“I just want to be a wife and a mom”
I used to say this in my teens and early twenties. It was all I saw, it was all I thought I could do. I thought since I hadn’t found my career by graduation I was out of luck and all the standard options presented to me were either out of my reach or didn’t interest me. No one showed me other options, no one told me my value was bigger, wider, deeper than the stereotyped catalogue before me. I said yes to being a wife and mom because I thought it was all I could do. As if to say that that life would require so little of me. I didn’t know there was more. I didn’t know it could be enough, that I would be enough. I didn’t know I would be so empty and so full.
I grew up not knowing the world was so much bigger in it’s smallness. I believed my role to play was small. No one told me there were so many more choices. Or that the choices I make would change the way I see the world, or impact the way the world is seen. I believed my world was only for a husband and babies and that world only impacted me. And, when neither of those things came in the timing I expected people continued to encourage me to hold fast to that goal rather than to seek new roads to travel. This just made the hole bigger, and emptier.
I floated through the emptiness in my twenties - a job here, a job there - not knowing what to do, nothing striking a flame, not challenging my feelings or life-spectations.
And just as I was making peace with the never-gonna-happen
A family burst into my life. A husband and two years later a child, and then another, and then another, and then another.
Making a life with another person is not a career option you are presented with in high school, yet, it is a spoken and unspoken expectation of our lives.
“When you get married and have kids”
But lets focus on preparing you for anything but that-
How do you school yourself for fights with your spouse? How do you gain the tools for miscarriage and the inadequacy, guilt and shame that follow? Where do you find classes on raising your children - before you have them - to give them the best chance at their lives, to not feel like I’m fucking it up at every turn, requiring therapy in twenty years. Every spill, every shout, every fight between them, every defiance. I don’t remember receiving any training for that. I remember struggling to dissect a rat and wondering why Mesopotamia was so damned important.
Eleven years later and I’m up to my armpits in what I “always wanted” Because I thought I wasn’t good enough to do anything else, because maybe this felt like the easy way. Because maybe just being a wife and mom is just not a big deal.
I didn’t know when I said I wanted to be a wife I was saying I wanted unexplained friction from things unsaid by fear. That what I “always wanted” was to live with someone who changes, someone I’m still getting to know and that it’s hard to live with changes. How do you navigate a relationship that requires a visceral intimacy based on a comparatively short “getting to know you”
“Oh, you sleep that way?”
“Wait, you hate getting up in the morning?”
“How hard is it to clean the espresso dispenser cup after you’ve used it?”
“How hard is it to not squeeze the toothpaste from the middle?”
“I don’t agree with what you’re doing here”
“why won’t you tell me how you’re feeling?”
“how you doin’? - wink wink, nudge nudge, know what I mean?”
“HAH! - Oh wait, you’re serious. Ok, give me a minute (or a hundred) to try to forget about all the crap I dealt with today”
When I said I wanted to have kids I didn’t know what I was saying was I never wanted to sleep again, for sex to never feel the same again, to go years without a hot meal, to have my body used as a dairy farm and a jungle gym at the same time. To one moment be yelled at for trying to help and the next turn around be yelled at for not helping. Apparently what I “always wanted” was to be responsible for remembering where every single thing they’ve ever had in their entire lives is, even if they haven’t touched it in months. Saying I just want to be a mom meant I wanted a constant onslaught of noise and need, and a loss of personal space and privacy. I didn’t know that I was saying I wanted surprise shower buddies, or to be serenaded (see also: shouted) with the Star Wars theme at 5:30 am Wanting to be a mom means I wanted daily battles over the same thing. Why oh why won’t they listen to me?!
I wish someone had told me that to say I just wanted to be a wife and mom reduces them to an achievement and minimizes my value and importance.
I don’t just want to me a wife and mom. I want to be a partner, a teacher a leader and a learner. I want to be humble and brave, I want to rejoice the small victories and celebrate the spills. Because no one told me that being a wife and mom means you weep for your spouse when they feel like they’ve failed and you can’t do anything for them but put yourself aside to build them back up. When your four year old yells they hate you and you want to yell it back at them but instead, out of your mouth comes “I still love you”
Or that when your child is in tears over having to use the potty you take a deep breath and say “Ok, we don’t have to do this now” even though you know their bladder is bursting.
When one child comes home broken because no one will play with them and you pray with them and give every ounce of you to help them see why they are loved.
And you look at them in their messes and your heart is bursting because you realize that when you said you just wanted to be a wife and mom you thought it was just to fill your needs, but then you learn that you must be broken first before you can be healed. And then then you see what you “always wanted” was really for them. And then you see it was for you too but not how you expected.
I said yes to this because I thought I wasn’t good enough, that this was the best of options. And I learned it’s the most, it is the highest of options and I still don’t feel good enough - and I am thankful for grace.
