Good Enough Mother

It’s been a long time since I have been a good mother. It is 7:25 am and my son is laying in front of the pantry, his face pressed into the crumbs, dust, and dog hair of the kitchen floor. His six-year-old body long and thin, splayed in a scissor-like pose, his hair, tangled blond snarls. He is banging one leg theatrically against the floor, telling me or the floorboards that he wants the granola with no nuts.

“No nuts.” he says. “No nut kind!”

“Sorry buddy, here is the kind that I made, right here.” I say, as I pull the glass ball jar to the front of the shelf. “Has nuts. I never made any without nuts.”

He yells something into the wood, bangs his fist.

I turn away, swallow my reaction, which is rising like bile. I know better than to try to reason with him, so I move on. I keep packing the lunches for school. Kindergarten and second grade, my kids one and a half years apart on the calendar. Two years in school.

“You said you were making eggs.” My daughter throws in, in her own angry tone, seeing the bowl of oatmeal at her spot at the table.

“I never said I was making eggs,” I counter, moving away. Sandwiches made, carrots sliced horizontally, orange in the palm of my left hand, ready to be sliced.

“Poached eggs!” She says. “You said you were making poached eggs.”

I laugh out loud. We woke up late today. I slept through my alarm. “Honey,” I say. “I have no time for eggs today. I said I was making lunches.”

“Hmmph.”

“Here’s the oatmeal, babe. This is what Mommy made. It is right here. It’s been here for twenty minutes, waiting for you.” I push the bowl in front of her. “I’ve got to keep moving,” I say.

She stomps away before even sitting down and slams the bathroom door behind her.

“I never said I would make eggs!” I yell. “We don’t have time. I don’t have time. I never said eggs, for Christ’s sake!”

She yells something from behind the door and kicks it hard with her eight-year-old ire.

I go to the door and grab the handle, a beautiful handle, a Spanish-style wrought-iron, slide bolt, which I pull on. I bang on the gorgeous door, painted in India, thick and small. I turn, furious, almost rapid at this point, and I look for something to destroy. I have turned into an animal, pushed to the edge, and backed into a corner.

My son, seeing this, tucks himself behind me like a shadow. I do not know this at the time. I do not see anything or know anything in moments like this. I am pure blade, pure metal edge, brittle, breakable, explosive. Another comment from inside the fortress of the bathroom, and I lose it and time stands on its own heels. I see the 5-gallon water bottle, standing on its own stool beside the kitchen counter near the bathroom. Sitting inside a nice ceramic base, which I paid fifty dollars for at the health food store. I put all my weight on my right leg, bend at the waist and fire one clean sidekick, not full out, not enough to send the bottle flying, but hard enough, that I accomplish a loud bang. At which point, my daughter, yelps from the bathroom, as if I have hit her. As if I have kicked her.

My son appears from behind my left side, and steadies the water bottle, the ceramic base, the stool. I stand still long enough to note there is no water spilled on the floor. There is no crack in the 5-gallon blue bottle. There is no damage. My daughter screams from behind the door and does not stop. I scream back. And again, I am moving faster than my body can track. My mind is elsewhere. I am throwing my body around like an animal with a leg caught in a trap. I am yelling. Noise is coming from me, coming off my body like steam. My son suddenly grabs me around the waist and buries his head into my stomach.

“Mommy, stop,” he says to me.

I do stop. I look down, see blond hair. I feel his small hands digging into my back. I see his face, now looking up at me. Scared.

I still feel the animal inside me. I still have the urge to break everything. To let everything break. To break. I have the impulse to shake him off of me and run, but I breathe an inch of air into my lungs. I hyperventilate for a minute. His small hands make circles.

“It’s okay, mommy.”

“It’s not okay,” I cry. “I cannot do this anymore. I cannot live like this. I can’t, I can’t.” And I collapse where I stand. I sit on the floor and let my head fall forward. My daughter comes out of the bathroom slowly, and sits next to me, puts a hand on my knee.

“Mommy,” she says. “Can I have something else, not oatmeal?”

And I laugh-cry. It is not a happy sound, but the sound you make when you know you already made all the choices, and what you have in front of you is the result.

I stand up, go to the cabinet, and pull out the Cocoa Puffs and all but slam the box down. I grab a clean bowl, pour the cereal inside in hot silence. I can feel their eyes on me. Watching to see if it has passed, this tempest, or not. I get the milk, pour. Spoon. Bowl.

“Here you go,” I say, defeated and walk out of the room. I walk downstairs and glace at myself in the mirror. My eyes are small, red, still wild, still haunted by whatever it was that took over. This familiar, terrible part of me.

A few minutes later, I am back in the kitchen, pretending at composure, and still needing to get the kids to school on time. “You guys need a snack for the car?” I ask with what sounds almost business-like tone. My softer side, the one I use when I have slept and no one has yelled at me before 7:30 am, is gone for the day. I just want to get them out the door without another outburst, from me, from them. I slip into the driver’s seat, listen for the click of their seat belts. And I drive us down the broken streets. As I drive, I cry behind my sunglasses.

I pull into the drop-off zone at their elementary school, and we get out and walk up the stone steps together. The tension has passed but has not been forgotten. We are quiet, our shells a pattern of cracks. The anger in me feels heavy on my system and in theirs. We are used to it. We are used to this. We move ahead because this is what we have learned to do. Keep going. Resigned to this kind of morning, afternoon, evening. I drop them in the gym, in their individual classroom lines. Backpacks, coats, in lumps on the floor. I kiss them each on top of the head and walk through the double doors and into air of morning.

Another school morning, and I drop the kids at their elementary school, and we are waiting for the first bell, and they are both holding onto me like it’s-our-last-day-together. But it’s not. It’s a Wednesday and the bell will ring in three minutes, and we still have two nights together until the weekend when their dad takes them, yet they are clinging to me like we are on some precipice and holding onto me assures survival.

I am thinking to myself, nothing happened this morning. I did not yell. I did not karate chop anything. I did not snap about what clothes they are wearing.  Here I am, a good mother, a fine mother, who did not yell today. And that is saying something.

Even so, I am the only parent flanked by her children at drop-off in a gym full of elementary school kids and backpacks and loud laughter and basketballs bouncing. My children cling, fiercely, their thin bodies plastered against mine, one on each side.  I lose my balance, try to step back, move away but they are persistent. I look around, trying to assess who is watching, who is judging.  The fact that my kids are the only kids clinging, and tantrum-ing, is something I notice daily. Especially on the good days, when I wake up and don’t yell. When I wake up and do not feel as if the world is halfway to consuming me whole.

The bell rings and I manage to shoo my daughter off to where her class lines up, but my son won’t let me go. His head is drawn down to his chest in a full pout, shoulders bent forward, no eye contact, and I realize it’s going to be another long drop-off.

“I want you to walk me,” he says in a low growl, not letting go of the sleeve he has managed to grab as I tried unsuccessfully to move away.

“I’ll walk you to the door,” I say, striking a deal. “But I’m not coming into the classroom, okay?”

I am not a happy mother. I do not smile graciously at the other over-bundled parents who actually, when I think about it, look about as groggy and stiff as I do, with some clear exceptions.

I bear down. I grab his hand and hold it firm. I wait for the second bell, saying nothing. Doing none of the sweet talk I might have done with him if my clinging child was say, three-years-old, not six.

I am resigned to this struggle, I realize. The bell tones and the children stand and pull on backpacks. Wrangler and I are already standing, waiting for the terrible moment together like two battle-worn soldiers going into combat. His terrible moment is the one I leave him; mine is the moment he won’t let me leave.

When we get to the door he slows to a stop and blocks foot traffic going into the classroom. I step us to one side and actually manage to smile up in my humiliation at the parents behind us who actually manage this day, and every other day to walk into the classroom with their child. All the way in. Wrangler and I get into our familiar eddy by the kindergarten bulletin board and circle. Inevitably, this is when Rose comes up and stands beside us silent and heavy with need.

“Rose, I need to get Wrangler in. I’ll come say goodbye to you again in a few.”

She doesn’t move.

“Rose.” My tone is hard and direct. I am sure my face is the mask I often wear, the one that looks like the Mommy Dearest I feel in my worst moments.

Rose’s first grade teacher from last year is standing at her door, touching each child tenderly, welcoming. Her gaze is not on me, but I can feel that she is looking. I feel her concern.

Inside the kindergarten classroom, I finally bribe Wrangler with some combination of ice cream promised at pick up and a threat of losing something good if he doesn’t let me leave. School has started, the second bell has rung, the other parents long gone. I have stood, yet again for the pledge of allegiance with his class in English and in Spanish. The other kids are all now sitting on the primary color rug in a circle and his teacher is firing out words that the children repeat.

I cannot help but notice that my son is the only child not sitting sedately on the pretty carpet. He is busy grabbing at my arm, and I am busy pushing his hand away. I am starting to sweat under the fluorescent lights of the classroom, and the mask of the good mom has cracked once again and I just want him to feel okay, to take off his coat and sit in his spot in the circle of kids.  He, on the other hand, wants to me pick him up and carry him out of the classroom on my hip like the good mommy I am.

But he is six.

When the perfect mixture of threat and benefit trickle through and he realizes that I will not take him home on my hip, he sits down hard, and I literally rush the door, escaping down the hall past Rose’s classroom without stopping and saying goodbye as promised.  I practically run down the wide, fairy-tale painted hallway and break through the double-doors and into the brittle morning air.

I walk by three classrooms to get to my car, the only car left in the drop-off zone. I get in, and the anger is oozing out of me, black like crude oil. There is a helplessness, and I want to cry. Or yell. Or scream about how hard it is. Just-to-drop-my-kids-at-school. A cold dread falls over me at the thought that it may always be this hard.

I turn the keys and stare ahead, willing myself not to cry, careful not to let my face crumple until I am out of the sight of my kids in their classrooms.  I do a U-turn on the quaint one-lane street and cry hard for thirty seconds once I am away from the school.

I come home, kick off my shoes, apply my slippers and assess the state of things: everything out of place. Toys and books and clothes strewn about.  Dishes and lunch makings all over. The dog has gotten on the counter while I was gone and eaten both the whole loaf of gluten-free bread and the new stick of butter.

And it’s this: Either I collapse into despair that this is my reality and sit and cry for the rest of time, or I just suck it up and start picking up socks and egg-y plates and do what I need to do before 2:30 pm when it starts all over again and I pick them up.

***

We are broken down, like an abandoned car driven over a bank of a dry river; wheel-less shot-up, rusted through to sharp points. All of us seem to sit here in the wreckage of the life we deserved, passing us by for the life I chose for us. Two good children and one good-enough mother. All of us blindly hoping that somehow, we will get it back on the road. Although there is no road. No car. Just us.

-Jaime Grechika

Jaime Grechika is a queer writer, single mother and amateur beekeeper who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She received her B.A. in English/Creative Writing from Middlebury College. She received her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts. She has been published in the Sextant Review, and Harper's Ferry Review. She was a finalist the 2021 and 2022 Short-Short Contest with Writing x Writers. She was on the longlist for the CRAFT Creative Nonfiction Award 2021 and was a runner up in Red Hen Press Quill Prose Award 2021.