I can remember the first day of kindergarten. Seriously. My dad took me to school and my little brother sat down next to me at a table that said my name on it. When it was time for them to leave me, my little brother cried and I waved goodbye. From the first day I set foot in a classroom, I knew it was were I belonged. I loved everything about school: singing the hokey-pokey, rolling out play dough, playing with my friends at recess. But the thing I loved the most were the proverbial "gold stars." You know what I'm talking about. The atta-boys and pats on the back for following the rules. The smiles and nods from the teacher when you did things right. The stickers on my paper for writing my letters better than anyone in my class. The look in the teacher's eye when I was able to read with little to no instruction. The more I did, the more I wanted to do. I didn't fully understand what was happening at the time.Little 6 year old me in My Little Pony velcro shoes and a boy hair cut had no way of knowing. But as an adult I now see clearly. I was falling prey to the first lie we all learn in school: if you are smart, good things will happen.
As I climbed the grade school ladder to middle and high school my need for stars grew even bigger, all the while kids around me got smarter and smarter. It's easy to be at the front of the class when the main objective for the day is to tie your shoes and get in the right bus line. Much harder to stand out as an over achiever when kids are studying subjects like chemistry and AP English. Having hit my intellectual peak somewhere around 6th grade, I had to circumvent the system and figured out that I would just have to work hard. Completed Running Start. Finished college early. Started teaching 6th grade at 21. Got my masters degree at 24. All the while piling my stars up and feeling like I was pretty darn special. And thus was born lie number two: if you work hard, good things will happen.
But then something unexpected happened. I got bored. School wasn't challenging. Even teaching wasn't so hard. How could something I spent my entire childhood perfecting be difficult for me? I lived and breathed school. But something was missing. That's when I decided to up the ante and challenge myself with a task I knew I would excel at: Motherhood.
Looking back, I know exactly what I thought. I read all the books. I watched my friends with kids and took mental (and maybe even some real) notes. I had been good at so many things, how could this be any different? I like to think the person in charge of the universe was somewhere laughing as they watched me think all these crazy thoughts. Laughing and wanting to play a little trick. Because what happened over the next 11 years could be seen as humorous, or horribly depressing.
I found out quickly that there were very few gold stars in raising babies. Parenting gave way to me realizing that being smart and working hard were not, in this case, going to just *make* good things happen. For every small victory there were at least three catastrophes. And even when I had something good happen, there wasn't anyone there to stamp my paper, or give me a ribbon. It seemed like no one cared if I changed a diaper, or rescued a toddler from a precarious situation, least of all the very people I was doing a mediocre job of keeping alive and well. The gold stars I once worked so hard for faded into the background of my life. None of them meant anything anymore. Who was I if I couldn't win at something? What had I become if I couldn't prove myself in this area of my life? How would I ever get back to a place where I'm good at something? Not just good. The best. How does one earn the title of "Best Mom" anyway? And is there a short cut? I'm embarrassed to say that for many years I tried to find the answer to this. And once again, failed.
Somewhere in the past five years I decided to bow out of the "Best Mom" competition. I quit trying to prove I was the best mom and started being "simple mom." Being there for my kids when they got hurt. Listening to them when they talked to me. None of my kids have done anything particularly amazing by the world's standards, but I started seeing everything they did as amazing in it's own right. Not because of who they are better than, but just because of who they themselves are. And through that process I discovered that maybe the gold stars weren't a lie after all. Maybe they were a myth, like the tooth fairy, and Santa Claus, designed to help kids make sense of a world that really doesn't make sense at all. All this time I had been trying to greedily gather more stars, only to realize that it was my turn to start handing them out.
Awesome!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jennifer!
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