Upending the Recipe for Motherhood
What mothering looks like…
- Say yes when a surprise pregnancy upends your life
- Want me
- Appear at the custody hearing seven years later to become a single parent
- Fight for me
- Place my terrible art on the refrigerator then smile and say it’s wonderful
- Hand me a Fudgsicle when it’s hot or just because
- Sacrifice your Saturday nights to make them special with mashed potatoes, meatballs, and gravy because it’s my favourite meal, then watch The Newhart Show together while we trade back rubs
- Challenge me when I cry about not getting my way
- Attend parent-teacher interviews, school performances, and graduations
- Indulge my weird hobbies—collecting discarded beer caps and flattening them to make a noisy bike decoration or collecting random badges to place on a hat
- Understand me
- Problem solve so I can return to school without feeling shame after a panic attack in grade five
- Make up games in the waiting room to distract me when I’m nervous at the doctor
- Offer me a sample bite while you cook
- Listen
- Smile every time you see me
- Pivot your day to pick me up and take me to the hospital when I’m injured on a ski field trip then challenge me to write a funny poem featuring my broken bones
- Choose me
- Watch me make terrible decisions so I’ll learn from them
- Sit alongside me without having to fill the space with conversation
- School me on laundry and shovelling the driveway, cleaning house and changing lightbulbs, skipping rope and skipping stones
- Insist I get comfortable with power tools
- Work hard and still be home for dinner with your family
- Know how I take my tea and have it ready in the morning
- Fill photo albums and frames with evidence of our lives together, then buy my first camera and teach me how to use it so I can chronicle my life and add to the family story
- Ask about my day
- Cheer for me
- Reserve a table at my favourite restaurant on my birthday because I love lobster
- Normalize silly by dancing in the kitchen, singing into a spoon, wearing ridiculous outfits, and making up nonsensical words and games
- Share my loneliness
- Instil the lesson that a firm handshake with eye contact signifies respect for oneself and others
- Suggest bra shopping when it’s time and let the sales lady take control so I don’t have to be embarrassed around you
- Teach me how to drive and remain understanding when I smash the car
- Trust
- Disregard my hours at the end of a twenty-foot phone cord talking to friends
- Remember the names of my friends when they come by
- Enjoy an uncomfortable laugh through the closed bathroom door when I get my first period then bring me shopping for supplies
- Ground me when I come home drunk and I say mean things to you
- Stay silent for days as punishment
- Forgive me
- Look over my first resume and high five me when I get the job
- Forfeit your relationships to protect my heart and safety—twice
- Inform my ideas on coping with anger, fear, and hurt by not shying away from your emotions
- Blast the music when my friends are over, then offer to order pizza so they don’t have to leave
- Ignore my teenage angst
- Defend me when I decide to delay university for a year and other family members worry
- Grieve with me
- Follow through on promises
- Go beyond your comfort zone to dance at my wedding and make me laugh when I was melting down
- Cry when your grandchildren are born and cherish them and their boundaries as you did mine
- Model everything I need to be a good parent
- Upend the definition of mother because you are my Dad