Scary Mommy Society

 

The commentary is always the same and I know that it will find me. At preschool pick-up. In the check out line.

 

There is no return policy.  Children are not dogs.  Adoption is for life.  Did she think it would be easy?  How dare she?  Awful.  Selfish.

 

What part of forever don’t these horrible people who adopt children and give up understand?  What part of parent don’t they understand?

 

No part. I understand too well. I understand parenting one child to the trauma and detriment of another.  I understand choosing between the needs of one child and another.

 

How could I give up?

 

I will try and paint it for you. If you will try to keep in mind that I am shaking as I write four long years later.

 

The sun shone in the windows and for the first time in two months, I felt a fragile peace. My traumatized, institutionalized five-year-old son with valid grief, with understandable rage and abandonment issues, actually leaned against me to see the story that I read. The tentative, warm touch of his arm against mine made it difficult for me to focus on the words. He had chosen to touch me. Months of screaming tantrums set off by nothing and rages and incidents with our little ones that I tried to ignore faded away, melted into nothing at my feet. I could do this.  I could do it if we could have these moments. If I could see the progress. If I could have something to give me hope that I was on the right track and he might someday love me and trust me enough that I could breathe.

 

My one-year-old son, my healthy, untraumatized child toddled back and forth from the bookshelf to us, carrying offerings. He asked to sit in my lap and I pulled him up, but he cried and fussed and I set him down. He leaned against me from the floor and then started to cry and crawled away. Maybe eight or ten times, until I wondered if he was sick, but the fragile bond with my oldest boy held  and so when the baby found a quiet game to play on the far side of the room, I read books and snuggled with him as long as I could.

 

Shadows fell. I kissed my son and got up to start the evening routine. I sat on the ground to change the baby’s diaper, pulled off his pants and pushed up his shirt. Angry red welts scattered across his stomach. One on his side. One on his back. My heart leaped to my throat. An allergic reaction? Hives? They weren’t raised. They weren’t itchy. In the middle they looked bruised.

 

I knew, then. I looked up and met my oldest son’s eyes and I knew. The hard, angry heart-breakingly familiar set of his face. Defiant, daring, asking. What are you going to do now? Do you still want to be my mother now? The price for my peace. The price for my oblivion and my quiet and my desperate need to have everything work for just one afternoon. I could see my older son’s rage splashed in vivid red on my baby’s stomach.

 

I could see the price and it was too high for me. I knew he needed to learn that he would be loved no matter what. Trauma, anger, grief, some part of my brain whispered to whatever small part of me remembered to be his mother. I know. I know. I know. I knew and I still shook with rage at a five-year-old boy. There’s no easier way to say it. I shook with rage at a five-year-old boy.

 

I took his hand and he writhed and screamed and fought and bit and scratched and I don’t blame him. Pure survival instincts. He sensed the danger as well as I did. I pulled him up the stairs as gently, but quickly, as I could, protecting myself as best I could and I put him in his room and I locked the door.

 

It wasn’t to keep him in. It wasn’t to contain his tantrum which raged inside, turning over furniture and ripping apart bedding and kicking and screaming.

 

I didn’t lock the door to keep him in.

 

I turned the lock because I didn’t think I could open a locked door to hurt a child.

 

And I didn’t. But I wanted to. I wanted to go in there and spank him until I couldn’t lift my arm. I wanted to hold him down and hurt him like he hurt my baby.

 

I stood on the other side of the door with my head against it and all my education, all my love, all my good intentions, all my reading, all my preparation, the time with the social workers, the words of the attachment therapist were nothing. Nothing. There was nothing and no one there to help me and I have never been so angry, so on the edge of out of control, in my life.

 

That’s where we are, these parents the world condemns. That is what the bottom looks like.  Imagine that you stand at the top of a dark well, looking down at a parent, sitting at the bottom with her head on her knees. Would you try to throw her a rope, or would you spit on her? Which do you think helps the child?

 

I will tell you what helped my children. A family that wanted a child. A family with only teenagers. A family that had parented traumatized, reactive attachment disorder children before. A mother who on the day that my oldest child became hers said to me not only, “we can do this; it’s okay to let go,” but also, “we understand why you can’t.”

 

They didn’t throw me a rope, they built my whole family a staircase and it was in the best interest of every single one of my children, my oldest son most of all.

 

What can we do to help? What can we offer in the place of judgment, instead of scathing commentary? We don’t have to be the whole rope. All we have to be is a thread.

 

It is a painful reality that a child can be so damaged in the first few years of life that he becomes a terrifying and heartbreaking impossibility for the parents who have opened their hearts and their homes to try and love him.  But each and every one of us can be a thread in the rope for change and healing.

 

How about this? The next time you see a mom “with a horrible kid” “losing it” at the playground, take a deep breath and instead of commenting on the “terrible parent doing nothing while her daughter screams,” think:

 

Maybe this is the twentieth tantrum today;
Maybe she was up all night;
Maybe the situation is ten million times more complicated than I realize;

 

And then meet that mother’s eyes and smile at her.

 

Because maybe, just maybe, an hour ago, she walked away from that child’s door. And maybe, just maybe, for the cost of a smile, you gave her the strength to do it again.

 

Just like that, you’re a thread in the rope. Now we’re helping children.

Last year on this day, I was 6 weeks pregnant with my third pregnancy. It was unexpected and I was conflicted and overwhelmed, but I was excited at the possibility of another baby in my arms.

 

Today, my sister-in-law went in for her first appointment for her first ultrasound with her first baby. She is 10 weeks pregnant.

 

Last year, when I was 10 weeks and 4 days pregnant, I went into my obstetrician’s office for an ultrasound. I was spotting. When I was 10 weeks pregnant, I was told that my baby no longer had a heartbeat. Part of me died in that moment.

 

Today, I was texted a photo of my sister-in-law’s ultrasound with the outline of my beautiful and healthy new niece or nephew. I was thrilled and then almost immediately, I felt kicked in the gut.

 

I’m not super sensitive or depressed but the fact is that last year around this time, I found out that I was pregnant. On April 31st at 10 weeks and 4 days along, an ultrasound tech told me that my baby no longer had a heartbeat. It was the worst moment of my life. The next morning I was wheeled into surgery to have a D & E because of how far along I was and because nothing was passing on its own.

 

I still have the photo of the ultrasound that I made them take again before I went into surgery that morning, just to make sure there was no heartbeat. It’s on my phone. I am afraid to erase it because I am afraid that I will erase the fact that my baby was ever here. That photo is my only tangible evidence my baby #3 ever existed.

 

Today, my sister-in-law, who I truly am very happy and excited for, went in for her first appointment, she is 10 weeks pregnant. She texted me the ultrasound and suddenly, what I thought I had learned to live with, those feelings, that pain came bubbling to the surface.

 

She sent the text as I was headed to afternoon pick up so I had all those feelings swishing around, trying to boil over, my heart hurts and I just want to cry. I can’t because my kids are here. I can’t write about it on my own site because I don’t want my sister-in-law to read it and think that I am not happy or to worry that her joy is bringing me misery. It is not.

 

I am happy for her and my brother-in-law; it’s just that every progression of her pregnancy is a reminder of my loss and the sadness I feel about it. These residual emotional time bombs left over from the loss happen at the most inopportune times. So I have to write about it to process it or I will explode and start blubbering inappropriately. I want to be excited with her. I want to celebrate. I want to embrace it all but my heart has not caught up with my head yet.

 

When will this ever stop? Will I ever feel truly happy again? When will I stop feeling like I’m going to burst into tears every time someone I love tells me they are pregnant?

 

1. You find yourself willingly holding a living creature that you would usually run away from screaming.

 

2. A girl makes eyes at your son and you have this weird urge to pull her aside and call her a “slut” (whether she’s 6 or 16).

 

3. You have an unhealthy knowledge of the point/gem system for Temple Run, Dragonvale, Bakugan, Plants vs. Zombies, Cube Runner …

 

4. You can’t muster the brain power to recall what you ate for breakfast, yet you can inherently transform a Transformer (without the 30 pages of directions it came with).

 

5. You bought a car based solely on how much equipment you could fit in the trunk.

 

6. Your child asks you to marry him and you’re totally considering it.

 

7. You know what a Ripstik is and you’re not afraid to use it.

 

8. You spend much of your days in a fog of fart odor and some of it is proudly yours. (What? How else can you impress your male offspring?)

 

9. A little penis seems to be constantly whizzing by (well, let’s hope that’s your sons).

 

10. You’ve actually placed yourself under a tree with the feeling that, if that kiddo loses footing you’ll at least be there to break his fall.

 

11. You know the pain of stepping on a Lego … and may in fact, have one imbedded somewhere in your body right now.

 

12. There’s a finger in your eye, your ear, or up your nose and it’s not yours.

 

13. You understand what I mean when I say “bleacher butt,” as in, “My sits bones are literally numb, I have bleacher butt.”

 

14. There’s a rogue Bey Blade in your purse.

 

15. You’ve found yourself saying things like, “No, you can’t ride the dog.” and “Yes, you do have to keep your pants on in public.”

 

16. You’ve had in depth conversations about who would win in multiple variations of match-ups involving Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America, X-Men, Daddy …

 

17. You can’t wait until he’s old enough to watch Airplane, The Naked Gun, Caddy Shack, Vacation, Fletch, The Three Amigos…

 

18. Though you claim to be an absolute pacifist, you’ve had a talk that involved you urging, “Sometimes you gotta push back.”

 

19. You’ve considered leashing your son at a theme park and he’s 12.

 

20. You’re on a first name basis with the orderlies at the ER who provide slings, splints, casts, and those velcro boots.

 

21. You may have shamefully thought, “It wouldn’t be so bad if he married an orphan.”

 

22. At some point you notice the change in smell from “OMG sooo sweet” to “Get that tween some AXE.”

 

23. You can use your keyboard, phone, iPad, but there’s a good chance your fingers will get stuck to it.

 

24. You can’t find a single pair of pants without holes in the knees.

 

25. There’s a love you feel for your son that’s too great and sometimes too scary to fully explain or even comprehend.

 

“I won’t grow up…

I don’t want to wear a tie…

Or a serious expression…

In the middle of July…”

 
The words of the Peter Pan song float down the hall and give me pause. I grin and tiptoe into the hallway. I peek my head into his bedroom, where he sits among his Legos.

 

“What are you singing, sweetheart?”

 

He gasps upon seeing me. “MOM! You can’t hear it! It’s supposed to be a surprise!”

 

Wearing the look of someone properly chastised, I ask, “Hear what? I didn’t hear anything. Did you?”

 

The smile that melts my heart spreads wide across his 7 year old face. His eyes alight and his nose wrinkles as he answers, “I know you’re kidding, Mom.”

Scrambled eggs topped with a slice of American cheese. A hanging plant. A new pair of running sneakers. A pair of gardening gloves…typically pink. A trail hike along the Wissahickon. And four hand-drawn cards. These are my gifts every Mother’s Day.

 

One card is crafted by my oldest son under slight protest, and contains very few words…just a small illustration drawn in pencil with a cute joke. When he hands it to me, he leans in and allows me a treat…a hug…very rare for this private boy in the midst of his tween years.

 

Another card is drawn in marker…illustrated in detail…and typically pictures me, grinning broadly, face covered in freckles, donning a cape. That card comes from my 10 year old. With it comes a hug that lingers just a touch, delivered by the arms of an imaginative boy whose right hand and left fingertips still bear the dark blue smudges of the markers he’s used to create my card.

 

Two more cards are thrust into my hands, but I don’t look at them immediately. Their givers wrap their small arms around my neck, climb onto my lap, and lean their heads on my shoulders.  They are 7 and 4. Nothing about them smells of baby anymore. But it doesn’t make them any less my babies. When I glance over their resting heads at the cards they’ve made, my eyes well with tears as I see the white pieces of printer paper bearing the words, “I LOVE YOU, MOM”.

 

The simplest of messages.

 

The most poignant.

 

The only words that truly matter.

 

Written by boys whose awkward grips on their writing instruments are still a bit too firm. Whose letters are written with painstaking concentration by hands that’ve yet to know their shapes as second nature.

It is a few minutes before 8AM on a Thursday morning. I sit in a pew among a sea of fellow kindergarten parents in the school chapel. We await the entrance of our sons. I suspect I’m about to hear the song I stumbled upon my son singing last week. The song about staying a boy. And the lump begins in my throat.

 

The conversations cease, the parents sit straighter, and iPhones are hastily retrieved from jacket pockets and handbags as our boys file into the chapel. They wear hats…chef hats, fireman hats, hard hats, and fezzes…and wave enthusiastically at us as they take their places on the stage.

 

My boy doesn’t see me immediately. He peers out at the audience from under his hard hat. I know he spots me when that grin of his…the one that warms my heart all the way down to my toes…spreads across his face. I wave to him, blow him a kiss, and he tips his hard hat in response. And that lump in my throat warns me a mere fraction of a second before it happens that the first of my tears is about to fall.

 

“I won’t grow up…

I don’t want to go to school.

Just to learn to be a parrot…

And recite a silly rule.”

 

I wipe the tears…first with my fingertips, then with the heels of my hands…as they fall.

 

“If growing up means…

It would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree…

I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up…

Not me!

Not I…

Not me!”

 

I cry because this boy…the third of my four sons…has come so far in just a year. I cry for the enthusiasm with which he sings…and because I know that enthusiasm has quite possibly reached its peak…it will soon drop off slowly or maybe more abruptly as I’ve witnessed with both of his two older brothers.

 

“I won’t grow up…

I don’t want to wear a tie.

And a serious expression…

In the middle of July.”

I cry for the magic of kindergarten. The innocence of their precious existence. The excitement of new friendships. The joy of learning to read and write. The independence that’s begun. The pants which were a smidge too long in September and are suddenly…surprisingly…an inch too short.

 

“And if it means I must prepare…

To shoulder burdens with a worried air…

I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up…

Not me…

Not I…

Not me!”

 

I cry for Kate. For her first Mother’s Day without Gavin, the miraculous boy who made Kate a Mom. The courageous boy who imprinted on the hearts of so many without ever uttering a single word.

 

“So there!

Never gonna be a man…

I won’t!

Like to see somebody try…

And make me.

Anyone who wants to try…

And make me turn into a man…

Catch me if you can.”

 

I cry for the parents of the victims of the shooting in Aurora, CO, last summer. For the Moms who will spend their first Mother’s Day without their children by their sides.

 

“I won’t grow up.

Not a penny will I pinch.

I will never grow a mustache…

Or a fraction of an inch.

‘Cause growing up is awfuller…

Than all the awful things that ever were.”

 

I cry because there is something more awful than growing up. The group of Moms a few hours North of me can attest to that. The group of Moms whose children…the same age as my boy who sings so passionately before me…will not take the stage and sing in celebration of this Mother’s Day. Or any Mother’s Day. I weep for the babies of Newtown, CT, who never got the chance to grow up.

 

“I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up…

No sir…

Not I…

Not me…

So there!

We won’t grow up!

We will never grow a day…

And if someone tries to make it…

We will simply run away!”

 

I cry for Denise Richard, whose young son, Martin, died so tragically in the Boston Marathon bombings. For the shrapnel that lodged itself in her brain, and for her daughter who lost a leg in the same explosion that took her beloved boy.

 

“I won’t grow up!

No, I promise that I won’t…

I will stay a boy forever…

And be banished if I don’t!”

 

I cry for Jeff Bauman. Who lost both legs in Boston. I cry for Jeff’s Mom and stepmom, who will celebrate a different kind of Mother’s Day this year. They will hug Jeff from the confines of his wheelchair. Because the recent loss of his legs renders him unable to stand up and wrap his arms around them in a Mother’s Day embrace.

 

“And Never Land will always be…

The home of beauty and joy…

And neverty…

I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up…

Not me!

No sir!

Not me!”

 

They bow. We applaud. I quickly wipe the remainder of my tears. Aware that my two older sons are several rows behind me. Knowing they’ll be embarrassed…possibly by my mere existence and certainly by my display of emotion…if they see fresh tears upon my cheeks.

This year, on Mother’s Day, I will savor every bite of my eggs. I’ll stop to inhale my fragrant flowers. Slip on my brand new running shoes. Slide my hands into my clean gardening gloves. Enjoy every step of our family hike…even the steps that are accompanied by complaints of tired legs and empty bellies.  Save each of the cards made for me by the four people I love most in this beautiful world…this beautiful, scary world whose tragedies rocked the existence of so many mothers in the last year.

 

In honor of all the Mothers whose children will never grow up…and for those Moms whose children cannot stand up…I will soak up every delicious second of my Mother’s Day.

 

Lucky to be surrounded by my children.

 

Painfully aware that so many Moms will not enjoy that simple…that most important…luxury this year.

 

Love, peace, and healing to you this Mother’s Day.