There is an intensity of emotions in motherhood that I have never experienced before – wildly swinging from love to hate and back to love again in moments – and yet in many ways I am more steady, more patient, more even tempered than I have ever been. Anyway, I love this quote from Lamott about her baby’s naps. Actually I love her whole damn book.
I wish he could take longer naps in the afternoon. He falls asleep and I feel I could die of love when I watch him, and I think to myself that he is what angels look like. Then I doze off, too, and it’s like heaven, but sometimes only twenty minutes later he wakes up and begins to make his gritchy rodent noises, scanning the room wildly. I look blearily over at him in the bassinet, and think, with great hostility. Oh God, he’s raising his loathsome reptilian head again.
From Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year
Many evenings as I go in for the final check on the kids before I head off to bed, my heart swells so much that I think it could burst with love and then fingers crossed I wish that the little “buggers” will stay alseep until 6am. I love that extract from Anne’s book – I am hearing you!
Perfect description
Whoever said that you love them more when they are asleep was very wise indeed.
I recall those swings from the earlier years, particularly the toddler years, but not now. An age thing, maybe? But then, my children all slept (which I am very, very well aware is due to the roll of the genetic dice). I think we are in the midst of the easy years – old enough to be very good company, to be reasonable, to be self-cleaning and self-feeding (they even make their own school lunches – win!) – but not so old enough yet that the difficulties of changing bodies and hormone surges are upon us.
Also, they are still very, very beautiful indeed when they are asleep. Even Ms Eleven.
Oh gods, I know that feeling. 😛
i love that book! i’ve read it a million times.
You can get some pretty wild anger from the teenagers – they’ll poke you to get a reaction. They do sleep fairly well, I’ll say that 😉
Anne Lamott is a genius at making it all feel normal–the wild swings of love and hate. Coming to terms with the stew and the mess of loving and hating and using it to understand ourselves better can be a gift also.
I am a grandma and a retiring psychotherapist and I have my own messy parenting feelings to consult on these matters as well as those of my “confessing” patients.
I read a stupid study abouot a year ago that claimed that most parents wished they didn’t have children.
They based this on reports that parents most enjoyed their moments of peace and quiet, watching tv at night without children, or rare child-free outings.
It didn’t seem to occur to them that because these moments are Rare for people with small children, it makes them precious. but it doesn’t’ mean you don’t’ enjoy the time with the kids, nor that you wish you didn’t have them.
I totally love that book to and exactly that quote.
I also love Daphne de Marneffe’s Maternal Desire, which I think you were talking about a while back.
Both Lamott and de Marneffe were humungously reassuring to me — there excellent description of all sorts of motherly ambivalence just made me go, ah! of course that’s normal!
I’m mama to a 3 month old and sometimes struggle with just how much I identify with your commentary on this. Thanks for being honest though.
What a relief it is to read this post.
I’ve just spent a couple of days feeling hugely guilty because I vented to a couple of friends in a moment of frustration and I actually said I didn’t like my child just then, that I have times when I hate this mothering thing.
They just stared at me in a concerned kind of way. I felt awful and contrite.
I think I’ll email them a link to this post.