You’re a Good Mom
By Tiffany Lewis

I’m writing this one for me.

About once a month I call my mom, usually near tears, and sob out this same speech:  “I can’t do this.  It’s too hard.  I’m not fit to be a mother. Jackson is hitting/biting/not letting me change his diaper.  Addison isn’t walking/sleeping/eating enough green vegetables.”

My mom always hears me out to end, then comes back with this gentle response: “Stop it. You’re a good mother.”  And somehow that’s all I need to hear.

I just finished reading Anne of Ingleside, the last book in the series about Anne Shirley of Green Gables.  In Anne of Ingleside, Anne is the proud, adoring mother of seven brilliant and creative children.  She lives in a mansion on the hill and spends her days soothing her children’s fears and tending her vast garden.  She is beautiful and willowy thin. Her fiery temper has given way to a calm and unrelenting patience.  She has a full-time maid/cook/nanny to prepare extravagant meals, scrub the front steps, and baby-sit the children so she and Gilbert can take frequent trips to the seaside.

The book depressed me.  I would be perfectly happy, too, digging in my peonies all day, if I didn’t have to worry about the piles of laundry, cobwebby corners, and turning all those foodstuffs in my kitchen into some sort of meal, three times a day.  Still, I really tried to be like Anne.  After three days, I called my mom – sobbing, of course.

“Mom, I’m never going to be like Anne of Ingleside,” I cried in despair.

“Of course not,” my mom said. “She isn’t real.”

I still wasn’t comforted, until I came across a biography of LM Montgomery, the author of the Anne books.  And I learned some interesting things.  I found out that Montgomery married a man whom she respected but never loved.  Although Montgomery was a popular author, she had few close friends.  She struggled, balancing her writing career and her role as mother and wife.  Anne was tall and majestic, but Montgomery was short.  World War II discouraged her so much that she stopped writing and died soon after, sad and bitter.

It’s terrible to admit, but this news really cheered me up.  I realized that my mom was right.  LM Montgomery was the same as the rest of us.  In Anne, she captured her ideal woman living the life she, herself, would have loved to live.  But she herself had to live in the real world, and her fantasies didn’t make her own life any more gilt-edged.

I think we all have this image of the type of mother we want to be.  Mine is the thin, sturdy, pioneer type, up at 5 a.m., baking bread and scrubbing the already impeccable corners.  She puts on her makeup before noon. She flits about the house all day with a smile and a song perpetually on her lips as she manages to organize, serve, and provide creative stimulation for her happy brood of children.  She keeps up on their scrapbooks.  She has no weaknesses when it comes to leftover cheesecake in the fridge.  When she disciplines, she does so in a calm, collected manner, and her children are so grieved to disappoint their sweet mother that they cry at the thought of evil.  The children sit through sacrament with their arms folded, and go to bed precisely when they’re told to.  The mother manages to make a home-cooked meal every night with at least three vegetable side dishes, and always accompanied by a delicious dessert.

Sometimes I live up to this ideal, at least until 9 a.m. (when I opt for a mid-morning nap on the couch).  I observe the family of thin-legged spiders living in the corner of the bathroom and think, for the tenth time, that I really should just sweep them away.  Sometimes I dance and sing, but sometimes I storm.  Discipline is an unwieldy beast I have yet to capture.  By 3 o’clock in the afternoon, I usually decide that, things being as they are, we’re going to have pancakes for dinner.  There are days when I feel like a 10-kid wife, and a good many days when I wonder if I overdid it by having two.

My technique for coping is to look at things in perspective.  I don’t plunk my kids in front of the TV for eight hours a day.  That merits one check on my good-mom list.  I feed them vegetables almost every day.  I feed them.  I take them to the park.  We laugh a lot.  My son and I like to make up silly songs together.  I wash their sheets occasionally, and try to remember to brush their teeth.  My kids will never, ever have scrapbooks, but I keep a good journal.  We read scriptures, even if it’s just a very short verse. I take them to church each Sunday.  They certainly don’t fold their arms, and sometimes we spend the majority of the time doing laps in the foyer, but at least we’re there.

And I have the perspective of the gospel.  Sometimes this perspective becomes shortsighted. In trying to live up to my ideal of a Mormon mom, I often forget that it is just that, an ideal.  And sometimes my kids have to remind me of this.

Trying to coax some obedience out of my son the other day, I asked, “Jackson, what do you think makes Mommy happy?”

He answered back without hesitation: “Jesus.”

His response caught me off guard.  But in an instant I realized he was right.  It only took the wisdom of a 2½-year-old to make it all clear.

If I want to be happy, if I want to be a good mother and be happy with the type of mother I am, I need to more fully understand my relationship with my Savior.  I need to be firm in the conviction that Christ didn’t come to atone for perfect mothers.  He came for those of us who lose our temper, who sometimes don’t have the energy to mop the floor or read our scriptures or grow a bounteous garden.  And even more, my happiness cannot be contingent upon my children eating broccoli, making it to the toilet on time, or not yelling full-volume while the sacrament is being passed. My happiness has to come from within.

I may never make that 5 o’clock threshold to bake bread. I will probably never get the live-in maid/cook/nanny.  But I can be happy in my present, imperfect state.  And I can be a good mom.