I am your MOTHER

There’s only been one consistent thing that I have missed throughout all the years since my ex-husband and I split and that is the one aspect that no one else can possibly truly and 100% replace.  My ex and I always parented together.  In the years since the divorce it’s been difficult at best to feel a part of the parenting partnership when Keith was with him rather than with me.  I have long told him how I felt, what I thought, what I saw and what should happen. I have long felt unheard.  This week I have felt heard.  I don’t know if it’s my imagination or my lust to be heard by him as a mother and perhaps I’m still in an emotional haze, but we were together handling things for Keith.  And this volcano of “missing” that feeling of two birth parents wishing and wanting and leveraging for the best for their son came bubbling to the surface.

Today I enrolled Keith in a program for school.  A program I will not discuss at length here because I love my son so fucking much it is a bottomless ache, an endless desire, an all consuming ocean of never-ending waves of emotion.  While enrolling him, I filled out about a half dozen pieces of paperwork.  I listed myself as the FIRST contact; the FIRST name was mine under my child’s name.  For a few moments I felt triumphant as I’ve thought about all the paperwork I didn’t have the privilege to fill out as his father was deemed (through no court of law) the residential or custodial parent despite our forward thinking much thought out “joint” custody arrangement.  Simply put my son had to go to one school and short of living on top of each other, he could never do that without living in one set spot.  I always thought he needed a male figure in his life and his father was the only one we’ve both got to be his father…his real father.

Sometimes my personal hatred and pain over that divorce and loss has probably clouded me and my judgment.  I am far from perfect.  Mostly it has been torturous to relinquish so much of my maternal instincts throughout this process over the years.  I have spent days on end, weeks on end…sometimes even months on end without seeing my son, never owning up to it, never being able to face it or talk about it.  At times I began to feel that he was my son, a beautiful picture in a frame, the son who had his friends and his life precisely 10 miles away.  As though he forgot me.  But…I never forgot him.  I never wanted to force him to come to me; I never wanted to dictate his comings and goings just because of a silly thing called divorce. I wanted to bear the brunt of all of the pain that rolled out of that divorce all by myself regardless of whether it was right or wrong.

Today I got up early, I drove to my ex-husbands house and I enrolled my son all by myself, and his father NEEDED me to do it.  His words were “you gotta pony up and do this” but if truth be told I wanted to. I’ve always wanted to. I’ve always wanted to do it all.  I have just been so fucking scared.  So terrified of fucking it all up.  And in that being scared, perhaps I have.  I will not spend months beating myself up.

I will just remind myself daily that I want my name first under my son’s name on those forms, all forms. I am his mother and I want to do those things.  Yes to many mothers the day to day minutia is not fun, it’s not rewarding it can be downright dreadful to be the one that runs for the t-shirt, takes the kid to the spring concert, provides the lunch money (only for said child to lose it etc).

I’ve been robbed of those day to day events, those things that are barely visible to the naked eye after years of parenthood.  And I never had the courage to acknowledge just how much it hurt and how much I missed it and how much it sometimes still pisses me off a lot.

In that moment when I wrote my name as the first contact…..something inside me healed over.  There where this sense of loss was a sense of self knowledge and pride came.  I AM HIS MOTHER.  No matter what I am YOUR MOTHER.  You said “yes mother” to me ten thousand times today in that irritated angst riddled teenager way and you really had no idea did you..just how much I love you even when you mess up, even when you’re lost, and mostly because you don’t have to be perfect for my heart to spill open at the mere mention of your name. 

That’s the thing…when you are someone’s mother no one can rob you of your baby boy.  No one said being a Mother was easy….but no matter the challenges….you are always going to be worth it.