Ode to Mothers: When You Finally Understand Your Mother

How many times did you put yourself in your mother’s shoes before you had children of your own? You never even thought about it, and to be completely honest, neither did I.

As children, we are very selfish. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean anything bad by that. It’s simply a fact. We always put our own needs above the needs of others, and I guess that’s normal. Until the moment we become parents ourselves, and then everything turns upside down.

Why am I thinking about this right now? Well, it’s actually not a new thought running through my head. But it usually resurfaces exactly when my little daughter needs me most: around 3 a.m., while she is “burning up” with fever and I’m sitting on the floor next to her bed in her room. She is either asleep or stroking my hair, and I can’t sleep until the mercury in the thermometer drops back to normal.

Those are moments of helplessness, when we don’t know how to help our dearest ones, even though we would give anything in the world to be the ones shaking with fever, aching from teeth coming in, or whatever else is troubling them. And then it isn’t hard to stay with them all night, and to doze off on the floor if need be. Because that’s probably the least we can do for them.

But in the morning, it’s time not only for the everyday duties of home and family; we are also caught up by the duties that are first and foremost our own: work, studies and/or writing a master’s thesis. And so, tired and worried, we put concealer on our dark circles, brew liters of coffee and keep going.

Of course, all the time I’m not with Sofka, especially when she’s unwell, I worry every other moment, and I feel guilty that I’m not watching Simba for the thousandth time instead of reading statistics on software and hardware and connecting them to Friedrich Kittler’s theory of technological determinism.

And until recently, I couldn’t do it. Whenever she needed me, I would drop everything and be with her. But then reality hits harder than we ever expected, because obligations don’t wait, and time flies.

So I managed to switch into “I can do this, I have to do this” mode, because I realized that this is the only way: knowing that I’ve done something that will soon bring good to my whole family. This way, I believe I’ve done more for her than if I had been nervous and unhappy that I’d once again gotten nothing done, while the deadlines kept getting closer and hopelessness and uncertainty for the whole family loomed on the horizon.

That doesn’t mean I love her any less or that I consider the time spent with her wasted. Quite the opposite. Balance between family and obligations is something I have long been striving for, and I suppose we all are, aren’t we?

On the other hand, there’s nothing defeating about it, and I’m no less of a mother if Dad looks after her a little more, even when she’s sick, because imagine this: he is a parent too, he worries too, and he can do everything Mom can do, maybe even more.

Mima with Sofka in a baby carrier by a lake in the park

Whether we realize it or not, it was from our mothers that we learned to be good mothers to our children.

And then I can’t help but think of my own mother. She, too, always watched over us when we were sick. In the middle of the night she was there to give me medicine, change my clothes and try to wake me when I had nightmares and was delirious with fever.

Only now the perspective has changed, and now I wonder what it was like for her: how did she manage to go to work in the morning, work 8 hours and then come home and take care of us again? How did she keep from collapsing with exhaustion, and how did she manage to concentrate on work with all her worry for us?

Yes, children are selfish. And shame on me for not thinking about this sooner. I’m ashamed, and I want to change it.

Then it occurs to me that one day Sofka, too, will think more about the fact that I had to go to work instead of being with her, and how unfair that was, and she surely won’t think that Mom had to, and that besides her and Dad, Mom also loves her work.

A thousand times I was secretly angry when Mom shut herself in her room to study for exams (yes, my mom is a queen who finished college with two small children, because she is ambitious and smart and never wanted to settle for average, not even today. So go figure, Mima, who you take after…).

And now I’m the one who disappears for a few hours into the study or the reading room, while Sofka sends me off with “Bye, Mommy! Work, write!” Don’t think for a second that I don’t feel guilty every single time. I like to believe that she isn’t angry with me and that she’ll understand, and I’m ashamed that I so often didn’t understand my mom.

But I suppose that’s all part of growing up and maturing, of personal evolution and self-knowledge.

The point of the story is this: even though it’s not International Women’s Day, or Mother’s Day, or any other holiday when we suddenly remember all mothers and women and praise them in often empty ways, I want to do it today with all my heart, in the way I know best, with words:

To apologize to all moms on behalf of all the children who don’t understand them when they need it most, and to tell them that at least now we understand them and admire them more than ever.

We have the internet, social media and blogs to complain to one another, and our mothers didn’t have that. Which doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard for them, or that they didn’t feel guilty, or that they didn’t love us endlessly.

And precisely because they gritted their teeth, rolled up their sleeves, kissed us and hugged us and managed all of it at the same time, that is why we admire them and why we thank them.