, her boy is sprawled on the ground, digging up worms. The mother thinks about the dangers of uneven sidewalks, holes in the grass. She embodies the term “helicopter parent”.

Soon, the toddler discovers slides. Her eyes widen.

At the top of one slide, the child hesitates. Impatient, a bigger kid behind him pushes with a violence that makes the mother spring to her feet.

“You do not shove my kid!” the mother shouts. She gathers her boy, who seems more stunned than upset, and leaves the playground in a huff, to the bemusement of other parents. It takes much too long for the mother’s anger to transform into shame.

The Permissive Mother

The mother is sprawled on the bed with her daughter on top of her, both of them still in pajamas. The daughter is pretending to be a cowgirl, using the mother’s hair as reins. They laugh so hard that they hiccup.

These days, the mother and son make mischief. They play pranks. When left to their own devices, they stay up late, strewing popcorn kernels all over the bed. Sometimes, when a storm hits, they race outdoors to dance in the rain.

Someone observes, “You let your kids get away with everything. I thought you would be the disciplinarian.”

It was a reasonable assumption. In most facets of her life, the mother enjoys order and checklists. But with her kids, the mother forgets efficiency. She relives her own childhood.

The Worried Mother

Teenage years creep in before she is ready. Unarmed, she navigates the bends of these tumultuous roads. No social media reels back then to suggest, “Things you should tell your Teens” She flounders, makes grave errors, says all the things she is not supposed to, feels the guilt, allows that guilt to guide her into more bad decisions, over and over in a seemingly endless loop. Her precious angels have horns now, to stab, and sensitive skin that burns by her mere breath. Where did she go wrong, she worries as doors slam hard, food remains uneaten and her husband refuses to indulge her overthinking. There is no special book that they can read together on this. They chart their own paths in dealing with these two peculiar beings that reside in their home, guided by their own childhood, their own upbringing.

The Step Back Mother

The epiphany arrives via an avocado, as she tries to encourage her now 24-year-old daughter to take one perfectly ripe avocado to her apartment, in a different continent.

Other than signing in to their Netflix account, she is financially independent. She could buy a case of avocados, but the mother still needs to give her things. Is it enduring love? Or is she refusing to let go of the mothers she has been?

The mother keeps wanting to give. Increasingly, the daughter needs not to receive. Transitioning is hard, so is letting go of all the 100 mothers she has been -  the nurturer, the sleep deprived runner of the dark, the hawk eyed mother in the rain swept playground refuses to let go. However, let go, she must. The mother eventually loosens the grip, steps back and breathes in and out, making space in her full heart for peace.

She has stopped sending her daughter avocadoes. The mother learns to respect the daughter’s ability to thrive on her own. She has learned to keep her conditioning from coming in the way of her son’s choices. Every day she tries to become a mother her children deserve. She unlearns and relearns the steps, there is social media to help now with reels on easy parenting.

   

When I think about my own mother in my youth, I remember her raging temper, her protectiveness that cloistered me, long afternoons where she slept while I tiptoed around the house, making myself invisible. Her love was a fist, then. But I also remember her lunches, that she kept ready and hot, full of nourishment, every day, on time, ironed dresses in my closet. Books and books and books.

Now, she is a tender grandmother, a mother who listens to my every word. She even defers to me; she lets me get away with things. I think maybe she has her own set of mothers to grapple with.

And I wonder: how many more mothers will move inside of me, over the years? Which mothers will my children remember? Which ones will I miss?