Confessions of a Young Mother

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This is Day 6 of my 30-Day Blogging Challenge which coincides with my joining Celestine Chua's 30-Day Live a Better Life Challenge.

I inherited my wanderlust from my mother. When I was a kid, my mother went away for two to three days, a week at most to work conferences. She would go off alone and I remember how I missed her on those days she's off somewhere. I wondered why she couldn't/wouldn't take me with her.

Perhaps that's the reason why I feel myself awash with guilt whenever dreams of travel fill my head. How could I do this to my daughters who obviously need me and who enjoy being with me? Does this mean that I love them less?

Now that I'm a mother, I understand how my mother would need time for herself. Life as a mother is full of endless and selfless giving that it's easy to come to a point when you have nothing to give. I know that few mothers would admit to this, for fear of being labeled as a bad mother. I attribute this to the unfair images of the good mother we are fed daily.

I remember watching in horror at this weird Japanese film when a mother was dying. Her husband and her children were crying out to her not to die. In desperation, the husband said, "Cook breakfast for us!" and the dying mother rose, her eyes glazed with fever. Then she got a wok and started cooking. After finishing her cooking, she went back to her bed and died. I watched that movie when I was in college and I interpreted it as another message for feminism. Now, that scene in the movie has lost its surreality. I am living it in less dramatic versions.

Remember that Blue Bay Tuna commercial where the kid ate all the canned tuna and the mother gave her share? Mothers are always seen in all their unselfish glory, giving, serving, washing clothes, complete with a luminous smile. Those images don't tell us how unreasonable children can be, how hard it is to be jarred awake by a child's wailing for milk, how icky it is to clean up after a child's "accidents." Those images don't tell us the guilt we feel when we thoroughly enjoy a day out without the kids.

All these inconveniences are easy to endure because children are adorable. Their innocent gazes full of love... their heavenly baby smells... their toothy grins.... their unquestioning acceptance of your love. It's easy to fall in love with them again even after they hit you square in the face with a baby bottle full of milk. But what if they're already grown? What if they already have lives of their own? Would you feel like all your sacrifices are worth it? I dread the time when my children would be off not needing my company anymore. When they go off to live their lives independently, would I be selfless enough not to expect for their call or their presence during holidays? When they already have families of their own and the visits become more infrequent, will I live my life quietly alone in a nursing home and feel nothing but gratitude for their presence?

I am raising my kids as best as I know how. Parenting is like walking in an unknown path, sometimes fumbling along, sometimes in resolute steps, but always, always with fierce and utterly complete love. When that time comes, will my children call out to me when they're in pain or in the depths of despair like I called my mother several times when I was giving birth to my first child? I hope so. No! Wait! I know so.

If you're grown-up, would you do a favor for me? Could you call or text your mother and tell them you love them? I would be very grateful.