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I'm tired. Is anyone else tired? I feel almost wiped-out, almost overwhelmed by the weight of the things people are going to ask me to do this week. I feel like all I do these days is turn obediently here or there as instructed by the people positioning me for their benefit.
I'm not really complaining about that. I'm not. This is the life I sought and I take great pride in being able to take care of my family well. More, I take great pride in being able to do it all better than it was done by the women in my family who came before me. I take pleasure in that the way I would in orchestrating the humiliating downfall of a hated enemy in the middle of the schoolyard at recess.
That doesn't say anything good about me and it doesn't even say what I really mean about the load I carry or how I carry it. I say this without a wink - my goal has always been to raise my kids with love and to never give up on them no matter how tough being a parent can be (as I was given up on). I've done that. I've raised kids who know I love them, who are better, stronger people than I am, tougher and less afraid. They don't steal or cheat people. They stand up for what they believe is right and they are the kind of people who will befriend the least popular kid on the block. I love my kids and I take tremendous pride and pleasure in them. If I do nothing else in my life, I did that and however tough it has been, I wouldn't change it for the world.
But underneath my pride in being a fairly good mother, there is always that undercurrent, that whispering nyah-nyah-nyah at my mother who did it so badly and who I am still so angry with. My mother and her mother before her. Inside me, the perpetually confused, hurt little girl has been joined by a spiteful woman who wants to flick my mother off her shoulder like a speck of dandruff. "How hard was it, really?" I want to ask. I know if I go back through my journals, I will find evidence of times when I felt desperate and on the verge of collapse, but ultimately, it isn't hard to love your children.
Stephen King, in his book about writing, says you should write the first draft without ever stopping to proof it. He says let it all come out the way it wants and fine tune it later because if you stop, you lose your rhythm. I wonder, if I let it all come out here, how it will end up, how I'll be able to fix it or fine tune it so it doesn't sound as awful as it does right now. I started out just whining about being tired and feeling pissy and it turned into this snotty tirade against Mom. I think it happened when I felt I had to justify feeling tired or overwhelmed, which, it seems to me, is a singularly female thing to need to do. Men are never asked to justify how tired they are.
