Quiet desperation

I watch Desperate Housewives. More specifically, I Tivo Desperate Housewives. I used to watch it every single Sunday, but fatigue won out and I now record it every Sunday. I'm waiting for some magical day when I am no longer too tired to watch all of the episodes to catch up on what is happening on Wisteria Lane.

I ran across an interview with Felicity Huffman on the Internet. She plays Lynette on Desperate Housewives. In the interview, she seemed remarkably down-to-earth, and remarkably in tune to what motherhood is like. (I say "remarkably" because most Hollywood actresses seem to have nannies who do the dirty work, which somehow does not preclude those actresses from enthusing about the beauty and serenity of motherhood. That always serves to make me feel even worse as a mother.)

Anyway, Huffman had the following to say. '' I signed up for Lynette because I thought she was a voice of motherhood that was silent .... I don't know why women can't turn to each other and go, '[Geez], if I have to give my kid a bath one more night I'm just going to shoot myself in the head.' ''

So here I go, traipsing out on a limb to agree with Huffman. I've fought revealing what I think are my inherent weaknesses as a mother for so long, thinking that surely I must be the only mother who is so tired, so desperate always for more time to herself, that I cannot bring myself to do all of the creative, crafty "SuperMom" activities that I can't escape thinking must be the hallmark of a good mother.

Maybe my image of the "good mother" is warped or unrealistic. I guess it would help if it was an unrealistic view, because then I'm not such a failure. But in my mind, the "good mother" has these characteristics. She plays often with her children. She does crafts often with her children. She never grows weary of "battling" with light sabers. She is creative and fun, a lively, positive influence for her children. She never grows impatient when her child repeats the same thing over and over. She never grows impatient when her child always reacts with a fit to not getting exactly what he or she wants when he or she wants it. She never yells.

I started this article on a day when I was just musing over what Huffman had said. I'm finishing this article on a day when I'm trying not to cry because I feel like such a failure (mission not accomplished on the crying, by the way, so please forgive any typos). I'm sure I'll have a more profound article on the wisdom of Huffman's statement, but today...I just feel like a parenting failure.

Twice today, I've yelled. I've yelled to cut through the din created by two children screaming at me and at each other. But that isn't an excuse. I just feel terrible for yelling. I got an email from a friend today praising me on parenting our difficult son. I feel like replying that I don't deserve that praise. Because I yell.

To the outside eye, our son is funny, lively, athletic, and hardly short of brilliant. He started reading at 3 1/2. He is 5 1/2 now and is fluent in addition, subtraction, and reading chapter books. He has a firm grasp of multiplication, and is pretty good at division. My husband has been working with him on the mechanics of "carrying numbers" in multiplication. DS's preschool teacher told us that on a day when they were playing a game with guessing numbers, DS shouted, "Now let's do negative numbers!!"

Yep...he's smart. But somehow, I just don't see that as a reflection of my parenting. I don't know why. I guess it should be, as I am home with him all of the time. But DH spends a lot of time with DS at night working on things. I don't. All I want to do is to escape to the quiet of our bedroom, the peace of curling up in bed with a wonderful book. My escape.

And to me, that makes me a terrible mommy. Doesn't the good mother want to spend most of her time enriching her children? Why do I usually want to escape?

At the same time, I am panicking about kindergarten starting next year. I'm afraid that I haven't taught DS the important lessons he'll need to know. I'm afraid that kids will be mean, that he won't know how to react. I'm afraid that he'll hear things that I won't be able to filter for him right away. I'm just afraid that I haven't done the right job to prepare him. Sure, he's well-prepared academically. But I'm worried about social preparation.

I've been through this cycle of despair before. I've often worried that I'm just not a good mother. Suggestions have been made. But I just can't think that going back to work full-time would be the right answer. That, I think, is wrong for a myriad of reasons. Someone else would be raising my children (I know...if I'm a terrible mother, wouldn't that be better? But at least I've got undying love for my children, a crucial qualification in my mind). The only time I would have with the kids would be at night or on the weekends, if I was lucky. The career DH and I share is extremely time-consuming, so weekends and nights would not be a given. Things around the house that I do during the day right now (laundry, cleaning, having repairmen come) would be shifted to nighttime/weekends, and that would further diminish time with the kids. And maybe I just cannot bring myself to think that I am such a terrible mother that it would be better for them and/or me to make the conscious choice to leave them the majority of the time.

I know this is not the happiest of entries. I'm just really struggling right now. At some point, things became so different that I now feel virtuous for playing Candyland three times in a row followed immediately by two games of Chutes and Ladders. When DS was a baby, I read him three books before every nap and bedtime. That was a minimum of 9 books a day. I also spent a lot of time on my tummy interacting with him, introducing him to things.

Somehow, that all got washed away in the timeline of 3 children and 3 pregnancies back-to-back-to-back. And now virtuosity comes in the form of playing a game, or reading a book in the middle of the day. That is so far from my image of a good mother that it makes me cry (again). The obvious solution would be just to DO these things that I associate with good parenting. But I honestly don't know if I have it in me. Sometimes it is all I can do to put Disney or Noggin on and escape to the basement for a bit. Great parenting there.

Perhaps my doubts lie in a lack of knowledge. Maybe the majority of SAHMs feel the way I do, and I just don't know it because no one talks about it. Perhaps the majority are also applauding Huffman's honesty, but quietly so that no one will hear them admitting to being anything less than perfect.

Then again, maybe I just wasn't cut out for this.

I just don't know.