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By MARY JO MELONE
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 8, 2000
Am I allowed to do this?
For a few minutes every morning, I play the spy. As I drive my tiny daughter to school, I watch her in the rear view mirror. She's playing with her stuffed dog or staring at the passing traffic, the storefronts, the palm trees. Her eyelids glisten with the perfect moistness of new skin. Her full mouth is half open. Her chatter makes me think a bird is caught in the car. I want to hold the moment forever, but then the light changes. I have to turn. Step on the gas. Watch where I am.
As soon as we reach school, and I place her in someone else's arms, the precious moment pops like a soap bubble. I feel enormous relief. I can get on with my day without her repeated interruptions.
After relief there's something approaching shame.
Am I supposed to feel this?
Is this what good mothers go through?
Every day is a series of secret pulls and tugs. If you asked me, I'd say I don't think of her that much while I work. I'd say, and it's mostly true, that I couldn't be a stay-at-home mom, even if I could afford it.
But I can be anywhere and hear the cry of a strange child and become convinced my daughter is hurt and telegraphing a plea for help.
My ambivalence is a song I can't get out of my head. It plays in the daylight. I hear it at night.
My daughter cries terribly when I begin to leave the room, after our last round of play, our reading, our rocking. Staystaystaystaymommystaystaystay, she whispers.
Her arms are around my neck in almost a wrestler's hold.
This is me she's talking about. Me she wants. Doesn't she know? I put no bows in her hair. I am impatient. I bake no cookies.
And she has invested me with the power of armies.
How can I turn my back?
It's true that she has to learn to be by herself. She has to learn to fall asleep on her own. It's a metaphor for what life will bring her. It will be mostly her on her own, at least her own thoughts, her own choices.
Am I allowed to do this?
I try to stave off that moment. I stay. We sit in the dark. I rub her back as she lays in bed until her breathing falls into the rhythm of sleep or, frankly, until I can't take it anymore. For often what the day hasn't extracted from me, she has. Will I never have time to myself? Resentment is also now in my repertoire.
Am I allowed to say this?
Mommy has to go now. Good night. I love you. You know I won't be far away. I'll see you in the morning.
Then I shut her door and retreat into my own darkened room, where the baby monitor is broadcasting the tail end of her tears.
I want to go to her. I want to lie down.
There are tears right behind my eyes. Am I doing the right thing, I ask my husband who stands in the hall.
He looks up at the ceiling in exasperation. He has heard this question a hundred times, on a hundred nights. This time he gives me a look that says get over it, you're doing fine.
My daughter does not look like me. She has brown hair, brown eyes, skin that tans the color of dark honey. I am blond, blue eyed and prone to sunburn. But some days I can't tell where I end and she begins.
The ties between us are already thick and knotted like seaworthy rope. The ride she takes me on sometimes leaves me thinking small craft advisories should have been posted. But this is living. This is love: bumpy and mixed up and never expressed enough out loud.