TO A YOUNG MOTHER, or WHAT I WISH SOMEONE HAD SAID TO ME

I went visiting teaching. My partner is a young mother—just had her second child and the first is two. When I’m with her, hearing about her life, all I feel is overwhelming pity. I really doubt I’ll ever be one of those old ladies who says, “Cherish those moments—they are the best part!” Because they’re not, for some of us. For some of us, those days were just plain old hard. Physically, intellectually, spiritually and emotionally. Especially emotionally. I know there are women out there who don’t feel the same, who revel in life with young children, who seem to have been born to mother little souls. But so many of us are crippled with guilt because we find it, frankly, BORING! Is that so wrong? The benefit of being someone more like me is that you find that parenthood keeps getting easier, more interesting and more fun the older the kids get. (Hopefully that will continue into teenager-hood, but we’ll see.) I have no understanding of the sense of doom that other women feel when they think of their kids going off to school. For me it’s a celebration, mostly. Not just because now I have time to myself but also because I am so excited for them to have new adventures, and to start turning into the people they will be. They just get so much more interesting to me as time goes on.

So here’s what I wish I could say to all young mothers who struggle the way I did, or what I wish I could have heard someone say to me in those very dark days.

1. It’s OK to feel sad and depressed post-partum. If it’s really severe, get some medication to help. Forgive yourself for it because it isn’t your fault—it’s your screwy hormones. And lack of sleep.

2. If your baby is a screamer, you’re not evil if sometimes you reach the end of your patience and think about shaking the baby or throwing him out the window. You won’t do that—you’ll carefully put him down and leave the room, or hand him off. But don’t beat yourself up for feeling that way—it’s the effect of your crazy hormones and lack of sleep and feeling of helplessness. Forgive yourself.

3. Having little kids is hard. Hard, hard, hard. You’ll meet people who don’t think so, serene mothers who truly love all aspects of the job and are angelic at it. But they are the exception. And there’s nothing wrong with you if you are tired, frazzled, bored, bored, bored most of the time. Don’t feel guilty because you are not a natural at it. Especially don’t feel guilty when the little old ladies with the misty memories tell you that this it the sweetest time of your life and you’d better enjoy it because it’ll be gone soon and you’ll wish it back. Most of us DON’T wish them back. Many of us find that parenting gets easier when the kids are a little older, and many of us are having more and more fun as time goes on.

4. You’ll do your best to have consistent rules and high expectations. You’ll do your best to be a good example. But in the end, how your child turns out will have much more to do with their own choices and ways of learning—things that you have no control over—than with how successful of a parent you are. Be the best you can, and then trust the atonement and your own child’s heavenly nature to pull through on the rest. It may take longer than you want to see results (maybe even longer than this life). But you can’t judge your own success by how your kids turn out. Really.

5. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll be painfully aware of them, too. Trust that the atonement will make it so that your kids don’t pay any eternal price for things that are your fault (although there might be a temporal consequence). God sent them to you knowing what you are. He’ll help them find a way to Him in spite of you, but you’re probably doing much better than you think.

6. You can’t help judging other people’s parenting styles. It’s part of caring so much about what you do—you are constantly looking for new things to try, evaluating what you see to see if it will work for you. As long as you don’t gossip with others about what you do and don’t approve of that someone else is doing, you’re OK. Notice how others parent and whether it seems to work, then ponder it in your heart and adjust yourself according to what your heart and the Spirit say.

7. Learn to be grateful for the little nudgings of the Spirit that tell you where you need to correct yourself. Repent and move on. If guilt does anything other than cause you to stop sinning, it is not from God.

8. Remember that your own parents are still learning how to parent you. Forgive them for what they did back then and for what they do now, too.

9. Ask God to help you notice the things that you do right throughout the day. He will help you. He’ll send you occasional warm fuzzies. Enjoy them—you deserve them.

10. Do whatever you can to preserve your relationship with your husband, even when you’re not feeling great physically. If you sometimes don’t feel much love for him, remember that you like him. If you sometimes don’t like him much, remember that you love him. The feelings always come back!

A couple of poems from me

Just because I haven't posted one of my own in a while, here's "Inheritance," which is in the book that just came out. (Which I'm sure you've all bought by now, right?) And "Shepherds," one of my two big attempts at Christmas poetry. (The other one is terrible, I tell you.)

Inheritance
by Darlene Young

I got your jewelry, a couple of scarves and an old dress
I claimed just because it looked like you.

But familiar though the earrings are, the scarf, the dress,
the emerald pin, no matter how I squint into the past
I can't make out your face and now I fear
I never really saw it. Being a mother too,
this worries me.

But also when you died I got your books
and, reading them, I find you after all.
Your voice, your voice, with sweetest clarity,
rings through the words you chose to share with me.

And so in fear of leaving my kids motherless--
and as a feeble recompense for all the times
I sneak into their rooms at night
to beg forgiveness from their twitching eyelids
for the petty strictness of my ways--
the one thing I make sure of all my days
is that they get my voice.

Stories they will build their worlds on, stories
teaching how to yearn, tales that break
their hearts apart then knit them back
a little softer—all the words I got from you.

Your voice in mine will carry on
in their bright dreams after I'm gone.


Shepherds
by Darlene Young

Don't tell me about rose-cheeked Arcadian youth
gathering daisies on a hillside
piping tunes to their cloud-fluffy sheep
under the stars.

No, these were foul-smelling, lusty
men with dirty necks, greasy hands,
snorting, arguing, joke-telling, nose-picking
men--one wearing stolen
sandals (although I admit he felt
guilty about it)--gambling on who
had the best aim as they chucked rocks
at a nearby lizard.

You talk about salt of the earth—
these men were salty, alright
downright ornery, some of them,
fighting sometimes and yelling
at their wives when they were home,
which wasn't often.

Yeah, I'll grant you Dan
was an innocent
and Dave had some noble moments
and none of them was really evil
but they all had dirty fingernails
of one kind or another
when the light came--

yes, it came.
But don't take away that moment just before--
flies whining over the sheep dung
and Jake and Zeke having a
spitting contest--
that's the key moment, you see,
in all their grimy glory;
it has to be

because the light came to me, too.
Allelujah.

Book Report

I’ve read a lot lately, mostly because I have committed to a philosophy of not writing at all unless I really, really feel like it. (Don’t know how long that will last.)

Besides a handful of mediocre things, I read An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, by Elizabeth McCracken. (And could someone please tell me why her name is so familiar to me? She’s written other things, none of which I’ve read, and yet I feel like I’m familiar with something about her . . . ) This book pretty much took my breath away. It is a memoir about the experience of losing her first child, who was still-born. I find myself wanting to buy copies for everyone I know who has experienced the death of a child—or, really, of anyone close. There are some really poignant and profound observations. Mostly, it’s just the details and truthfulness of the observations that kicks me in the solar plexus. Here’s an excerpt:

When I called my friend Ann the first time after Pudding died, she immediately asked what she could do, and then did everything, and then kept asking, and she sent out an e-mail to tell people I hadn’t told that was so beautiful—though I have never read it—that I got the most beautiful condolence notes in response. Wendy burst into hysterical tears at the sound of my voice and asked me questions until I’d told the whole story. “Was he a beautiful baby?” she wanted to know, and I wondered how she knew to ask: she was the only one who did. Margi said, “Oh, Elizabeth, please know that if any of us could absorb your pain for you, we would,” and then laughed at all my dark jokes. Bruce, remembering something just as terrible that had happened to him decades before, wrote, “There is no way for such an event to leave you who you are.” Patti, who has seen as much sorrow as anyone I know, was an extraordinary combination of complete sympathy and complete comprehension. My brother said, at the end of a long conversation, “Well, I guess as a family we’ve been pretty lucky that we haven’t had something awful happen before.” My sister-in-law Catherine texted, Poor, poor darling you.

Somehow every one of these things happened at exactly the right time for me. This is why you need everyone you know after a disaster, because there is not one right response. It’s what paralyzes people around the grief-stricken, of course, the idea that there are right things to say and wrong things and it’s better to say nothing than something clumsy.

One of the reasons I read (and I’m sure it’s the same for you) is to find out how it feels to be someone else. And for me, one of the most fascinating and impossible things to imagine is what it feels like to go through something MAJOR like losing a child. We all struggle with imagining this kind of thing, which is why we bumble when it comes time to say something to the person who is grieving. This book does an amazing job of making me feel I’ve been in the mind of a grieving person, and experienced what I can of the taste of her grief.

Right now I know too many people who are hurting very deeply and I am at a complete loss of what to say. As I bumble through it, I pray that someday these friends will look back and be glad I at least tried.

The Trouble With Poetry

I just finished reading 100 Essential Modern Poems by Women, which I enjoyed immensely. (Hmmmm. I see that I am drawing more and more towards poetry and less and less towards fiction. Could that little itch be telling me something?) It was a fantastic sampler for someone like me who is sadly, pitifully, underexposed to poetry. (Which is another blog topic in itself [everyone's underexposure to poetry], but I’m saving that up for the Red Brick Store blog, I think.)

Anyway, one thing that has been very unsettling to me as I have read about some prominent female poets is how really screwed up or unhappy so many of them are/were. It seems like some 80% or more of them had abusive upbringings, or lovers who killed themselves, or nervous breakdowns. What is UP with that? Which comes first—the poetry or the misery? And could I possibly be a decent poet, someday, without having a miserable life? Please?

Here’s an interesting quote from May Swenson who seems to have had a relatively happy life but who also happened to leave the church. As in the Mormon church. She says, “It is not for me—religion. It seems like redundancy for a poet” (p. 100). What? So the holy calling of poetry stands in the place of any organized worship? OK, I know that’s not what she was really saying. But it bugs. It bugs. (And of course I know that some of the best poetry ever written was written by very, very religious people. Like, say, Isaiah, Joseph Smith, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Donne and some of our own LDS poets, many of whom can be read in my favorite poetry book, Discoveries.)

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Politics, Again

It occurred to me in conversation with Angela yesterday that the problem I have with politics is that I can’t understand how people can be so sure about things. I know people who are without a doubt more intelligent than I and who are very committed to living a Christian life and following the direction of the Spirit who are absolutely convinced that the Democrat platform is the more moral and responsible one. And, of course, I know other people who are without a doubt more intelligent than I and equally committed to living a Christian life and following the Spirit who are completely sure that the Republican platform is the more moral and responsible one.

And then there are the individual issues. How can two people pray about gun control or immigration or how to help the unemployed and come away with opposite views? And how can they be so convinced of the rightness of their views that they are willing to proclaim them and argue them everywhere—even on other people’s blogs and facebook walls?

I just wonder where all of this absolute conviction comes from. I would like to have it, but it makes me squirm. Especially, especially, it makes me squirm when I hear it from politicians themselves. How can they lead when they are so very sure? How can they not consider the other side of things, about which so many intelligent and honest people are equally sure?

(Again, I love comments, but I don’t want a political discussion here. You could, however, talk about ways of knowing, without being specific . . . )

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Election (do I really dare go there?)

OK, I am absolutely unqualified in every way to address the subject of racism, because I am white, I grew up in a white neighborhood, attended almost completely white schools, and know hardly any non-white people at all. Having said that, I just cannot understand why a person would vote for someone based on his skin color. It’s almost as bad (but not quite, I admit) to vote for someone because he is black as it is to not vote for him because he is black. (The reason I say it’s almost as bad is because of the historical aspect of it. There’s something to wanting to see the course of history changed.) And whether or not I voted for Obama (and you’ll never know, will you?), I have to say that I’m very very glad that we finally have our first black president, mostly for the fact that hopefully from now on it won’t be an issue! We’ll have gotten all that out of the way and it won’t interfere with what really matters—right?

Similarly, I didn’t like feeling that the people who chose Palin to run with McCain did so because they thought people would vote for him BECAUSE of the gender of his running-mate. (And I’m sure that some people did just that, so the logic of choosing her was sound, much as I dislike it.) I don’t think gender should matter.

(I also don’t think that whether or not someone is a parent should matter—UNLESS that person is using his/her parenthood as a reason I should vote for him/her, emphasizing the effect that parenthood will have on his/her decisions. IN THAT CASE I think it is not unfair to examine what KIND of parent he/she is and whether I approve of that kind of parenting. In other words, if someone is thinking that I, as a mother, am more likely to vote for another mother, they are underestimating my intelligence—unless she’s the kind of mother I believe people should be has made it part of her campaign to include issues that affect that kind of mothers. But that’s another kettle of fish that I will keep [mostly] closed on this blog.)

And just because my friend had a horrible experience with people commenting on her own Facebook Wall when she expressed a political opinion, I’m going to ask you to comment only if you agree with me or want to tell me how smart I am (or beautiful). (Also you could compliment my children. Or my poetry.) So there!

A delightful little tidbit . . .

I read this thoughtful little poem this week. It speaks to me. Can you tell why?

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

. . .

The reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniquer,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet . . .

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
liek it better than being loved.

Excerpts from "For the Young Who Want To" by Marge Piercy, quoted in 100 Essential Modern Poems By Women.