For weeks, I repeated this laborious procedure at home every two hours. Many nights I cried. My baby and I both lived completely covered in milk. (If your kid prefers the bottle to the breast, you do not need to put yourself through this. Your kid will be fine. But Luka was as uninterested in nursing from a fake nipple as he was in engaging with a real one, and I figured if I was going to have to teach him how to suck on something, it might as well be my breasts, because they were easier to carry around when we went out.) I’d always imagined that my child emerging from my body and latching on to nurse would be this beautiful, effortless bonding experience for us. Instead I was taping tubes to my boobs and squirting milk with a syringe, sometimes accidentally straight into Luka’s eyeballs, just to try to get my kid to gain a little weight so he wouldn’t have to be hospitalized.
Soon after becoming a mom, I heard a song called “If I Could” by Celine Dion. As I listened to the lyrics, staring at my sweet baby’s face, both my love for him and my fear for him felt more real than ever. I sobbed. The lyrics were torturous, I tell you, especially for someone still struggling through the crazy emotions of postpartum blues:
If I could
I’d protect you from the sadness in your eyes
Give you courage in a world of compromise
Yes, I would
If I could
I would teach you all the things I’ve never learned
And I’d help you cross the bridges that I’ve burned
Yes, I would
If I could
I would try to shield your innocence from time
But the part of life I gave you isn’t mine
I’ve watched you grow
So I could let you go
If I could
I would help you make it through the hungry years
But I know that I can never cry your tears
But I would
If I could . . .
As tears streamed down my face, I wondered how I could ever be at peace loving someone with every molecule of my being and yet knowing that I would never be able to shield him from the inevitable sadness and pain life would bring his way.
Within the first few months of Luka’s life, I learned to let go of a lot of the little things I’d thought would be within my purview as his mother. But as Luka got older, the smaller, simpler things that I learned to accept were out of my control became bigger, scarier things that were out of my control. As his world expanded, I found myself craving more and more control, and yet found my control diminishing. It was terrifying.
I want to control everything. I always have. But once I became a mom, my desire for control became an urgent need for control. Control seemed like my only weapon against a world that promised to hurt the thing I loved most fiercely, one way or another, some day or another. Any parent who says she has zero control issues is either a liar or a liar. However, I knew that if I wanted to avoid emotionally suffocating my children and to feel even semisuccessful as a mom, I would need to let go most of the time. But how was I supposed to know how much to let go and when? Could I keep control in my life as, like, a friend? Demote it from the “I want to be all over you every waking and sleeping moment because I can’t live without you” zone to the friend zone? Or would I have to completely unfriend control?
As our children grow from babies to walking toddlers to driving teenagers to on-their-own adults, we’re supposed to let go a little at a time, right? Or maybe a lot at a time? How much and when? Why hasn’t someone written out the exact formula for this? Or discovered medication that induces letting go (preferably with side effects that include patience and a constant state of feeling rested)? The longer I’ve clocked in for this motherhood gig, the more I’ve learned and failed, then succeeded and failed again, at letting go.
One area in which I learned to control my controlling tendencies was with the things that didn’t matter in the long run. When Luka had to create a solar system in third grade, my imagination immediately went into overdrive, brainstorming how we (and by “we,” I meant “I”) could make his version of the solar system unique and spectacular.
“What if we figure out a way to make it out of glow-in-the-dark balloons?”
“No, Mom.”
“Okay, what if we make a little movie where we have different people act out each planet? And then you can show the movie in your class. That’s genius! I can’t believe I just thought of that!”
“No, Mom.”
“All right, all right . . . I have something even better! We love to make fun cakes, right? So what if we made a solar system–shaped cake? Each planet could be a completely different flavor, and we’ll use fondant to create cool, elaborate details. And then your class would get to eat the cake afterward. Yes! Yes, we’re doing that!”
“No, Mom. I just really want to make it out of Styrofoam balls like the example the teacher showed us in class.”
Oh, you mean the overdone boring version that EVERY SINGLE KID in your class will make, I said on the inside. “Sure, that sounds great!” I said on the outside, faking an excited expression so hard that my jaw was sore for days.
I knew my response to Luka’s assignment was all about my ego. Who cared how creative he got with a third-grade assignment? The outcome didn’t matter as much to Luka’s growth as the process of completing a big assignment as independently as possible. I was going to have to land the parenting helicopter and let Luka do it his way. If I butted in, I would send him the message that he couldn’t handle projects on his own, that he wasn’t creative enough, or that his ideas were not as good as mine. I had to let go and allow him to do his own thing . . . as I stood in the background—cringing but still pushing encouragement through clenched teeth. “Well, that’s . . . that’s . . . different . . . and so awesome!”
And he’d look over at me, big smile on his face, feeling confident. “Yeah, it is awesome.”
Two years later, when it was Matea’s turn to create a solar system, it turned out she’d been eavesdropping on my conversation with Luka and she remembered all the suggestions I’d had for him. She excitedly told me that she’d like her solar system to be made out of cake. I was ecstatic! I immediately emailed her teacher, getting permission to bring a homemade cake to school to share with her classmates, and then started designing the cake in my mind. I had a vision for this cake. Every planet was going to be a different flavor, we were going to use lots of marzipan and fondant to add shape and color, and somehow I was going to figure out a way to make the planets look like they were actually floating. It was going to be epic.
But then Matea told me her idea for the cake. What she envisioned turned out to be little half globes covered in messy frosting representing the different planets, perched on a superthin, lopsided sheet cake. “This is so great!” I forced myself to say. And truly it was. With no fondant, no elaborate details, and with only one flavor and a million imperfections that I refrained from fixing, the solar system cake was great. Because it was her vision that she’d realized. If I’m being completely honest, it was hard to ignore the petulant disappointment I felt at first. Hey, I’m human. But after I stepped away from my own ego and my desire for control, I was able to joyfully appreciate that my independent daughter had taken notice of a great suggestion, carried it in her mind for two years, and then confidently executed her version of my suggestion when the time came.