Reflections on Modern Motherhood
Written by a Mom from Mass 50501
I wonder if I would have been a better mother in another time, another life. In this one, I wonder often if I’m good enough.
“My little pandemic baby,” I would coo when she was a newborn. “What a story I’ll have to tell you someday.” That was five years ago now; it seems woefully naive. These days, motherhood is filled with worries. What if ICE snatches her classmates and their parents? Will there be a shooting at her school? Will we be able to access the vaccines needed to keep her and her classmates safe?
My daughter still sleeps in my bed. She smells sweetly of baby, although on nights when we don’t fit in bath time, it’s mixed in with the smell of watercolor paint and faint dirt. These days, my heart feels like an open wound. At night my mind wanders to the mothers separated from their children. My tears often dampen her hair as she sleeps on my shoulder. I know there is no law I would not break, no mountain I would not climb, no border I would not cross for her. There is nothing I would not do to give my daughter a better, safer life. How can we demonize other mothers for doing these things? By a stroke of luck, I was born to this life where I can cuddle my daughter in our warm bed, in our cozy house, with our full pantry, the sound of rain falling gently on the roof.
I cannot help but think of the things that would wreck me if I was separated from my own daughter: Is someone treating her gently, kindly? Do they understand what she is asking for when she mispronounces words? Do they know to hold the top of her hair when brushing the bottom so it doesn’t hurt? Do they know she likes cinnamon sprinkled on her yogurt? Do they know that even though she’s in kindergarten, she still needs someone to fall asleep next to her? I know the immigrant mothers in my town, separated from their children, worry the same way I would, and it splits my heart right open.
Photo via Mass 50501 Volunteer
Recently, I scrolled through my phone while waiting in the pickup line outside my daughter’s kindergarten. There is a video of a toddler and his father getting detained by ICE just a few towns away. My heart fills with dread. I can hear a crowd of women behind the camera. I wonder if they are mothers just like myself. They are begging for compassion for the child as his little hand reaches through a crack in the window. My mind races—Does he need water? A snack? Is the car too hot? Is he scared? It occurs to me that this moment in the car with his father may be the last time they see each other. The video cuts to later—I don’t know how long—until his mother comes to get him. Her sobs while she clung to her child are something I will never forget. I am lost in her suffering when a noise brings me back to my car. Three minutes until my own child runs happily into my arms. I cry the entire drive home.
It has become increasingly difficult to hide the world from my daughter. Eat your dinner, brush your teeth, share your toys, ignore the fascism at our door. My daughter tells me she wants to be a doctor when she grows up. I smile and say, “you can be anything you want to be my darling girl.” I want to believe it. She asks me what I am talking about when I whisper worriedly to friends and family about the cuts to science, and about the ICE vehicles taking over our town. I change the subject. She asks if my tears are happy tears and I know I must do more for my community than sit and cry staring at my phone. I want to be a fun mom. A good mom. I want my daughter to look back someday and remember me smiling, laughing, and being silly, not distantly scrolling though news headlines each day. It's so hard to be those things when I know down the road a mother is being ripped from her children.
Some days my activism looks like raising a kind human. Some days it's helping to organize with my fellow volunteers at Mass 50501. More and more, I find myself thinking about the women who committed to hiding their neighbors and saving children during WWII. They were normal people who refused to look away. I won't let ICE take away my humanity. In the coming weeks, I will join the women in the video who screamed for the baby boy to be reunited with his family. I will join the legacy of women who protected their communities throughout the world’s most treacherous moments. As a LUCE volunteer, I will dedicate my time to observing and documenting ICE interactions. As a mother, a neighbor, and an American, I have a duty and responsibility to bear witness.
As modern motherhood continues to bring earthshattering obstacles to my neighbors and me, I know that in this time and this life, I have no choice but to be good enough. I imagine someday many years from now I’ll sit down with my daughter, and she will ask me what I did during this historic time. Each day, I try to live my life in a way where I can someday answer, “Everything I could.”
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