LITMIR.BIZ

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noticed.

       I should have known better.

       Thirty minutes into playgroup, before my second cup of coffee had cooled, a piercing wail rose from the playroom. Seven mothers, including me, shot out of their chairs. Even with Hannah in my arms, I managed to be one of the first on the scene. It wasn’t pretty. As we burst into the room, Will, a plastic knight’s breastplate strapped to his chest was standing over a bawling Eric, waving his arms triumphantly over his head.

       Will turned to me. ‘Eric was being mean to us!’ he cried as I glared at him, trying to assess the damage.

       I helped Eric to his feet and knelt in front of Will, my back to the others so they couldn’t see my face.

       ‘Tell Eric you’re sorry,’ I said to Will through clenched teeth. Eric was looking at his feet, wiping his nose with the sleeve of his shirt. The other three and four year-olds were standing in a circle, solemnly watching what was happening.

       ‘No. He was the one being mean!’Will retorted, stomping his foot on the floor. ‘Eric should say “sorry” to me.’

       Just then, Hannah, who had been asleep in my arms, woke up and began screaming. Eric started crying again and ran to his mother. I felt the other women’s eyes on me, imagining them, accusing and smug, outraged on behalf of their innocent ones. It was, I realized, a situation that could not be easily remedied. Deciding to cut my losses, I handed Hannah to Karen, picked Will up and carried him, kicking and thrashing, out to the car. Both kids screamed all the way home and anger swelled inside me. I was outraged at having had to abandon one of my few opportunities to spend time with people who didn’t need me to help them to the potty. More than anything, though, I was furious with Will for ‘outing’ me as the bad mother I was.

       Now, an hour and a half later, the two of us were facing off. Will was refusing to change out of his Robin Hood costume before going to the grocery store. As I stood there, I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the sweet little boy whose slippery form had slid out of my body three and a half years earlier, the baby who had slept on my chest every day in the warmth of the afternoon sun. In a little less than four years, I had managed to ruin the perfect little being who had been entrusted to me. I suddenly felt exhausted and my anger at Will vanished. Overwhelmed by my complete and utter failure as a mother, I sat down on the floor and began to cry.

       As I wept helplessly, my face buried in my arm, I heard Will’s footsteps approaching and then felt his arm slide around my neck.

       ‘What’s the matter, Mommy?’he asked, bending down to peek at me.

       I lifted my head, wiping the tears from my cheeks.

       ‘I’m sorry, Will.’ I said. ‘I just don’t feel like a very good mommy right now.’

       ‘Why?’ he said, adjusting his cape to keep it from slipping over his shoulder. ‘Is it because I want to be Robin Hood at the grocery store?’

       In that moment, I saw something I had never seen in the same way before. As Will stood there, looking at me, waiting for my answer, I realized that he was a completely unique, intact human being in a little person’s body entirely separate from me. Yes, he was dressed like a bad Western’s version of Robin Hood, but what did that matter? I was dressed as a bad soap opera’s version of a suburban housewife. Together, we made quite a pair.

       I began to laugh and pulled Will into my arms. I understood then that I had been pouring so much energy into trying to make us and our lives look the way I thought they were supposed to look, that I was missing all the wonderful, unique things we already were. Just because I would never consider going to the grocery store dressed as Robin Hood, it didn’t mean that Will couldn’t. In fact, it was inevitable that there would be many, many more things that Will was going to like to do, to eat, to try, to be that I would have no interest in. His preferences for this or that had little or nothing to do with me.

       And as for my frustrations with his behaviour earlier in the day, of course Will was going to have difficulties learning to get along with other kids, managing his angry feelings, deciding what he liked and what he didn’t – at age 29, I was still struggling with the same things. But the important distinction I had not been able to make until this moment was that I was not Will’s difficulty. My responsibility as a mother was to have compassion for Will, while at the same time trying my best to teach him skilful means of dealing with his feelings – and the situations he might find himself in. His behaviour, good or bad, belonged to him; what I did in response to it belonged to me.

       Our differences and difficulties were not personal to each other; they were simply part of who we were. And the truest way I could express my love for Will would be to respect and celebrate both our connection as mother and son and our separateness as two, unique human beings.

       ‘Come on, Will,’ I said, holding his hand as I got to my feet. ‘Let’s go to the grocery store dressed exactly as we are. After all, even Robin Hood has to eat!’

       First Steps

       The mid-July sun was hot on our faces and shoulders, but the water along the stretch of isolated beach on Lake Superior had risen from the icy depths of the deepest of the Great Lakes, so our bare feet were red with cold. Hannah, 10 months old, asleep in the infant carrier strapped to Claude’s back, had a yellow pacifier in her mouth and a rumpled white sun hat on her head. She had spent much of the morning pushing her stroller around our campsite, Claude and I cheering her on and congratulating each other that, like Will, she was going to be an early walker. I knew that anyone watching us would see that we were the perfect family, especially if they knew we also had a handsome young son.

       My parents had invited Will to spend a week with them at the Cherry Festival in Traverse City, so Claude and I had decided to continue north after dropping Will off, and spend the week camping and hiking along the National Lakeshore. It felt great to have stepped away from the busyness of our daily lives. Now that we had become used to juggling the needs of two children, it felt easy to take care of just one. Almost a week before, we had pitched our tent on the sand, under a stand of pines, but although we had begun to feel more and more relaxed as the week progressed, the decision we had to make still hung in the air between us.

       Claude and I were at a crossroads in our life. For too long, now, Claude had felt unhappy at work. The most progressive and experimental cellular technologies were being developed in companies on the east and west coasts, not in the midwest. As a design engineer, if Claude wanted to work with the best, we would have to move. But, to me, the thought of uprooting our family at this time in our lives didn’t feel like such a good idea. In the past year, we had already experienced a number of significant changes. I had quit my part-time job soon after Hannah’s birth, and although it was a dream we both shared that Claude would provide financially for our growing family so that I could be with the children at home, it seemed that neither of us felt happier or less frustrated, despite our new arrangement. The arguments between us had been growing louder and more hurtful, and more than once I had allowed myself to flirt with the idea of a divorce.

       I couldn’t help thinking of a story I had recently heard about Picasso. After sitting in front of Gertrude Stein for more than three months, painting her portrait, one day Picasso stood up and asked her to leave. ‘I can’t see you anymore when I look,’ he said.

       For some time now, I had felt as if I were experiencing the same thing. After eight and a half years of marriage, I felt more distant from Claude, rather than closer. Our love for our children was one thing we unquestionably shared, but no matter how much that meant to me, it did not feel enough. The life we had constellated together felt more like a fantasy

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