Motherhood

The Limbo of Maybe

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Last week L came to us and told us that he had a painful bump on his jaw. It was a hard, pea-sized bump on the right side of his face. My first thought was “It’s back. It’s back. He’s relapsed. We have to do it all again.” This is always my first thought when something happens with him. It will always be my first thought.

Maybe it’s nothing. It’s probably nothing. But given L’s history, we no longer have the luxury of nothing. We live in the maybes. Maybe it’s back. Maybe it’s a secondary cancer. And so, it must be checked out.

I called our pediatrician and requested an appointment. Our doctor was on vacation. Oof. Our back-up doctor was also on vacation. Double oof. If I wanted someone to see him that week, it would have to be with a new person. Great. I get to tell the whole story to a stranger and answer questions I have answered 1,000 times before. I get to explain, again, why it is so important that s/he examines him thoroughly, that s/he looks everywhere, for everything and if there are concerns they need to tell me. Now. If I wanted L to be seen that week, the new doc was my only option. I made the appointment.

Then, later that morning, in the back of my mind I remembered that our babysitter took the boys to their dentist appointments in July (best babysitter ever) and that L had a cavity that needed to be filled. It’s like in the cartoons when the word bubbles are floating around people’s heads. And he has a huge canker sore. On the same side as the pea-sized bump. I call the dentist. What side is that cavity on? (Poor dental health is just one of the side effects of all the chemo he got, but that’s minor compared to the alternatives, right?) And now my mind is in overdrive. Spinning with possibilities, holding on to the prayer that it’s not cancer, again. YES! The cavity is on the same side as the bump and the canker sore. So, odds are it’s just a swollen lymph node or an abscessed tooth. Wahoo! I’ll take it.

 

It's JUST an abscessed tooth!

It’s JUST an abscessed tooth!

We go to the dentist a few days later. Thank goodness for our dentist. I really like him. He is thorough and kind. He is also a parent and he knows L’s history, so he gives us a lot of latitude. He lasers the canker sore (very cool, didn’t know they could do that. And we got to wear sunglasses while he was cauterizing L’s gums) but he thinks the bump should be checked out. Our eyes meet over L’s bony body that barely fills the reclining dentist’s chair. His mouth is covered by his mask so I can’t see his lips moving. But my eyes are searching, pleading and he knows what I am really asking. “I think it’s nothing. Odds are it’s the lymph node doing it’s job. But, this is not my area of expertise and given his history, I think you should keep the doctor’s appointment and get it checked out.” My stomach drops to the floor. Given. his. history.

We go to the new pediatrician the next day. She is ah-mazing (thank goodness!). Not sure if the triage nurse who made the appointment told her about L’s history, but the Dr. had read his chart. I didn’t have to tell the story, again. She knew most of it. And, she was very, very thorough. “I think it’s nothing. It’s not hot, red, he doesn’t have a fever. If you want to do bloodwork we can, but I don’t think it’s necessary. If it gets bigger and/or doesn’t resolve in two weeks, come back.”

wwwwhhhhhheeeeewwwwww. How does the world not hear the air decompressing from the balloon that has filled my chest for 48 hours?

Scare over. It’s not cancer. It’s a lymph node. He’s fine. (Almost a week later now and the bump is almost gone.)

Maudlin? Dramatic? Over-the-top? Yes. Yes. And Yes. And, completely exhausting. But that doesn’t make it any less real.

This is our life. We live in the limbo of maybe. Equally ripe with potential and dread, freedom and fear, reality and worst-case scenario.

This spring I read Lily Koppel’s book The Astronaut Wives Club about the Mercury and Apollo astronauts and the Space Race. Buzz Aldrin was chosen to be part of the crew that would make the first moon landing. In speaking about the months leading up to the actual launch, his first wife Joan said, “It was normalcy tinged with hysteria.” Yes! This! This is what I feel like as parent to a childhood cancer survivor. It is vigilance and paranoia. On the outside, everything is fine. Normal. He survived. We survived. We are…unscathed. But just beneath the surface is maybe.

Some days are better than others. Some minutes are easier than others. Most of the time, the duration of my freakouts is short. But, other days, not so much. I know too much. In the week that I waited to post this, a fellow Rhabdo mother posted that her daughter relapsed. The cancer is everywhere. The odds are not in her favor. Some of my 46 Mommas friends have children who are still in treatment, while trying to go to school. They have missed the first day of school because of fevers and low counts. Others have orthotic leg braces ordered & ready to go, but cannot pay for them because insurance won’t cover it.

It’s never over. The maybe lingers.

As September approaches and the childhood cancer community asks for your support, I hope that you will be moved. Moved to do something. Paint your nails gold, make your facebook profile picture a gold ribbon, donate to a childhood cancer charity, make a meal for a family, pray for families who are grieving. We need you. Help us turn “maybes” into true “nothings.”

Thank you.

Gold Ribbon

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

Happy 40th Birthday, Heather

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Dear Heather,
Happy Birthday! I am thrilled and grateful to be here celebrating YOU!
I think you know that I stalked you on Facebook before you moved to Michigan. 🙂 I was so excited- and I will admit a little desperate- at the the possibility of a working mom friend in the area. Meeting people in suburbia can be very hard!
I was very nervous to meet you, though. Terrified actually. What if you hated me? What if our boys didn’t get along? You seemed (and are) very bright, energetic, kind, and very very involved in ACPA and our profession. So, I was a little afraid that I could not live up to your professional standards. Turns out you have no standards since we are now friends! Ha, ha!
I made up a picture of you in my mind. How I thought you would talk, the issues that you would care about, the way that you would look at me. I thought you would judge me. Because, isn’t that what women do sometimes? Most of the time? I don’t care about feminism, higher education, or professional organizations nearly the way you do. Turns out all of that was made up in my head. You have accepted me for who I am. You are passionate about things without forcing your views on others or making them feel like they must care about them the way you do. I think that is my favorite thing about you. Well that, and one time when I was over at your house I saw toaster crumbs on your counter and I was like, “Yes! She’s like MEEEEE!”
I remember meeting you in person for the first time. You, Ray and the boys were waiting for me and my boys at Patriarche Park. You were sitting on a bench. I remember being relieved that you were wearing jean shorts and Tevas. I remember our boys taking off immediately to go play. They played all afternoon. We wandered all over the park and at one point you taught my boys how to play horseshoes- horseshoes that you brought with you. Because, you are that kind of person. First, you own horseshoes and then you think to bring them to a play date because your new friends might want to learn how to throw them, too. Then, we all went to the MSU Dairy Store. It was the longest first playdate in history and it was great!
From that first meeting on we have connected and shared stories about motherhood, mothering boys, being wives and partners, and working mothers in higher education. I have truly treasured those conversations and am grateful for your thoughtfulness and your selfless friendship. I am thrilled beyond measure to call you friend and I look forward to many more happy years.
The attached picture is from when you and Kelley drove all the way to Detroit to support me in Listen to Your Mother. Thank you for that. It meant so much to me that you were there in the audience that afternoon. Actually, you watched the boys for me so I could go to the first rehearsal, so you were in my corner from the very beginning. And, that is just like you, too. You are loyal, kind, generous, and giving. Thank you for being my new friend.
Cheers to 40! Can’t wait to see where the years take us.
Love,
Monica
Thanks to my cheering section!

Thanks to my cheering section!

The missing piece in the “good mother” puzzle

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Today I re-tweeted an article by Kathryn Sollmann, Peace Talks for the Mommy Wars in which she re-frames the “have it all” and “lean in” rhetoric into personal, economic terms. I love this article. I think her argument is spot-on. She writes, “At the end of the day, let’s accept that we’re all good mothers…The better mother is the one who faces reality, plans for life contingencies and makes certain that she tucks her family into a future that is financially secure and safe.” Amen.

I am fortunate to have a mentor (the same one since I was 22) who told me to always know what money is going in and what money is going out. She taught me that I am responsible for my financial future and no one else. That was/is good advice. Especially since at that time, a spouse wasn’t even on the horizon. I was young, educated, and on my own. I needed to know how to pay for my car, food, health insurance, plane tickets home to NJ, etc. etc. No one else was going to do it for me. I needed to know how to do these things. And, thank goodness, I do. God forbid I am ever widowed, I could still stay afloat. I have a job, my degrees, and the know-how to figure it out, or at least ask someone who does.

But this is only part of the “good mother” puzzle. An important one, but not the only one. Of course I need to tuck my children into a financial future. But I also want to tuck them into bed and into my heart.

I have read Lean In and I think Sandberg has some great points. For some people. I spent five years of my life as a PhD student investigating work-life “balance,” which I now call work-life negotiation, and wrote an entire dissertation about women student affairs administrators with young children and how they are trying to “have it all.” I read journal articles, tweet interesting links, have entire files of studies, pie charts, and bar graphs outlining ways that corporate America can help working families. All of these things are good and important. I have even blogged about my own “negotiation” strategies sometimes on this blog.

Today I had lunch with my husband who is also a working parent in higher education. It was a date in a college cafeteria because that is what fits our lives and our budgets right now. Sitting there over the beef and broccoli and roasted turkey, I realized something. All of these “have it all” articles are missing one important piece. The articles are prescriptive, one size fits all suggestions. I’m not a fan of being told what to do. I don’t know many mothers who are.

My contribution to the missing piece is this: the better mother is the one who does all she needs to do- personally, emotionally, financially, legally, geographically, etc., etc.- because it works for her. Because it works. for. her. Happy, focused mother= well-adjusted children and family.

The focus of modern rhetoric has been on macro changes. If more mothers lean in, then “the system” will change. (Maybe.) If legislators are made more aware of the burdens of working families, government will start to act in the best interests of the people. (Umm, sure.) Yes, these are important and necessary. Is it ridiculous that in 2008 I pumped breast milk in my own locked closet with paper on the windows because that was the only place I could go? Yes. Ridiculous. Is it insane that families with a sick child or elderly parent miss important meetings at work AND with their loved ones’ medical care team for fear that something will fall through the cracks? Of course. We absolutely need changes on the macro level. No question. But shaming SAHM and working mothers (or fathers) into leaning in, or wanting to have it all isn’t the answer.

I don’t have the answer. But, I have my own experience, I have my own answer. And what I have learned is this: forget everyone else and focus on what works for you. What worked for me as a working mother was to leave a Director level position and come home to a less than mid level advising position 10 minutes from my house. And guess what, NO ONE said boo to me. The person who was shaming me into thinking that I was derailing my own fast track train to having it all was me. I thought that giving up this job made me a hero or even better, a working mother martyr. Neither of these labels is true.

I gave up…nothing. And gained everything.

When I told people at my former institution that I was leaving because a job 5 miles from home opened up, every other woman (mother or not) in that office said this, “Oh, well, of course. That makes soo much sense. The little people in your life will be so happy.”

The little people in my life were indeed happy. Especially the three year old (who is now six and a giant!). When I was gone 60 hours/week (15 of which were spent driving the autobahn that is I-96 East in MI), he barely spoke to me. I saw my boys for 15 minutes each morning. I forced them to snuggle with me because I needed to leave the house with their morning smell still on my shirt. When I came home at 530pm (if I was lucky), the three year old wouldn’t speak to me. Sometimes he would open up and start talking to me over dinner. Sometimes he never spoke to me; he avoided my loving, hopeful eyes. This was his little three year old way of telling me that he resented me being away for so long. I resented it, too, but was constantly torn between wanting to “have it all” by using the degree I had just spent five long years earning, and wanting to be a “good mother.”

At the time, a fellow working mother told me that my son’s not speaking to me when I came home was about him and not me. He was three years old. Maybe that is how she would have approached the same situation. But for me, that was not working. I was actually starting to get really good at my job when I left it. But I was not the kind of mother I wanted to be. I missed everything- drop-off, pick-up, class trips, laughing at the breakfast table. And, I missed them. I missed them. Much of the modern talk is about the children. How are the children impacted by a parent’s work-outside-the-home status? What are the differences between children in daycare and those not? The good news: there is no difference.

What I think is missing from this rhetoric is the other side. The mother’s side. My side. I saw very little of myself in all of these articles screaming at me to keep my fast track job. I missed my children and my husband. I needed them. I missed them so much I ached. Eventually the three year old would have been fine. But I am not sure that I would have been fine. I was tired all the time. I was stressed out from driving. I started clenching my jaw at night (and now need a bite guard which I am getting tomorrow).

I tried the stay-at-home mom thing, too. Twice. Hated it. I was not good at it. I would be a horrible stay-at-home mom. I was also a horrible “have it all” mom.

For now, I am a mid-life, mid-career, mid-western mom who does not have it all. But, I am pretty darn close. I am happy. My boys are happy. I go to work and I help people. I help students be better versions of themselves and I love it. Turns out, my current position pays even more than my last one and I am no longer spending money commuting, so double bonus. Tucking them and myself into that financial future.

My real legacy, my “having it all” is my sons. They are the micro changes that will go out into the world and make macro differences. If that happens, when that happens, then I really will have it all.

That same mentor who taught me to take charge of my financial future also told me once, “your life right now is not your life forever.” Preach.