Self-Definition Switch

Early motherhood is a meatgrinder. Pre-child you is fed in one end, and out the other comes maternal-you--ground up, bloody and raw. It's not pretty, and it's not fun. And it felt permanent, too. From I Am Andrea to I Am Mom, and then trying to figure out how to marry those things together.

Now? I hardly ever think about it.

In fact, in the wake of the Truth In Advertising post, I realized that somehow, without my realizing it, I no longer consider being a Mom a central part of my identity. Frances is a separate person; we have a relationship that is the biggest part of my life and a huge responsibility, of course. But that relationship is no longer something I am. Now it's something I do.

It's something I do a lot, but it's not me. Like being a daughter, a sister, a friend. I say I "am" those things; but what I really mean, if I think about it, is that I participate in them. In a fundamentally different way than I mean when I say I "am"--I don't know--an introvert. Or analytical. Or overly sensitive.

I don't even consider myself a single mom so much, although of course in demographic terms that is what I am and the census-takers would not expect me to pontificate when asking me a direct question about my demographic status. But while it was a riveting question for, I'd say, the first six months after I moved out, in the same way that motherhood was a riveting question for the first two years, now I sit down and can't quite puzzle out what "single" and "mom" even have to do with each other. It seems to have about as much relevance as "single runner" or "environmentalist mom." Enh. So what?

I don't know. Maybe I'm just terminally sleep-deprived, but "single" and "mom" today feel like two unrelated things. The first is a signifier of a lack of one kind of relationship, and the latter a signifier of a different kind of relationship; so the first, I suppose, is something I don't do right now, and the second is something I do. But they're still not me. And what do they have to do with each other, except that according to a commonly-held cultural viewpoint you're supposed to do both of them in tandem?

They've both changed me. But they're not me. Any more than I am my job, my apartment, my friendships.

I'm afraid that this will come off reading as if I don't love Frances as much as I ever did, or as if I care less about motherhood in general or being a good mom or all of those other very good things. But it's not that. (As anyone reading last week's mommyblogging post could probably tell.) It's not even that I think I have the motherhood question all sorted out; good mothering continues to occupy all sorts of valuable mental real estate. (How do you get a highly-conservative four-year-old to try spicy food? How do you dissuade her from snuggling with the baby mole for long enough to finish the dishes? What's better: an extra ten minutes of joint playtime, or another short book before bed?) It's more a sense of separateness, possibly facilitated by spending two days a week apart: I have no choice but to become someone separate from motherhood.

[This is where I restrained myself from blathering on about the many many meanings of the verb "to be" that all get muddled up together and confused.]

But it's a very curious--and possibly temporary, I know--sensation. Now motherhood is at the top of a very long list of things that I do and roles that I play, something that as it turns out I can stop doing for a few days each week and still be the same person (unlike being introverted, or overly sensitive, which I could not stop doing for a few days and still be the same person). Which is not how it felt in the beginning, not at all.

Posted by Andrea at April 29, 2008 1:49 PM under Single Momming

EMAIL this entry

(comments fields are below this section)