She gets it...

First, let me start off my post by saying that I should know better than to say something about Joshua and sleeping. It's as if any ounce of confidence on my part about good sleeping habits has to be immediately corrected. And corrected it was last night. Joshua and I met about every 15 minutes between 11:30 and 3:00 when I cried "uncle" and woke Jason up to help me. Lauren was also awake to eat and we were playing a very painful game of let's-work-together-to-drive-Mommy-right-over-the-cliff. Just as I would get one of them to sleep, the other would make a noise and the game started over again. Our friend Zyrtec wasn't doing a very admirable job last night, and poor Joshua was having trouble. Every time he'd have trouble breathing, he would wake himself up. And we all know that if he's up, I have to be too. We finally had to go to man-to-man defense and Jason laid down with Josh while I rocked and bounced Lauren back into dream land.

I guess that's what I get for saying anything yesterday. I won't make THAT mistake again.

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Yesterday, I neglected to mention another highlight of the weekend and that is that I finished another book. You might recall that the last time I read a book was last June when Jason and I took our trip to Nemacolin to sit around the pool, get massages, eat too much and spend time together. At that point, I stumbled upon a book called The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan. I haven't been captivated by a book like I was with that one in quite some time. Honestly, I couldn't put it down. It is still in plain sight at the house, pages all marked up and underlined, corners turned down for quick location.

I sometimes feel like motherhood is a little bit isolating. Do you? I mean, we all have our support network of friends and family and people we can vent to, or share ideas with, but I sometimes wonder if anyone feels the same way I do about things. Oftentimes the things you don't really talk to anyone about, like your insecurities as a mother, your fears of doing things right or wrong, the guilty feelings you have when you know you made a bad choice or really screwed something up. For the first time, I really felt like the author and I felt the same way about a lot of things. The Middle Place talks about the place in your life when you are both someone's mother and you're still someone's daughter, where you find yourself balancing the independence of being a mom and making decisions about your children, but still wanting to run into the arms of your parents for that safety and security and belonging that means so much. I TOTALLY get it. She talks a lot about her relationships with her father which so deeply reminds me of my relationship with my dad. In fact, there are times in the book that I felt as if she was describing my Dad...the magnetic personality, the shaping influence he has had in her life, and her need for him even as a grown up. I get that for sure with both my mom and my dad...and the dependence and need for them seems to grow instead of fading the older I get. So anyway, if you haven't read that book you need to.

Well, Kelly Corrigan has just released another book called Lift. It's a letter to her daughters, and I once again couldn't put it down. It's a short read and I was done with it in about 2 hours, although I keep revisiting the notes I made and the pages I marked since finishing it. Here are a few passages that I keep coming back to and thinking about (emphasis mine)...

"You'll remember middle school and high school, but you'll have changed by then. You changing will make me change. That means you won't ever know me as I am right now-- the mother I am tonight and tomorrow, the mother I've been for the last eight years, every bath and birthday party, gone. It won't hit you that you're missing this chapter of our story until you see me push your child on a swing or untangle his jump rope or wave a bee away from his head and think, 'Is this what she was like with me?' "

"My default answer to everything is 'no'. As soon as I hear the inflection of inquiry in your voice, the word 'no' forms in my mind, sometimes accompanied by a reason, often not. Can I open the mail? 'No'. Can I wear your necklace? 'No'. When is dinner? 'No.' What you probably wouldn't believe is how much I was to say 'yes'. Yes you can take two dozen books home from the library. Yes you can eat the whole roll of SweeTarts. Yes you can camp out on the deck. But the books will get lost, and SweeTarts will eventually make our tongue bleed, and if you sleep on the deck, the neighborhood raccoons will nibble on you. I often wish I could com eback to life as your uncle, so I could give youmore. But when you're the mom, your whole life is holding the rope against these wily secret agents who never, ever stop trying to get you to drop your end. This tug of war often obscures what's also happening between us. I am your mother, the first mile of your road. Me and all my obvious and hidden limitations. That means that in addition to possibly wrecking you, I have the chance to give to you what was given to me: a decent childhood, more good memories than bad, some values, a sense of tribe, a run at happiness. You can't imagine how seriously I take that- even as I fail you. Mothering you is the first thing of consequence that I have ever done."

If anyone wants to borrow the books to read, let me know. All I can say is that I've enjoyed reading the books and I'm enjoying The Middle Place just as much the second time through as I did the first. Kelly Corrigan gets it....she really gets it. And it's not that we need validation as moms...but it sure doesn't hurt to feel known.