Mother Guilt

It started for me when Maddie was just a tiny little bundle of chunky baby love, maybe just a few weeks old.  I was holding her in my left arm and playing solitaire on the computer with my right.  She was snuggled in happily enough, but about a half an hour went by and I realized I hadn’t paid any attention to her sleeping little baby-self at all.  Can you imagine?  A whole half hour (mostly) to myself.  Was I excited?  Was I grateful?  No.  I felt guilty.

Do we as mothers ever hit a point of equilibrium, a point where we feel the kids are entertained, healthily fed, clean, mentally stimulated, properly transported, conversationally satisfied, exercised, safe and secure, and happy?  A point where we ourselves have  listened to something besides Barney songs on the car stereo, paid attention to our own need to pee before it’s too late, or brush our hair, or put on matching shoes, or glance through a People, or drink a cup of tea before it gets cold, or eat lunch sitting down, or cleaned the house to our personal (albeit low) level of satisfaction, or check our email before 9 p.m., or wake up when our own body is ready to wake up and not one second before that.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve sat on the edge of a sleeping child’s bed and whispered to him that I would try harder tomorrow.  Then I would break that promise and lose my temper and find myself promising again at nap time that I would worry less about getting the dishes in the dishwasher and get down and push those stupid cars around, even though I don’t like to play, but then I’d get the dishes put away and fold the laundry and grump at the child for leaving the cars all around the floor and get dinner going, and eventually find myself on the edge of the bed again, feeling guilty as can be.

Even the days that are devoted mostly to the children can leave me feeling guilty.  Guilty for not spending enough money on them, for spending too much money on them, for making them run errands on the way to the playground or for chatting with the other moms and saying Later! when they wanted me to push them on the swings, or for forgetting the water bottle for after the playground.

You know those mothers who put the rest of us to shame?  The ones who never yell , the ones who stop talking with the other moms so they can go put legos together with their child, the ones who never lose their patience with a screaming toddler in a grocery cart (heck, have their children ever screamed in a grocery cart?)

I wonder if they feel guilty for something.  Like, not putting enough ground up spinach in the pasta sauce or not using mind-sharpening color words when playing with the Legos or for never saying no and wondering where that may lead them someday.

I just wish I could be satisfied with the job I was doing.  Not stellar, not practically perfect.  Just satisfied.  Content. 

At peace with myself.