Mom
I have a three-year-old son. Chapter Three is something special. It’s wild and gentle and exhaustive. Beautiful and frustrating and fun. And funny, too. So funny. It’s incredibly wild how commonplace the experience of creating human life and then watching as that life becomes itself is. I can’t believe it most days. I am literally in awe.
I’m never sure if that’s in large part just because we almost lost Griffin when he was born. I actually don’t know why we didn’t. We aren’t religious, not in the slightest, and never will be—but statistics, the odds, logic, all of them pointed to a very different outcome for our family. That’s important. It’s an all-compassing piece of our story now. I can’t explain Griffin’s health and won’t refute it when others call it a miracle. It was. He is. And so, it’s a delicate thing, this part. He’s so big. He’s so… three. And even without what his doctors now refer to as simply a “rough start,” nothing hurts like parenting. For so many intimate reasons, individual to each of us. No one becomes a parent without being touched by the tenderness of caring for a small thing like you once were and… loving them. Seeing them, really seeing them. At least for us, for me, that mirror’s edge is so sharp.
Lately being a mom has been… challenging. Since having Griffin in 2021, especially when he was just a baby, I’ve often found myself wondering what it is other parents must be experiencing alongside me. Sometimes the way the world talks about it is so dark, and rightfully so, because it’s a lot. But there are so many parts that never felt “hard” to me. I’m not certain how much of that can be attributed to the perspective we gained in almost losing our newborn baby, you know? It muddies the waters. I was deeply messed up in the beginning from what happened to us and also just grateful to see my son alive, walking, talking, eating… breathing. But now we’re a bit disconnected from that chapter of our lives, and I am glad. And he is three, and he is more than fine. He is fast and crazy and smart and thoughtful, and I have been sufficiently humbled as I am over here pulling my hair out at the three-year-oldness of it all. It’s so loud. Being three is so fucking loud. Another beautifully layered part of this equation is my husband and I’s relationships with our own parents and our own childhoods. For both of us, they’re not things we look back on fondly or enjoy remembering in most cases.
Cut to me yelling (and I said I would never) because my toddler is yelling so loud I can’t tell him to stop without yelling over him, and I’m so overstimulated my eyes are about to pop out of my head, and I hate myself for being so mad because Savannah, I thought you didn’t think this was hard?—when I’m at that place, all I can think anymore is I want my mom.
I just want my mom.
Not… mine. I have a mother, of course. She gave birth to me (something I actually cannot even begin to fathom even a little). She kept me alive, in spite of her best efforts. But a mom? I don’t have a mom. To be fair, I don’t have a dad either. But he died before we ever got a chance, and I miss him very differently. I just want my mom. I need help, I have questions. I’m lonely. The very reason I can’t stand to be touched, why I recoil at physical affection even now and always, the coldest and cruelest person I’ve ever known in all my life… I just want her to hold me. I want a mom to hold me, not mine, not her. But the one I should have had, the one I’m royally failing at being to my own kids this week. I want a strong, beautiful, funny woman to look to for guidance. I want a witty, sharp, brilliant woman to shop with and cry with and go to dinner with. I want to admire the way her eyes crinkle when she laughs, I want to watch her kiss my dad, I want to see her hold my babies. I want to talk politics and Taylor Swift and coupons and playgrounds and sex and poetry and movies with her. I want to see myself in her eyes and swell with pride. I want to see myself through her eyes and overflow with love and adoration.
But I don’t. But I can’t.
And lately… lately that has been the hardest part of parenting.
Wanting my mom. Needing my mom.
And feeling so deeply all the ways in which I will never have that, not as long as I live. That’s a harrowing realization, you know? It’s so final. Like grieving a death. But our relationship was dead on arrival. I said my father and I never even got a chance, and that’s true. We didn’t. If he’s somewhere else right now, in some other dimension or between the stars watching me wear his face, at least we never had to hurt each other. We missed out on whatever shit was in store. But my mom? There’s just nothing more to do, nothing more to say. It’s just empty, just a black hole in my life that sucks everything in and then spits them back out, more broken than before and unable to shake it off, marred by the root of my world and stunningly worse for it. She was my world, she was all I had.
And now I can’t even call her when I—I can’t even call her.
And even if I did, I’d end the conversation even more blue than I started it. And I just want my mom. Goddamnit, I just miss my mom. I wish there was some beautiful punchline. The bridge in a song where the pain makes sense. But sometimes it just fucking doesn’t. Sometimes you just wish it was different, and there’s no poeticism, no lesson. I just want my fucking mom to hold me and brush my hair and be my mom, and she never will because she doesn’t exist.
And it just fucking hurts.
And I’m a worse mother, a worse friend, a worse woman for it. My girlhood is wrapped up in her arms with fingers like knives, and I can never get it back. And it’s the single most impactful, painful, ugly thing in all my life, every day for the last thirty years.
And I know, believe me, I know. All I can do is love my kids better. Try harder when it’s hard. Let it go when I can. Hold on to it when it helps. And say it when I muster the courage. There’s just so much to say for there to be nothing left. There’s so much.
Today I had the courage. Tomorrow I’ll try letting go.
