Guilt Hangs On to Mother Love

I was in a hurry, not wanting to press my luck.

She, not quite 8 months old, was strapped in the baby carrier that was straddling the grocery cart. I was picking things off the shelves and throwing them beneath her into the cart.

She was happy, sometimes just tossing her arms into the air out of pure delight, but who knew how long it would last? I just wanted to get on with it and get out.

She was alternating between chewing her feet--first one, then the other--and an orange plastic toy, also in the shape of a foot. She is very attached to this foot.

Perhaps that is because she already knows: Feet play a starring role in our lives. It seems they are always taking us, her father and I, someplace else. She and her sister are usually left behind.

Then suddenly, here in the supermarket, the mental static playing between my ears fades to white. It’s then that I hear the music, piped in nice and soft, surely designed to put us shoppers in the mood to spend.

“This is the time to remember,” Billy Joel is singing. “ ‘Cause it will not last forever. These are days to hold on to. . . .”

And then I almost sit down in the aisle of the supermarket and cry.

Guilt.

Most every mother I know, of a certain age, with certain expectations, feels it. Sometimes it goes so deep that our bones vibrate with its implications.

Am I making the right choice? How can I know? What if I’m not ?

There are exceptions, of course, mothers who don’t look back, or forward, to torture themselves with the question, “What if?”

What if I could have made partner if I’d stayed with the firm? What if I had the time to join the PTA if I’d stayed at home? What if nobody notices what I do, either way?

But I’ve met so few mothers completely at home with their choices--whether voluntary or not--that when I do, my first inclination is to question whether or not these women are for real. These days, only a Stepford Mother never doubts.

Because we of flesh and blood, often with the bags under our eyes, and perhaps a tear or two pooled and just waiting to drop, expect so much of ourselves.

The pressure comes from all sides, and once it surrounds us, it penetrates the skin. Pinpricks of guilt can keep me up at night.

“Mommy, I like it when you’re at home,” I hear my 4 year-old say.

“Mommy, I want you to pick me up from school all the time,” she told me the other day. I had dropped by her preschool as “a treat” after an interview I’d arranged was cut unexpectedly short.

I signed her up for kindergarten shortly after that. I am the second to arrive, with all the requisite papers in hand, feeling ridiculously proud.

My neighbor, who stays at home with her kids, is first. I suggest we car-pool, that I can take and she can pick up. My offer feels somehow unseemly, like I am bargaining over my child. And even then, my position is not very strong. There is no way I can pick up: I work.

Then there is the receptionist, when I hand in all my completed forms. She tells me that my daughter will need two more shots right away, the ones my pediatrician says should wait until she is 5 years old. The receptionist says that isn’t good enough.

“We have problems with this all the time ,” she says. “Parents say they’ll do it, then they don’t. They forget. Parents can get very lax. If we let everyone get away with it, we’d have a mess. You know how people are.”

I hear myself telling this woman, interrupting her to make sure that she gets the point, “I am not that kind of mother.”

Of course, what kind is that? One who doesn’t love her child? One who is selfish? One who doesn’t really give a damn?

Yes, they are surely out there. Or so I have heard. I haven’t met any myself, and I meet all kinds. Married, single, divorced, adoptive, surrogate, older and outrageously young. None of them are perfect, but perfection remains an endlessly frustrating goal.

So I am back to guilt once again.

The other day a reader, a mother of three, said she was surprised to hear that I had two young children. Only she sounded more like she was in shock. She said she didn’t know how I did it, what with writing this column three times a week.

Then she paused a moment; she didn’t want to be rude.

“Oh, but what you’re doing is important ,” she said. “Maybe if I had a job like yours I would have stayed at work too.”

There goes that gong again.

So I told this mother what I tell myself and what I believe to be true. I’ve made a choice to work outside of the home, and my husband has too. I’m fortunate that the choice has always been my own.

I hope that this is best for my family, and for me too. We are happy about it most of the time. Both of my parents worked when my sister and I were young and, as they say, we all turned out just fine. That goes for my mother and father, too.

The trade-off, of course, is doubt and its ugly cousin, guilt.

My guess is that won’t go away, not as long as there are different paths to choose.