KC's 1988 journal Excerpts on being a Mother

     In her second journal from 1988, KC wanted to make sure she that did a better job of raising our son, Miles, than her parents had done with her.  She recognized that being a mother was more challenging that she'd imagined, and especially so when you've grown up without good role models.  

     She'd gotten pregnant early in 1980, after the first time we'd agreed to make "unprotected" love.   We were renting a house in Hermosa Beach, CA, at that time and we were both also working full-time. 

     Our baby was two weeks late (apparently reluctant to leave the womb), so labor was finally induced.  Contractions started later that day, and her water broke just as I got her to the hospital that evening.  I stayed by her side, holding her hand, and coaching her through her breathing, all that night and into the morning after she'd been moved into the delivery room and the nurses had taken over.

     But after 15 hours of heroic pushing (all of which I witnessed), there was still insufficient dilation... but more significantly, her vitals had become sufficiently troubling that her doctor "called it" (she and him had agreed on a "natural" childbirth, if at all possible) and she was wheeled into an OR for an emergency c-section.  She was given local anesthesia and was also being carefully monitored.  I been allowed to stay with her, no longer by her side, of course, but at the top of the slightly-elevated gurney, so I could talk to her and she could hear me. 

     I remember it all like it was yesterday, especially when the doctor pulled our not-so-little baby by his feet out of the horizontal opening he'd just created in her abdomen, pulling him slightly from side-to-side, to clear this surprisingly-small opening.   Of course our little baby boy (a fact now demonstratively confirmed) was not happy about being suddenly and forcefully evicted from his comfy digs and let everyone withing hearing range know it!

     She was wheeled into an adjacent hallway/room - and these details escape me, both then and now - because I was focused entirely on her.  Sure, I kept up a stream of soothing remarks on what a great job she'd done, what a perfect little boy she'd nurtured and brought into the world... But I could tell, she had well and truly had it, and I mean HAD IT.  I had never seen her like this before, this wasn't just exhausted, she was ready to let go... and I mean ready to let go of it all, ready leave for good! 

     And let's face it, it's not every day that an eleven-and-a-half-pound baby gets delivered!  But it wasn't just me, either.  Why else did her anesthesiologist keep coming by - it seemed like every 5 minutes or so - to "check on her", to "make sure she was doing ok".  Was this normal?  I mean he struck as a very competent and caring kind of guy.  Maybe he was just picking up on my evident concern?  After all, between dating and marriage, I'd known her for almost a decade and so I felt I knew her pretty well.  I also knew her family's issues with difficult childbirths, stillbirths, spontaneous abortions, sudden post-partum bleeding and its consequences, and I was worried I was going to lose her. 

     So I did what any loving husband would do, I prayed to God like I'd never prayed before!   I made Him this solemn promise: "Please, Lord, please don't take her from me!  I promise I will never, ever do this to her again!  Please, just let her live!"

       And as you can see from these pictures, He did, and she did, and yes, I kept my promise.

     I see this as a time of transition, partly because Miles is no longer a baby.  One of my limits, self-imposed, is that I think it would be unwise for me to have any more kids at this point.  I want to finish my degree, and to my surprise and delight, I want to continue studying my art and painting pictures. 

     Fresh start or no, I can't ignore the collapse of my old defense systems.  Codependency was my main defense system.  I was denying my feelings, my real feelings.  And I was still caught in old traps. 

     Miles often makes me little creations.  It's the beginning of his art.  I, too, once wanted to make my mother happy with me.  I wanted the love she was never able to give me.  I hope I make this process a lot easier for Miles than my mother did for me. 

     The hardest thing facing me right now is how to balance my own needs against the needs of the family.  I really have to be selective about how the money gets spent — and worry that I'll cheap out on Miles the way I once was cheaped out by my parents.  And I'm worried that I'll cheap out on myself. Again. 

     Realistically, I know if I could make money I could help Miles get a better education.  So it seems okay to invest in myself now, while he's still young and the cost of education is so low. 

     Maybe it will be good for him if I provide a model of taking care of oneself appropriately. 

     Floundering feels like the greatest limitation of all.  It's great that I have the freedom I do, to make choices about what I'll do with my life.

     Options: 

     Stay at home.   The traditional route.  Be the full-time homemaker.  Make curtains and pillows, the arts applied to the home.  Eventually can go crazy with this dead-end, but will end up with a cute house. 

     Go to school.   More drifting?  That's what it feels like.  Set a goal, get credentials.  Get a job.  Become an academic.  Become a professional. 

     Be a full-time artist.   Forget that.  I can't be a full-time anything unless I give up wife - and motherhood.  Something I'm not prepared to do.  Not willing to sacrifice my loved ones for the sake of higher ideals. 

     Work part-time.   Only after more education.  Nothing I could do now would begin to pay enough to make it worthwhile. 

     Why do I need/want to make money?  Freedom, Independence.  I have freedom of a sort right now, freedom to manage Peter's paycheck. 

     He and I are very compatible, fortunately. I guess we've seen that over and over through the years. 

     What about me?  Was being along for the ride good enough? 

     No.  I had a kid and I had to drop out; I was making about a third of what he was.  I didn't, at first, put much value on mothering.  It was a dirty job and someone had to do it.  I wasn't ready to give up on my career, hadn't really achieved any success.  I was drifting, pretty much.  And I was emotionally exhausted by all the changes in my life.  I'm glad now that I "dropped out" and am sorry I didn't have more self-confidence about my choice.  Instead, I saw myself as dependent on Peter.  Compensating for that was the fact that he now had to work twice as hard to support me and Miles. 

     But things changed.  Things gradually got better.  My old resentment at doing all the giving began to resurface.  I felt guilty at my lack of gratitude toward this man I loved, who worked so hard for me.  But I could also see that in the world's eyes he was somebody and at best, I was the wife of somebody. 

     Now I think, maybe the world's values stink.  Maybe I shouldn't measure myself by the world's values.  Maybe I should see that other women resent the success I share with Peter.  They'd like to see me running around like they do, with no time for enjoying life. 

     I'm no hero, no saint.  Sometimes I've given out of love, sometimes out of altruism, sometimes out of self-interest or pride.  If other people are jealous of me because of the public face I put on, that's their problem.  I like myself, think I deserve a happy life.  I don't think God brought me into this world so I'd never know joy.  I've had my share of sorrow, but I don't believe in manufacturing misery. 

     I did give up a certain kind of freedom when I married Peter — the freedom to be a young and beautiful career woman.  Once I married, my first allegiance was to the marriage, not the job. 

     But I gained a lot more than I gave up.  I could never see that until recently. 

     I've been feeling very emotional lately, my hormones giving me the business, I guess.  Plus all the stress of the job-change and money and car problems  Little things drive me nuts, like not being able to find the vacuum cleaner attachment, which has disappeared into thin air. 

     Time to go get Miles.  I spent today reading, taking a short nap, going to the store to get a little wicker tray for the bathroom clutter.  Just cruising like an old-fashioned housewife.  Someday's I read "difficult" books but today it was a satisfying novel by Gail Godwin.  Every other page she gives me a new angle on my life.

     Back when I was working I felt like I never had any free time to think.  Now I have a lot more time and I want to use it well.  But I feel adrift.  

     Ostensibly I quit my job to stay home and take care of Miles.  But I also stayed home to take care of myself.

     I'd like to go back to school seriously; full-time eventually.  But I can start now.  Finishing my degree is doing something for myself. 

     I don't feel called to having any more children than Miles.  I feel lucky to have had him, as it is. 

     I want more than anything to give God praise for the present moment. 

     I was so anxious to prove my worth to society by living the feminist, modern media fantasy – the do-it-all woman.  And I failed, abruptly.  I kept wondering why I screwed up, I couldn't figure it out.  Now I see I did the right thing for me by staying home with Miles — I did the right thing for him, too, and for Peter, I think.  My "career" was going nowhere as it was.  I wasn't doing anything I really loved, though the pay wasn't bad.  My heart just wasn't in it. 

     I wasn't the world's greatest mother, either.  I began to realize the extent to which my own mother's indifference toward me gave me none of the learned responses to use with Miles.  I was amazed that I didn't know what to do — that the ordinary cooing and baby talk was totally missing from my repertoire.  It took me a long, long time to break those barriers and hold my baby and look him in the eyes and smile.   In a way he and I are survivors of those confusing times and because we made contact late in the game, we value it all the more.   I sense from him now his whole-hearted affirmation of my being as mother, and I whole-heartedly claim him as my son. 

   The simplest things in my life turned out to have the most depth and meaning for me.  They were the sine qua non of my existence.  They were the two aspects of my life in which I gave of myself out of love – and in the case of having Miles, out of courage, as well. 

     What happened after this discovery?  I think I gradually began to claim myself for the first time in my life.  Oh, it's been a very slow process, indeed.  Bit by bit I expanded my horizons, my sense of possibilities – and awareness of my proper scope of responsibility. 

     A life of self-blame is not the same as a life of self-examination.  There is a time and place to take on blame, but not every waking moment of every day.  I thought that helping myself would be much too selfish.  I didn't understand that if I was ever going to really help others I have to clean up my own act, first.  To do otherwise, despite all my good intentions, would be arrogance. 

     But all these realizations came very slowly.  These moments of awakening seemed to rise up from the depths of my soul.  It was like giving birth – the seed would be planted by an encounter with another's thought or experience, would grow slowly and painfully would make its presence known. 

     I believe in giving a child a structured, but expanding series of choices to make — based on instinct as much as any other factor.  That is the way in which a parent should know their child — they should know honestly, not colored by assumptions and preconceived notions of what one should expect at such and such a point.  Each child grows as God intended, not according to some societal or parental doctrine.  We can know our children well enough to intuit what they're ready for. 

     I can see that I deal with anxiety by getting very wordy.  And I take myself too seriously.  Overall, though, I think I've been making some real progress the last several months.  It's been a difficult time of transition. 

     How do I live out my beliefs?  And what exactly are my values, anyway?  

     Responsibilities 

     Raising Miles 

     Being a good wife 

     Share of housework 

     Doing my creative work 

     Planning 

     Preferences 

     Thinking 

     Doing my art 

     Reading 

     Go to movies, leisure activities 

     Values 

     If you're going to do something, do it well. 

     Don't take on more than you can reasonably manage. 

     Seek the highest good in all endeavors 

     Change what can be changed, ask for God's help on the rest. 

     Room for improvement 

     Slow down, take one day at a time. 

     Don't play God. 

     Accept measure of loneliness. 

     Get education. 

     Make new friends.

     Tolstoy said children were eager to learn, did not need to be disciplined into learning.  In our time the authorities very carefully parcel out chunks of information, easily digestible nuggets of fodder.  Children are not encouraged to challenge themselves in any way by ingesting anything "difficult".  The methods of control have changed but the basic goal remains the same. 

     If I were to revise my life voluntarily, where would I begin?  There are so many things I take for granted – not that I ever take anything for granted, really, I'm too neurotic for that.  But there are certain things I prefer to have rather than not.  I love our home, for example.  In the last three years it's grown on me, like a good-fitting and beloved old sweater.  I love old cars and would get another one tomorrow if I could.  I love cars, period.  I like the old things we've gotten over the course of the years, the memories I associate with those things are precious. It goes without saying that my relationship with Peter and Miles is the very foundation of my health and well-being. 

     Ultimately all those dear people and things will be gone – but naturally I want to put off that day.  At this point now would I want to give up any of them freely?  Is there any higher cause than my responsibility to this family? 

     I'd say not but Christ says there is, and I often wonder about that.  In my soul I know it's true, that on some level we always owe God more. 

     So back to the original question, What would I revise? I think the last fifteen years have been critical for my mental health.  The stress of my family had me worn out and confused.  Building a family of my own has given me proof that I can love and be loved.  All those things which are symbols of this love are precious to me, very, very precious.  They are gifts from God to me, and I hope I have used them well. 

     I'm going to the thrift stores today to look for an old dresser for my room.  Miles could use one, too.  I decided to let Miles stay home today, on the basis of a big sneeze as he was making his breakfast.  He'll be a good help and he does seem out of it lately.  A day off will do him good.  

     To take risks privately is a whole different matter from taking risks publicly.  I took a big risk when I decided to give up my "career" and be stay-at-home Mom, bigger than I fully realized.  I'd give myself an A on the success of the venture.  Now I have to move forward, into new territory. 

     The best thing, I keep telling myself, is to be myself. 

     This struggle to determine who one is, it never really ends.  But thank God, by this point in my life some of the urgency has worn off.  Oddly because on some areas I've given up.  There are some aspects of my life where I simply cannot be dogmatic — I have to live with "I don't know".   In fact there's not much I feel very strongly about beyond loving God and my family.  Everything goes from there.  No one else can tell me to do that, people can advise on how best to do that, but it's mine to choose.  Perhaps I see my individuality most truly resting right here, in how and where and when I choose to love. 

     Family for me means my immediate family, of course, and the people God – or chance – send my way. 

     I admit I'd be uncomfortable if I saw Miles growing away from me, into a lighter, richer world — I would miss him. 

     But I want him to have a much more fulfilled life than mine.  I don't believe the route is necessarily to "buy" him that life in an obvious way – putting him in a "name" school, etc.  It's more of a question of experience – that's what I choose to emphasize. 

     What do I feel guilty about these days?  Putting the expense of my own education over the expense of putting Miles into a fancier school – something I'd resist in any case after having dealt with that in my own childhood.  I'd rather get the means to get a good job in a few years and put him through a decent college.  But the guilt lingers. 

     It's six thirty and Miles is still asleep.  I'd like to leave here in an hour for the Y.  It's painful for me to vary the routine, painful for him, too, I think.  There's always the urge to have reliable maps. 

     Miles told me he enjoyed his first day at the Y.  I hope they have him swimming by the end of the summer.