The Formative Years

of childhood, of motherhood

My sister and I were recently talking about how brief our time as children is, but how many memories we have of childhood, and how exactly the same number of years of our childhood is what we are allotted with our own offspring when they are children. It’s odd that, generally speaking and God willing, we will spend many more years as mothers to adult children versus the years spent raising our children when they are babies, toddlers, elementary aged, yet it’s the small years we think of when we hear the word “Motherhood.” I don’t have anyone in diapers anymore, but when I think of myself “being a mom” I recall swaying in the back of church with a baby on my hip, or pushing the Aldi cart with two toddlers in that blessed double seat, or falling behind on all the family hikes, either stopping to nurse the baby or because the smallest child is doesn’t always get very far. Maybe my perspective and memories will change with time. Maybe I’ll lump “college visits” into my memory folder labeled “Motherhood,” along with the surprise baked goods from teenagers and the endless driving between events and places. Maybe alongside the exhaustion and chaos of the early years, my mind will also hold the quiet afternoons of computer work, reading, and fiber arts. When I am old and crinkly and remembering my own role as a mother, will I remember my girls as teenagers, holed up in their room writing stories in their Five-Star notebooks? Will I remember the transition of cooking dinner in The Witching Hour to cooking dinner alone, with music playing, all children otherwise occupied, keeping to themselves, even if they are hangry? I have that vision of my future life because that’s what occupies my teens while Sylvi (and sometimes Ingrid) are still active Witching Hour participants. I think I’ll definitely be adding all of these teen days to my memories folder, but still… I think I’ll always think most on the beginning when I think of the word “motherhood.”

What stood out to me in my conversation with my sister, and what I’ve been kind of thinking on ever since, is that term “formative years.” On paper, I look at childhood as a fleeting season of less than two decades, and by definition, the formative years only are until you’re what—eight? Ten? I always think of it as till about 4th or 5th grade. That’s not a long time! And beyond that definition, by the time you’re 18 you really aren’t a kid anymore, and up to about age six, what kind of memories can you have? But then I think of my childhood and that overused term “core memory” and, I realize—we have a new pope! And suddenly the Eucharistic prayer says “Leo our pope and Timothy our bishop” but my brain, it still recites “John Paul our pope and William our bishop,” every single time, and my friends, John Paul hasn’t been pope for A LONG TIME. And William hasn’t been our bishop here for a very long time either! But those are the words carved into my brain, slated there in childhood, now immortal.

And we all have those things, those memories from childhood that are always there, forevermore tripping us up, because in those formative years things were one way, and even though time has changed them, and even though now we are adults, they are still in there! Parts of our childhood years are still so much WHO WE ARE, even though childhood was brief, even though childhood was a long time ago. Those brief , long ago years of childhood give us a brainful of everlasting memories.

In that way, I wonder if the formative years of childhood are also the formative years of motherhood. The time when it’s new and fresh, and kind of scary, and every decision seems to matter so much. Baby’s first food is a big decision! Diaper brands, stroller brands, bottle or breast? What are they saying now—back sleep, or tummy sleep? Or side sleep with one of those little foam wedges? The reaction to naughty behavior, the reaction accidental cursing out of tiny, innocent mouths, (my nephew had a really hard time with the word “firetruck” when he was about 2… he put in an extra f, I’ll let you guess the placement. He also REALLY liked firetrucks, especially when he saw them out in public!) Am I teaching them enough? Am I teaching them the right things? These moments, these short years, they are beautiful but weighty. By the time they’re teenagers, you have a different sort of relationship, you know them better and it’s not as new, even if the path is still a little murky, you have some input from the child (or the not-a-child-for-much-longer) and in the troubly times you’re leaning more on desperate prayers and star-wishes than feeling the enormous responsibility of early motherhood, when everything you do directly impacts their health and well being, both physical and emotional. You go from wondering if you’re using the right toothpaste or exposing them to enough playdates with other children, to much darker wonderings that are more about their own choices and actions than yours. With teens, the crying once they go to sleep is more like “I hope they don’t do something really, really stupid,” instead of “I hope they don’t bite their college classmates like they they bite their preschool classmates.” In a way it’s really much heavier when they are older, except, for some reason, those early years felt… scarier. Higher stakes. I never had a problem with potty training my girls, but I know it’s a pretty standard worry, when kids get to a “too old” age, or they are going to school and need to ditch the diapers pre-enrollment, mothers worry that their children just will never potty train. Never! Somehow, when it’s happening, that is a true fear that feels completely legitimate. My kids have always been hitters… I have cried many a tear worrying that they would grow up to just start whaling on fellow shoppers in the checkout line who have gotten a lot of items, are super slow at unloading, and are paying with a check. And even though by the time I was 8-10 years into motherhood I think I was sort of getting the swing of things, I’m still a worrier with each girl. Right now I’m in the phase of “Sylvi will never want to learn to read, so she will definitely grow up to be illiterate and will obviously end up living under a bridge.” Because of course that’s how it will go, naturally, since she’s five and says learning to read is boring. Of course. Oh, and vegetables! The stress over vegetables! Now that they’re teenagers, I’m kind of wishing their tastes would go back to being as cheap as pasta with butter and salt, but many were the days way back when that I lamented the lack of vitamins entering their systems.

I have so many gorgeous memories of my girls as young children. Just amazingly beautiful. I can picture Anja and Greta standing at this little half-circle table we had where they would color pictures or eat their lunches (of plain pasta.) (Actually, Anja mostly ate cheese for her first four years. That’s all she would eat! Cheese! She still loves cheese!) We had a little CD player in the kitchen above a bookshelf that was only filled with board books. The kitchen was always filled with music and board books scattered everywhere and little barely-walking girls bopping up and down to the music. There was one particular early summer, the year Elka was born, that was a terrible drought—terrible!—but every morning was clear blue sunny skies and the girls and I would go outside and they would play in the kiddie pool while I sat in the shade talking to them and it was just magical. We had a kids’ album by Kira Wiley and we listened to “Sun Salutation” every morning. We planted raspberries that year. This was before smartphones, when there were no distractions; we just had each other, compact discs, and the Soulemama blog. When Elka was born in June, the drought was still horrible but all I remember of that summer is the endless sunshine and day after day of happiness with my three daughters. And then the three became four. And now it’s five.)

What will they remember? Are the same things that are so concrete in my memory what they think of when they remember their early years? Will they say they had an overall happy childhood? What will be announced as surprise trauma down the line, when I thought I was really doing something right? What enormous efforts put in by me will be lost to them, just blown away from their memory completely? I worry. I have so many deep memories from those formative mothering years—good and bad—and I want them to have mostly good. Yikes, I have some memories from those years that I definitely hope are not shared by them. You know, those “worst self” moments. Will the good overshadow the bad? I can hope.

It’s kind of neat, I think, how we grow together with our children on parallel paths. It’s a really unique experience, getting a second session of formative years. And it’s funny that where John Paul II and William Higi will be the names of the Eucharistic prayer in my head forever, theirs will probably be Francis and Timothy, or now for the youngers, Leo and Timothy. How amazing that in all these memories, in all these events and experiences there are such differences, but also such overlaps, because the best, best, BEST part of being a mother is that you get to live a portion of your life—your one, single life— with these amazing children.