A Mother's Love
When I first found out I was pregnant in the hot, desolate, Covid-tarnished summer of 2020, my biggest fear was that I would be too selfish to be a decent parent. It wasn’t entirely unreasonable. After all, I have a track record of being too “autonomous” to have an office job (they hijack your time!), too “freedom-loving” to put down roots in one city, and too egotistical to prioritize my partner’s needs above my own (something my fiancé will definitely attest to). So, when I realized I was about to forever bid adieu to my revered independence and dedicate my foreseeable future to another human, I was, dare I say it, terrified. I had always known I wanted children, but was I actually capable of the level of commitment they require?
Three years – including two years of motherhood – later, I’m relieved to tell you that I’m not the Runaway Mom I had feared I would be. Even though I occasionally have a slight compulsion to run away from my life and buy a beach hut in Bali (don’t we all?), I’m fully convinced I would smuggle my daughter along. To my own surprise more than anybody else’s, it was easy for me to instantly tap into that animalistic, nurturing maternal instinct that enables one to survive on 3-hour sleep intervals for weeks on end. Considering how disjointed this is from my self-centered baseline, I have gradually come to see that a large part of this has something to do with my own upbringing – and, specifically, with my own mother.
This realization is not a result of any sort of extensive analysis. Rather, it’s a direct projection of a thought that has been recurringly running through my head over the past two years: “I sound exactly like my mom.” It crosses my mind when I sleepwalk to my daughter’s room at 5am (her preferred wake-up time) and hear myself by sounding caring rather than borderline violent. It echoes when I reprimand her for using the walls as an art canvas with my mom’s “strict” Russian expressions, or when I fawn over her most minute accomplishments (“umnitsa! krasavitsa!”). Often, I experience this strange sensation, almost as if it isn’t me speaking. It's as though all the expressions, platitudes, and words of endearment exist within me, guiding me through the day-to-day of motherhood. While I have no idea when they come from, they feel comfortable and familiar and simply right. They feel like my mom.
Most of the time, I’m infinitely grateful for this unexpected gift. My mom is the most nurturing person I know. She is maternal to the core, a born caretaker, a woman who always puts her kids and grandkids first while my dad hovers in the background (much like my fiancé!). She is cool and loving and warm and adored by every single person she meets, my friends included. She is a superstar grandmother who has been instrumental in helping me raise my daughter. She is also my best friend, the person I call three times a day with idiotic questions and bombard with pictures of shoes and Sasha (she always responds!). While I’ll never have her altruistic energy or infinite patience, witnessing her in action for the past 36 years has inadvertently not only made me a better person – it has also modeled what it means to be a good mother.
However, I would be remiss not to admit that it has also hindered me in certain ways. Like so many people, I always wanted to carve my own parenting path that was somewhat different from the way I was raised. I pictured myself as a mother who sets firm boundaries, whose kids listen to her and know she’s in charge, who can get them to clean their cesspit of a room with nothing but a stern look. (What can I say? I read Bringing up Bebé – twice.) The minute my daughter entered her early onset tantrum stage at 14 months, I delved into every single parenting podcast that Spotify had to offer. I memorized all the advice, from Dr Becky’s boundary-setting tips to her archnemesis’ Dr. Kevin Leman’s rhetoric on “parenting powerful children.” And yet, in moments when I most need them, my pre-rehearsed scripts always seems to escape me, leaving me with nothing but my gut instinct. In these instances, I find myself going for the gentler reaction, the coddling, the pushover spirit that feels so removed from the limitations I had set out to establish. As a result, I have a two-year-old who doesn’t listen to a single thing I say, who uses me like her own personal chef-slash-horsey-slash-butt-wiper, who clings to me every time I leave the house, yet has also been known to smack me in moments of frustration. I have a daughter who owns me, fair and square. Most of my Spotify mentors would probably concur that I’m failing to establish proper boundaries and set her up with tools for emotional regulation, all of which I (not-so-coincidentally) happen to struggle with myself. Old habits die hard, and so do intergenerational patterns.
And yet, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Sure, some parts of my upbringing weren’t up to par with today’s progressive child rearing canons, but whose were? I was listening to an interview with the Internet’s love guru Jay Shetty the other day, and what struck me was what he said about his mother when recalling his prior struggles. “My mom’s love has pierced through every pressure and layer in my life. I think my mom loved me so deeply that I always felt safe in a profound sense, and never thought myself to be unlovable.” His words resonated with me. Throughout my teens and twenties, I faced myriad internal struggles that I wasn’t always equipped to handle. And yet, there was always a strength within me that pushed me to keep going – to see the best in things, to know that I was worthy of a good life, of happiness, of change. That strength stemmed directly from a lifetime of my mother’s love. If I can give this to my daughter, it will be a far greater gift than any other emotional tool can ever be.
At least, that’s what I’m going to keep telling myself as she kicks my pushover butt.
To all my fellow mamas out there, happy Mother’s Day! You’re doing God’s work. Hopefully, they will thank you in 30+ years.