Motherhood: Paris

I wake up to a small face inches away from my own, big blue eyes searching me, a long whine escaping his mouth, pulling me out of peaceful sleep and into the reality of Thursday morning:

He's not the only one who woke up on the wrong side of bed.

Maybe it's stemming from being jarred out of sleep so early.

Or maybe it's from feeling like I'm walking a never-ending road of healing.

But most likely, it's all about Paris.

John is leaving for Paris soon on a work-related trip ... and I am not.

So, currently, I detest Paris. Or maybe I just detest what Paris is doing to me.

I'm staying home with the boys and likely waking up to mornings like this every morning, which would be sweet if we could forgo the whine {and I'm embarrassed to admit that most of the whining comes from my own lips} but

I'm tired.

I'm still climbing my way out of the post-miscarriage anxiety and depression haze

I'm still trying to heal from this balance issue.

And I'm not ready.

Here's the thing about motherhood in this season of life:

I desperately want to mother, but I suck at doing it alone.

And here's the thing about Paris:

I want to go to Paris, but I am in a season so drenched in mothering that I cannot see past its thickness.

I told myself a few months ago when John first asked if I wanted to come along riding on his coat tails of frequent flyer miles that Paris could wait but the kids couldn't; they wouldn't be 3 and 5 forever.

A few months ago, fresh from the loss of a third baby during pregnancy, I thought that was a travesty. I wanted to soak up every ever-loving minute that these boys were small and mine to keep safely in the nest. Savor every moment, you know.

Today, with Paris looming in the near distance, I think it's a darn good thing 3 and 5 don't last forever, because my patience with 3 and 5 lately has been slim ... and I can only imagine what it will look like when I'm alone with 3 and 5.

We weren't meant to mother alone, and I know this keenly during times John is home and I am feeling well.

But when he's away and I'm still sporting tender wounds, the magnifying glass sharply focuses on my intolerance and my impatience and my limits.

Enjoyment and savoring? Those come harder when I'm simply in survival mode.

My writing off of Paris was a little short sighted. Because here's the thing about Paris and motherhood and this season of life and the intersection of all three I didn't know to put together:

there's only so much tolerance, so much patience and so much enjoyment a mother can experience when she hasn't set her own limits well.

So I'm taking a lesson from Paris, setting aside my grievances and setting my limits; I'm giving myself permission to receive the help I'll need and abide within these margins I've set.

I'm coming to understand that what I need to be a good mother isn't really a trip to Paris.

And what I need to be a good mother isn't simply to survive mothering in Paris' wake.

Rather, what I need is to recognize my own limitations, accept them and gracefully allow the gift of help from those who also know the importance of me staying within the lines right now so that there's enjoyment and savoring in the surviving.

Thinking, that's all: A blanket

A soft blue glow dimly gives light to the dark recesses of an inky backstage area.

We sit hip to hip, perched in chairs that form an oval, silent except for the wild beating of hearts, the quick whispers of courage breathed out to the first voice making her way toward the center stage.



She's first to bring life to the black print on white as she shares her story.

I find myself holding my breath tight inside my lungs, keeping vigil for her before I realize that she's got it and slowly exhale it into the soft shadows.

I hang on her words, her threads dangling in the air and grab on tight.

She brings her story to a close and a round, full-bodied applause breaks out from the audience and fills seemingly ever inch of empty space in the theater.

And the backstage?

The backstage is drenched.

It is drenched with applause, and it is weeping with awe and love

because she has broken the silence with her voice.

She has taken the first threads, added her own and she has begun weaving them all together through gifting us with her own.

The words we've all written about motherhood -- about how it's changed, shaped, grown, morphed us, made us-- come quickly, deliberately thereafter, single thread after single thread added

hers

and his

and hers

and hers

and hers

and then ours.

We are next.

As part of the only duet in the show, I've long realized that this story I'm about to give voice, this thread I'm about to add to the collection, isn't only mine.



It's hers, too.

But it's not until I step onto center stage that I truly realize it's not just mine and hers either.

There is laughter, deep thundering laughter, as we give comedic voice to the loneliness of mothering in our day in age.

And I know, in the laughter, that our stories, our threads have been grasped, they've been picked up and woven together with others

that these stories don't just belong to the people in center stage, the people giving them voice.

No.

The laughter coupled with tears tells a story of its own: that these stories are all of ours

that motherhood has given us all a song swelling in our chest in some way or another

that these threads were meant to be woven together.

Our lives, our stories weren't meant to simply be separate, dangling threads


but rather a blanket of warmth spread across shivering shoulders.



Sunday night in Chicago, I snuggled deep into the comforts of that blanket in the best of company.

Bigger Picture Moments: On Being Noticed

There is tired written across my newly sunned cheeks and wild, wind-stricken hair swept back into a sweaty ponytail when I decide to take the leap. 

I flip open the computer, see my image reflected onto the screen from the webcam and think again -- maybe I'll record my audition for the show a different time when ...

But the kids are asleep. 

The nights are short.

And time is of the essence.

I take a deep breath, open the typed piece a friend and I had just hours before co-written and talk myself into hitting record.

As I self-argue again about perhaps freshening up a bit and putting my powdered face forward, I disregard the thought and remember why I'm doing this audition in the first place:

****

It's lonely sometimes, motherhood. 

I recall days, mostly after each of my babes were born, where I felt isolated, weary, invisible to all but little pairs of needy eyes. 

Days where loneliness stretched out across the never-ending hours until my husband would appear in the door frame, me longing for cohesive conversation after feeling enslaved in a house where sickness was bounding us to couch or naptimes were holding us hostage both morning and afternoon. 

Days where I desperately needed someone, a friend to come alongside me and remind me that babies outgrow naps and winter colds dwindle and mothers again find their voices to use for something other than reading the same story a billion times or shouting in frustration for everyone to stop whatever atrocity was being committed. 

There were days where I longed and cried and yearned for a village.

I felt so alone. My friends lived far away and schedules seemed to always conflict and there were weeks when I'd see hide nor hair of anyone outside of attending Bible study or running to the grocery store. 

So I wrote it all out -- the heartache, the pain, the loneliness that wiggles itself into the cracks of motherhood amid the beautiful and lovely and wonderful. 

Someone noticed. Actually, a lot of someones in this here blog space as well as my geographical area noticed. And they felt the same way. 

This voice of mine that spent so much time coming out as solely that of a mother began to emerge into the voice of a woman who also happened to be a mother, the me I'd not really known until a community came around me and helped me muddle through all of the life that had been thumping around inside my heart and head.

I grew and a community grew around me and I grew into community and friendship and I found my freakin' village all because someone noticed, all because someone, lots of someones heard me and said, oh yes, yes, yes, I feel that, too..

But I've never forgotten the lonely that stung my heart, left me weeping and heart sick for traveling companions, left me aching to be seen, to be noticed. 

****

I blink a few times, exhale and press record as I accept the tired eyes looking back at me, the messed hair. 

Because this -- plain and simple little old me recording my half of the audition for Listen to Your Mother in a dishelved state, not perfectly coiffed, while the children slumber and I steal moments from my evening to give space for my authentic voice to rise --  this is real motherhood. And it deserves real voice.

This production that pays tribute to mothers, gives voice to all the parts of  motherhood -- the hilarious, the messy, the lonely, the beautiful, the weary, the lovely,  the completely disheveled, the imperfect -- this show isn't just for the perfectly groomed or only professional writers or only actresses who can deliver flawless monologues; it's for real mothers with real voices and real messy hair and real tired eyes who have something very real, very important to share.

The popularity of Listen to Your Mother, as evidenced by multiple-city productions now running only three years since the inaugural Madison show, demonstrates that real motherhood not only deserves a real voice but that we mothers need a space to have real voice, hear a real voice.

Because we're all just waiting to have a voice given to the parts of our lives -- especially the complicated, messy, beautiful, impossible arena of motherhood -- that aren't often shared let alone celebrated.

We're all just waiting to be noticed, to be a little better known, to be heard. 

As my voice finds the courage and strength to speak into a microphone on a Chicago stage come May 6, giving life to the other half of a duet about the weariness and loneliness and hilarity of motherhood, I hope that another mother, somewhere, anywhere, will feel just a little more noticed, a little better known, a little more heard from her time spent in a space where motherhood is shared and celebrated. 

{Also, I promise to shower before the actual show and perhaps put on my powdered face because mothers don't just deserve to be given a real voice, they deserve {and need!} showers, too.}

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