When I pulled out of the daycare parking lot in 2001, Five for Fighting was on the radio. After dropping Liam off for the first time, I cried. Every mother cries. To this very day, I can’t hear the song “Superman” without my lip trembling and my eyes welling with tears. There was never a more gentle or accommodating baby, and in early motherhood, I often burst into sobs just looking at Liam and thinking about the overwhelming love I felt for him. Leaving him just shredded my heart. Liam was born at a time when I desperately needed an anchor. He was my son but he was also the balancing force to all the chaos I had created in my life.
After Eamon was born, I didn’t feel the same sense of peace or calm I felt as a first-time mother. I was emotionally overwhelmed, had a touch of post-partum depression, and felt anxious about parenting two children when I felt so alone and abandoned in my relationship with their father. And Eamon, well Eamon arrived with his own spirit and his own soul and he bore no resemblance to his brother’s disposition as an infant. I felt ill-equipped to parent him. This child with his brute force strength and mental intensity. With Eamon, I felt like I had simply created more chaos in a life that already made no sense to me, and now also for them. These two innocent little boys who didn’t chose to be born to me; conditions beyond their control.
And that’s how our lives unfolded over the last 14 years. Two children getting tossed around by their mother’s impulsive decision-making and propensity for chaos. This husband, that husband. This job, that job. This home. That home. This school. That school. A frantic mind and an unsettled soul searching for something I couldn’t define and certainly couldn’t find. Conditions beyond their control.
For years I walked as their mother, trying to be strong for them, when I felt so weak and riddled with flaws, like an imposter in their lives. For years I walked in their lives wanting only the best for them, while making decisions that brought about the worst, and I always secretly harbored the belief that they deserved better. Me and my pell-mell bedlam that couldn’t be calmed, a large lingering shadow on our lives.
But today, I walk between my sons and the shadow doesn’t feel so big. In fact, I feel small compared to them. Yes, I am smaller in size, but I’m also dwarfed by their spirits. They are smart, and kind, and clever, and confident. They are self-assured in a way that calms a room, their emotional strength is deceptively timid, their independence and determination are the compass of their conviction, and they are generous and forgiving without compromising their own worth or values. They know who they are, unapologetically and they won’t be coerced off course.
But I am also small because their forgiveness of my mistakes and their acceptance of my imperfections humbles me to my knees. I hold them at either side of me, with a peace I wish I could have known when I held them in my arms as infants. I lift my eyes to them with a clarity that I wish I could have shown to them when they were babies. The pride I feel shreds my heart. Through all the chaos and disorder in their young lives, they found themselves. Their resilience built them this way, and I never could have known that my imperfections would be among the chisels that whittled their perfections.
When I pulled out of the daycare parking lot in 2001, Five for Fighting was on the radio, and I cried as the lyrics of the song Superman echoed in my ears for seventeen and a half years, “I’m just out to find, the better part of me.” My boys have been next to me the entire time, just waiting for the right moment to announce themselves. “Here we are, mama. The better—the best—part of you. Supermen. Here we are.”