Post-Pandemic Mothering and What Has Been Lost
The date is April 22, 2021. My bleary pre-dawn social media scroll tells me it’s Earth Day. (Climate change. Fuck.) The date doesn’t really matter because most days of my pandemic parenting life feel the same, but also every day feels scary and unpredictable in its own specific way, creating a constant feeling of déjà vu meets “dear god what next.” We are living through moments of history that feel intractable and unbearably heavy, in a digital world that gives us unprecedented and unrelenting access to humanity’s collective anxiety, sadness, and suffering. I’m a mom, wife, employee, volunteer, friend, sister, and daughter — every single role seeming to demand more from me than I am able to give right now. This is a typical morning for me in the year 2021.
It begins with my oldest thundering into our room shortly after dawn, the intensity of her big emotions feeling like an assault on my weary, achy, and exhausted self. She is not supposed to get out of bed until her wake-up light turns green, a rule she never follows, yet still I am enraged every single time she comes stomping in to drag me from sleep with her whines and demands. I know she is just a child. She’s starting kindergarten during a really hard year, and I need to do everything I can to mitigate the trauma she is experiencing. I know putting my own needs last is what I signed up for when I became a parent, but given that so much of the unwritten societal contract that existed when I began this mom gig has been nullified in the last year, I don’t find myself feeling very enthusiastic about upholding my end of the deal. Also, I am really bad at being tired. And I am tired a LOT these days.
Throughout 2020, I watched in horror as the supports that made my life as a working mom possible fell away one by one, every day a slow motion car crash. My sense of security in the world fell away, too. And even when life began to stabilize a bit this year, the feelings of safety and joy have been much slower to return. We have seen what this country really thinks of parents, and it’s essentially, “You’re important and all but we aren’t going to actually help you or change anything. Stop complaining and just keep going. We don’t care that you are drowning. This has been going on for a year and you are still whining about it? Get back to work.” I am finding myself feeling increasingly bitter toward motherhood these days, and this morning is no different.
I turn over in bed and rub the giant knot in my neck, my body trembling with fatigue and my mind racing with stress about the day ahead. My daughter is just being a normal kid but it’s already more than I can handle. I try to dig deep and find a nugget of compassion to help soften my reaction to her, but I come up empty handed. I’m panning for gold in a river long depleted of its resources. The water is lifeless and gray. I yell until she shuts herself back in her room, already crying and fighting me and my feet haven’t touched the floor yet. I feel like a horrible mom but I just don’t have the energy for engaging with her. I spend every day trying in vain to help her manage her emotions and there is little room for my own, so they often bubble up and force their way out at inopportune moments.
In an impulse I can rarely control these days, I reach for my phone — my gateway to Elsewhere. I respond to texts and emails with forced cheerfulness I hope will become genuine as the day progresses. I scroll Instagram and Facebook, absorbing the emotional impact of every piece of content I come across. A friend’s dad recently died after a long battle with cancer. A former college classmate got a big promotion that deserves to be celebrated, especially because we so often only celebrate women for getting married and having babies. A woman I don’t know has finally unlocked the body of her dreams. I see photos of kids who look well-behaved and well-adjusted. I see smiles. I detect sarcasm. Anger. Fear. There’s a new latte at Starbucks. I click on a blog post about how George Floyd will never get to hug his daughter again and that can’t be called justice. I click on an article about how 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant was killed by Columbus police for having a knife after basically no effort to de-escalate the situation in a way that didn’t end with her death. I click back to Facebook and see a meme about how people who have push start in their cars never really know where their keys are, tag someone who relates. I’ve been on my phone for five minutes and I already have emotional whiplash, but at least I feel something. At least I was temporarily transported to somewhere else.
It’s time for my oldest daughter to get on the bus, but she is crying hysterically about wanting more cereal. It seems like this is probably not really about the cereal but we don’t have time to get into that. My younger daughter is running around in circles, making a mess of everything she touches and trying to keep her body attached to mine as much as physically possible. I’m clobbering around in my pajamas, my mind spinning as I search for the perfect words that will make my kids feel seen and loved and comforted while also keeping them on track and stopping my oldest daughter’s meltdown so she doesn’t miss the bus. I haven’t even had a sip of coffee so none of those thoughts make the leap to influencing my behavior. I end up dragging my oldest out the door, shouting at her to put on her shoes and calm down. My husband tells her to say goodbye to me and tell me she loves me. She doesn’t. I wordlessly close the door behind them, a little too hard. In these moments, the children feel like a crisis, and I just want it to be over.
My husband gets the youngest off to daycare while I wait for ibuprofen to loosen my neck enough that I can get going for the day. I head to the bathroom and look in the mirror. I notice the purple circles under my eyes. My face looks puffy and lined. I’ve aged ten years since 2019. Just then my husband returns home from daycare drop-off, looking beaten down as he hovers outside the bathroom to tell me that the new tent we bought is broken because it couldn’t withstand the weight of the late-April snow storm yesterday. We neglected to get it taken down and properly put away after our daughter’s outdoor birthday party the week before, and now the joints are cracked. So that’s $160 wasted, but it’s not a big deal.
I finally split open. Hot tears roll down my face. “I can’t do this anymore,” I tell him. “I don’t know how many more times I can say that I can’t do this anymore.” His eyes are full of sympathy, solidarity, and love. He rubs my shoulders as I cry for a minute. “I’m sorry, but I have to jump on a call,” he says, giving me a small, sad smile as he turns toward the door. “It’s okay,” I say, wiping my tears away and getting out my toothbrush. “I have to get to work anyway.” I put on some makeup. I spray dry shampoo on my oily roots. Before long, I look decent enough to convince myself that I’m doing okay. I pour myself a large coffee, gather my things and head out of the door.
I keep going for one more day.
