A Mother Remembers: On Losing Confidence

This is a reminiscence that I published many years ago when I was a young mother.

Nothing is more chilling than running into an old friend who asks, “What have you been doing lately?” Lately? I can’t remember yesterday. And if I could, it wouldn’t be sensational enough to mention.

The fact is, I’m never quite sure what I’ve been doing lately. It’s not that I don’t try. I think it has something to do with the stage of life I’m in. It’s that stage when the roof leaks, the dishwasher always needs loading, the ironing still has maternity clothes in it though the baby turned one, my twelve-year-old’s nuclear energy report is due at school the same day as the ten-year-old’s Kansas report, and they both want help, but I can’t give it because it’s the six-year-old’s dance review tonight.

It’s that stage.

“What have you been doing lately?” It’s too much and too little to say. The best thing I can do is not ask the people I really like the same question.

What I did yesterday is usually not on yesterday’s “List of Things to Do.” I feel wonderful each day when I make that list, emptying my brain of all the pieces and fragments and putting them in a clean, unthreatening list. This was yesterday’s list.

Clean out the girls’ dresser drawers.
Reorganize bedroom closet.
Vacuum under bed.
Polish bedroom furniture.
Mend girls’ clothes.

It went on. I could imagine the girls’ bedroom well organized and deeply clean by the end of the day.

This is what really happened. When I pulled open the dresser drawer, the knob came off and the screw rolled somewhere underneath the dresser, lost forever like my blue earring and gray coat button.

I took the matching screw and went to the hardware store and, while I was there, came upon a wonderful sale on tomato plants. It was only on my way home I realized I’d forgotten the screw. I still felt okay though because I spent the rest of the day planting tomatoes. Last night it froze and the girls’ bedroom is still messy. It doesn’t help to be ambitious when you’re so easily distracted.

What I really think is happening, though, is that I’m just losing confidence. Maturity has a marvelously leveling effect. I remember when, childless, I had lots of advice for parents. I envisioned long, peaceful hours together taking walks in nature, singing songs. I saw myself disciplining them gently and having them melt into tears at having offended me.

Now I just feel grateful if I’ve got them all back in bed at night and no one has died a violent death. I don’t know much about parenting. Whenever the kids think I should know something I don’t, I remind them, “Hey, I’m just making this up as I go.”

Like a few weeks ago, I was just driving out of my driveway when one of my daughters, furious at me, yelled out the door, “You jerk.” I’m sure I never called my mother a jerk.

“What have I done wrong with this girl?” I wondered. “And what do I do now?” The scenarios came flashing through my head. Even though I’m late, should I storm back in there, wash her mouth out with soap, lock her in her bedroom, deny her sustenance for thirty-six hours? Should I go back in, be loving but firm, and make her apologize?

Should I ignore the whole thing and talk to her about it later when she is more able to listen?

I was late so I decided to talk to her later. When I came back, she was crying in the living room, alone. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re not a jerk.” (It’s nice to know you make the right decision once in a while.)

The most profound way I’m losing confidence, though, is the way I tell people what I’m thinking. I don’t ever say, “Be there at 4:30.” I say, “Do you think 4:30 is good?” I’ve learned from a long time relating with my children how much they hate to be told anything that has an air of command about it.

My friend had a similar woe. She told me, “I know my husband would rather miss the freeway exit than be told, ‘Okay, there’s your exit. Get in the right lane. Wait, there’s a car coming. Now.’

“When I used to say that he’d respond with an icy stare. I don’t even say, ‘There’s the exit.’ I don’t even say, ‘Do you think that is the exit we’re looking for?’ Only after we have passed the exit do I say, ‘Do you think we just passed the exit?’

She was losing confidence, like I was.

Still, for me, I knew it had all gone too far when I was in labor with our last child. The room was astir with activity when I finally said, “I think the baby is coming,” in a soft apologetic voice as if I shouldn’t be causing them all this trouble.

Nobody paid any attention. Nobody noticed at all, but kept on with their chatter and work while the baby was starting to come. I mean, really stared to come. But my mother leaned over and said, ‘You’ve got to say it like you mean it’. She was right. There are times when you really know what you’re talking about. With the utmost confidence, I moaned loudly.

You should have seen them spring into action!