lyricalechoes | Bullies, Boyfriends, and Murals

I went to pieces when I became a mother. Not just physically, though apparently that happened too. My husband gave me a play by play of how the doctor was removing my organs and laying them out. All three of my children were born through c-section and once I persuaded my husband to stop the play-by-play, I appreciated the fact that they put a blue drape up between the mother and the area of her body they are taking apart. I could feel it but I sure didn’t want to see it!

I may have missed out on the normal mysteries of natural delivery but I didn’t mind leaving parts of my operations to the imagination. My favorite part was always when they brought a little wrapped up bundle up next to my face before trotting him or her off to the nursery.

At last, there was my baby: red and wrinkled, strange-skinned and bald. Somehow my babies always had infant acne. Babies make almost anything adorable but zits on a baby aren’t beautiful. I’m just hoping getting their zits so young means my kids will have clear skin as teenagers!

But from the very time I was shown a little bundle, a bundle of my own, I learned the truth in the quote by Elizabeth Stone. She said, "Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body."
That is how it has felt, even on that very first day. You splinter into pieces. Part of you walks out the door even as the doctors are stitching your stomach back together. Part of you is missing and you feel it. Even now, while I type this, there are parts of me in four rooms in our house.

Part of me is here trying to explain how amazing and yet terrifying it is to be so many pieces at once. But part of me is also in my son’s room, listening to a Harry Potter audio book and dreaming of flying on broomsticks in a quidditch match. I never read the Harry Potter series until my (then eight year old) son wanted to read them. Trying to be responsible and read them first meant opening my heart to the world of Hogwarts. As he grows, my knowledge does too, of Hogwarts and cryptids and all the trivia contained in the “Ripley’s Believe it or Not” books from our library.

Tonight, part of me is in his room, wondering if he is warm, if his Spiderman comforter is soft enough, if he is going to dream about the boy who hit him in the face with a basketball in gym class last month. Part of me is 9 ½ and 4 foot 11. Part of me loves Archie comic books and Mario DS games. Part of me still wonders why I misunderstand people so often and writes about it in essays for my guitar teacher. Part of me may have Asperger’s. But I cling fiercely to this part of me. One of a person’s basic instincts is to survive and this part of me takes a lot of my heart. But this part of me will always matter. I will never stop fighting to understand my son and find new ways to help him thrive in spite of his learning and social problems. I hope he’s thinking more about Hogwarts and less about the bully in gym class tonight.

Another part of me is in my daughters’ room. This part of me is 7 and worries because I am the tallest first grader in the school. This part of me sleeps with the same pink Care Bear every night but eagerly applied pink toe nail polish the night before Valentine’s Day because I wanted to be pretty for the holiday. I’ve never polished my toes in my life but this part of me saved for weeks to buy herself a manicure set. My middle child is like me and unlike me but always a part of me. She’s the one who wanted a button that said, “Kiss me, it’s my birthday” to wear to school because she was hoping a boy in her class named Eli might take the hint. I let her wear it this year but inside I cringed. Kissing already? But I hope this part of me is confident and knows she’s beautiful long before I did, as a gangly female. This part of me is precious. Often overlooked, between a needy brother and a charming baby, this part of me tells everyone she is going to be the first person on Mars AND the first lady president. And she just might be too. I admire the confidence in this part of me.

The third part of me is in the living room, dozing off to a movie about a girl and her dog named Bolt. This part of me is creative. She’s only four but already tonight we have argued about what she will wear tomorrow. She is convinced that long dresses are a must but since it will be 60 degrees tomorrow, I told her the long-sleeved sweltering dress she selected is not an option. I don’t understand this stylish part of me. She wants to dress “like the other girls” (she claims) but fully participated in Freaky Friday at her Mother’s Day Out. She went as Cinderella Bear, insisting on wearing both her brother’s old bear costume with her sister’s old Cinderella dress on top with a blue sock and a pink sock and two mismatched shoes.

She’s a piece of me that’s all her own, upset that she can’t read yet like her siblings but she can click around YouTube.com like nobody’s business. I’ve always had to closely watch this part of me. Twice she let herself out in the yard at age 2. She’s the one who decorated each wall of our house with at least a small mural. This part of me is so stubborn and so cuddly. She is my very last baby. So far, my biggest fears are that I will spoil her and that too many men will break her heart. This piece of me cuddles under an old blue Dora blanket of her brothers (because boys can love Dora too!)

But the last part of me is here, typing with long fingers, resting my size 12 feet beneath this desk and worrying about my college history midterm on Thursday. It’s exhausting to be four places at once all day long. I never knew being a mom would break me up so badly! After my son, I kept trying to get it together but now I know this state of feeling splintered and scattered is here to stay. Someday they will sleep in different states instead of just different rooms.

And where will I be? Likely I’ll still spend part of my day at a computer. But this time, instead of trying to gather my mixed-up scattered thoughts enough to describe the pieces of me to you, someday I’ll be frantically emailing and messaging all these little pieces who will have left to live little dramas and spawn little parts of their own. I want to be a hip grandma, who will know how to use whatever new technology we have by then to embarrass my kids by telling their kids about their parents’ childhood.

Tonight, all the pieces of me will sleep under one roof. And tonight I will savor it, until the four year old piece jumps into my bed wet at 4am and I urge her out to don dry clothes before she wiggles yet again, kicking me until I finally rise to pack lunches for the other pieces of my heart. Tomorrow I’ll worry again about the bullies and the boyfriends and the murals that I can’t seem to scrub off my wall.

But tonight, I just want to love them, while I can still gather a waking coherent thought to do so. I’ve never felt so splintered, scattered, and falling apart. But I also never knew I could love so much, for so many days in a row. I’ve found that love grows best in a broken heart, in a heart that’s gone to pieces.