Weight of the World

When you are a mother, sometimes you feel like you are carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.  There are the small pebbles, like remembering to take your husband’s suit to the dry cleaners.  Then there are the concrete cinderblocks, like deciding which bill can go longer without getting paid, and where the money for the oil bill is going to come from.  Then there are the glacial boulders, the size of elephants, which represent your deepest fears and worries about your children and family.  Most days, we can walk mostly upright, pulling strength from deep within to carry this load.  But there are the dark days that come, when the weight becomes a crushing force.  No matter how many times you shift the load, you find it harder and harder to keep from giving in to gravity. 

A mother’s mind is the eighth wonder of the world.  It holds so much information, a warehouse full of filing cabinets.  We remember every phone number, every birthday, anniversary, what we wore on our first date, what illnesses our children have had.  Sometimes the filing cabinets spill over onto the floor and the file that holds where we put the car keys gets stepped on.  There are dusty, rusty cabinets, which hold our childhood memories.  We break out those files every once in a while when we are in dire need of a good laugh, or in some cases, a good cry.  There are the old cobwebby cabinets in the corner that hold information like how to fix a leaky toilet, how to install a DVD player, how to start the lawnmower.  These cabinets aren’t used very much sometimes after we get married.   But in the middle of it all, there are several transparent filing cabinets that hold our deepest worries.  They are installed the moment you give birth and they are with you until the day you leave this earth.  There are several files with worries about your child’s health, growth, and development.  There might be a cabinet or two devoted to their pains; tummy aches, sore throats, earaches, growing pains.  But there’s also one that is devoted to fear.  Fear about your children growing up properly, if you are a good parent, if they will fall victim to drugs and alcohol, and keeping them safe in an ever violent world. 

The key to those transparent cabinets is always around your neck.   Use it well and use it often.  The more you ignore those cabinets, the larger and more disorganized they will get.  But if you look at those files every week and face those fears head on, you will learn sooner or later that you are fighting the good fight.  Your children are happy and healthy and that inner strength that enables you to carry those boulders overcomes the crushing gravity.  You can keep walking upright, and keep filing the pages away.

“To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons.”—Marilyn French

“A mother’s life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible.  Not an hour but has its joys and fears.”—Honore de Balzac