Passionate women who are also mothers

“[Mothers can] put their own lives and interests on hold as a sacrifice to their children. As noble as this seems, [it is] a sort of negligence: withholding who she is - the best part of herself - from our children.” Monte and Karen Swan

This quote surfaced in a conversation I was having with one of my best friends this week and it seems particularly poignant this week with oodles of mothering talk in the air. Talk fell to “How do you do it all?”, a perennial favourite, and the answer is that I don’t. I do far more than I thought I ever could and occasionally startle myself when I see myself through the eyes of the old me. I give to others in huge swaths of time and energy, thought and feeling. The secret is that I put myself on that list. My passions, which could easily be denigrated as mere hobbies, are the reason I wake with a joy in the morning, eager to see what the day brings and what I can do within its bounds.

The Swans are homeschooling authors and they were writing particularly about self-sacrificing homeschooling mothers. And it is true that it is a path that tends to lead to that mindset. They make an important point - that homeschooling (and indeed parenting) is a romance of our children’s hearts, and we cannot do that if we are empty.

Don’t be afraid to think of yourself as a woman who also happens to be a mother. When you do this, the vibrancy and passion that you bring to life makes you a better mother. The self that does the self-sacrificing is that much stronger, that much more energized, that much more interesting. Don’t be a Mama. Be a Sarah. Be a Jennifer. Be a Jane. And then let that woman be a mother. You’ll have a far more fascinating self to give.

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Which is something that somehow brings me to the button bender I went on today. I had cleaned, mended, dashed, cooked, and otherwise been useful since 7 am. My father picked the kids up at 4:30 for Sandra’s horse-riding lessons and I suddenly had 90 minutes to myself. My brain froze. What to do? What tasks could I finish? None, answered some part of me. You’ve got nuthin’ left to do them with. I fought it at first, but when I realized that I could take a small chunk of time to go to second-hand stores, I was lost to productivity. You see, a need to have buttons in a button jar has been growing in me. For months it has simmered but in the last few days it has risen to a boil. And so I went…and not just to one store. No, I went on a button bender, and at 5:17 I found a bag stuffed with vintage buttons on yellowing cards which finally slaked my thirst.

I can’t quite say what this is all about. I remember the magic of my grandmother’s button jar and the smaller one my mother had. I remember the sound of them cascading onto the tabletop. I remember sorting them by size, by colour, or by shininess. I wanted a button jar. And today, I desperately wanted to find second-hand buttons. Something within in me rose up and demanded it.

So I sat on the front porch with a mug of tea and a bowl of porridge for my supper, beginning the button jar as the birds sang and the grey rain clouds jostled with the puffy cumulus clouds and life was good.

And now, even though there are many buttons to be liberated from the cards, even though there is cleaning and mending and baking and jogging with the kids - among other things - ahead of me tonight, and now…now I can.