Parenting Without A License

Maternal Insticts

Posted by Kimberly on January 30th, 2008 — Posted in Kipple

Ow.

Motherhood  hurts.

I mean, we all know about the labour pain.  And the sending my baby out into the harsh, cruel world pain.  And the “I hate you!” tween angst pain.  But  that’s not what I’m talking about today.
Tonight I’m blogging this us using the time honoured hunt and peck method, because I seem to have pulled a muscle in my left shoulder.  How?  Just by being Diva Girl’s mom.

She’s been looking forward to the Girl Guide tubing trip since Christmas.  The fact that she had no idea what tubing is did nothing to dampen her enthusiasm for the experience, nor did the fact that it was about -22 tonight with the windchill.  Exactly the kind of night you want to spend outside, careening down a mountain of snow while ensconced in an innertube, particularly when you seem to be coming down with a nasty cold.

Maybe I should have said no and cancelled the outing.  Her increasingly deep chest cough and my aching shoulder would certainly point towards that having been the better course of action.  But I just couldn’t bear to disappoint her that way.

So, because I love my daughter, we layered up (I even wore jeans even though I was wearing the snowpants and could have totally gotten away with the flannel jammie pants) and headed out into the cold, dark night.  I really wasn’t hoping for much out of the evening beyond not freezing my toes off.  I definitely didn’t expect to have a ball.

But we did.  Yes, it was cold.  And kind of scary for someone who is decidedly NOT fond of heights.  And a wee bit embarrassing when I fell on my arse getting onto the little people mover thing that takes you up the mountain.  In front of the very, very cute snowbunny guy.   But, in spite of all that, we had a great time.

Diva Girl and I don’t spend a lot of one on one time together anymore.  It’s just the nature of the family dynamic when you’ve got two kids and one parent–the one on one stuff is at a premium.  I miss it though.  Much though I love the Zen Baby, a part of me misses the family I had before, when it was just me and Diva Girl and everything was so much less complicated.  So, just getting the chance to hang out with my girl with no distractions is a treat. Add in careening down the mountain at mach speed in a wildly spinning tube and you’ve pretty much got a perfect evening.

Until the kid lets go of the tube and your maternal instincts kick in even before you realize it.

Because she’s new to tubing, and really, just a little girl for all she seems closer to being obnoxiously 15 with every blink of the eye, Diva Girl and I were tubing together.  Meaning we each had our own tube, but held on to each others as we spun down the mountain.

In theory, anyway.

Like I said, she’s just a little girl.  And inevitably, she let go of my tube.   Which left me with that eternal maternal connundrum:  Do I let go and give my child her freedom, let her be independent and soar away from me?  Or do I hold on like cold, grim death?

My screaming shoulder muscles, pulled far beyond the bounds of dignity by the extreme effort of fighting the combined power of gravity and centrifugal force, made a strong argument for letting go.  But even as my brain was telling me to just go ahead and let go, she’d be fine, my fingers curled even tighter around that handle and I held on to Diva Girl for dear life.  My mama brain had already internalized my daughter’s panic before I even consciously realized it, and had acted in kind, holding tight and screaming  reassurances–mainly the old maternal standby of “It’s ok. I’ve got you.  I’m not going to let you go.” before I fully understood what was going on.

It’s no secret that I’ve been having a wee crisis of sorts lately.  In the course of that mess, I’ve been questioning a lot of things about my life, including my parenting.  Spending my days in my jammies, doing the bare minimum housework to keep us in underwear and clean spoons, well, it just doesn’t feel like I’m on track to win Mother of the Year this year.  But that last trip down the hill was an epiphany of sorts.  Even when I don’t feel like it, even when I don’t think I’m doing a particularly great job of it, even when I question everything about it, on my most basic level, I am Sabrina’s mother. And really, at the end of the day, that’s all I really need to know.

Well, that and where I left the Tylenol.