The exquisite pain of the motherhood

Lately I have been receiving more feedback than usual about my blog, the usual being next to nothing. Mostly this is due to the fact that after a little over three years of this silliness I am easing out of the closet in terms of my blogginess. The Library Ladies officially prompted this move but it was also a recent check, albeit a small one, from BlogHer ads that made me realize the act of keeping Caloden a dirty little would yield me virtually no money for my liposuction fund. Lord knows I want that fat sucked out of my hips and shot into my lips so I have been spreading the word to just about anybody who will sit still long enough to listen. Okay, maybe not, but I did send out some emails last week announcing my hidden need to expose my dirties on the internet.
One of the main comments I hear from people, other moms, is that the things I write are the the things we all really think but most of us have more grace than to sing them to the world, or the internet in my case. The first couple of times I heard this I thought to myself, “Huh, well. All right. Maybe that makes me sort of cool in my honest edginess. Yay for clever me!” But then after hearing it a few more times I began to second guess my hipness and wonder, “Hmmm, maybe not. Maybe there is something wrong here, a lost chip in the tender loving mother department.” So I have been taking stock of my mothering ways and looking for sweet maternal moments to whittle into posts in some sort of assurance that I am indeed Betty Fucking Crocker and Mother of the Year all rolled into one. I do bitch about the kids here. A lot. Loren has read the occasional post and has wondered, none too quietly, why I refer to the kids as asses so often. I told him that if his behavior didn’t warrant such a label then I wouldn’t give it one. Case closed. And that is the sort of brutal honesty that is our life. But it is not the whole picture. I don’t often write about the beauty of our lives, I guess because if I did I would realize what a jackass I am and know that as soon I hit the publish key the sky would fall and shit would rain down upon my shoulders.
We do have wonder in our lives. Everyday there are moments so beautiful that it hurts to breathe. Whether this is because we rock as a family unit or because there are so many of us that statistics have to fall in our favor at some point, I don’t know. Last week Cassidy heard my voice catch as I was on the phone with Loren’s vice-principle, she immediately came to my side and gave me the sweetest hug, all her angles and bones jabbing into me as she tried to absorb my disappointment and tears. Yesterday Devon found me in my room having a quiet moment before dinner. He burrowed into my bed, wrapping his stubby arms about my neck, nestling his sticky cheek against mine. He murmured, “Mai-Mia! I find you. I love you so much.” He followed it up with a sigh of contentment that I swear tasted like vanilla creme. And over the weekend Loren sought me out countless times to share a moment or two. Granted he knew he was on my shit list, but he was dearly sincere.
The thing about motherhood, and probably fatherhood too, is that it is so damn hard and endless. I once read a comment by either Tea Leoni or Felicity Huffman where they said something to extent of: motherhood is the most beautifully exquisite pain you will ever experience. I have identified more with that comment than any other in the 15 plus years I have been at this. To me it means whether we are up or down, whether the kids are achieving or failing, being little shits or darlings there is an anticipation. Of what I never know. Sometimes it is fear, sometimes hope. But that element of not knowing whether we are raising a being who will succeed, who will hurt, fall on their faces or stomp about in victory, that hurts. What I do know is there is a purity in this endeavor. When I am with my children it is the most real experience I have ever had. It is true. It is pure. There is no deception in loving my children. No vertigo here. Despite the tantrums, the tears and fighting there is a peace in knowing I love these three being unconditionally and that I am their mother. At least for right now in their lives I am their mother, and that is beauty.