Channeling Aretha Franklin

A New York Times opinion piece on the stresses of pandemic parenting prompted more than the need for a second cup of coffee during my breakfast. “Mothers Are Losing It All Over” set my mind down my own path as a Mom.

Two points made by the article’s author—one of them a hypothesis, the other an observation drawn from a respected research study—resonated for me in particular. The article postulated that “what the pandemic has done for many women is to make them feel more insecure about those aspects of their parenting than they already felt most insecure about.” As a psychologist who’d made her career exploring patterns of human behavior, this made sense to me.

However, the writer’s spotlight really touched home in another way, as well. From the point of view of the twenty-year old study, nearly all children believed their working Moms most needed to improve “controlling their tempers.”

Who knew?

Certainly not me. I had no real idea back when the study was undertaken how many mothers—other than my own—had trouble maintaining their cool. Despite my professional experience, for years I had believed that I, too, just didn’t fit into being a “Neighborhood Mom”—most of whom were “Stay-at-homes.” They were the “Normals,” who, when overwhelmed by the kid-raising gig, they stepped back intuitively and took a long breath.

Unlike them, I got my crazy on when I was too frazzled, and already felt guilty because I worked long hours away from the house. I talked about none of this, afraid that any sharing I did would only call further attention to my being an outlier. When all else failed and I still couldn’t settle myself, I’d retreat to my car and blast Motown music. Calming it wasn’t, but the upbeat tempos and blaring horns sometimes helped me to shift my mood.

But looking back, even this isn’t the whole story. There was a pattern to the rants to which I sometimes succumbed. Sure, they happened when I felt emotionally and physically spent—which was often. But what triggered me most completely was when I perceived that my only child had failed to provide me with what I expected from her the most. Perhaps even more than Aretha Franklin, what I wanted was R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Once I’d finished the Times article, but before I had time to stir the cream into my refill, the infamous memory of my daughter’s Girl Scout Daisy-to-Brownie ceremonial dinner zoomed into focus, dive bombing down like an angry bee on a flower. That particular evening, newly separated and headed toward divorce, I’d worried that I would no longer “fit in” at all with the neighborhood “Normals,”, each of whom I’d judged as not just happily married, but most likely ecstatically so. Tired from a long day with clients, I nudged my grumpy seven-year old as we drove to her school’s gym. This is a big night, I reminded her brightly. Gotta be on our best behavior! She rewarded me a mere fifteen minutes later with a tantrum—sliding onto the floor, just as the pizza and salad were served.

In that moment, blinded to whatever had been troubling my daughter—and thus unable to see her meltdown as anything other than a poor reflection on me—I imagined the perfect Moms’ silent disapproval of us both. Surely they saw Grace’s behavior as the expected fallout from my divorce. I pictured them thinking: Sad that her daughter will probably wind up in Juvie one day, as I tried to coax my child out from under the table and off to a corner of the room. She responded by lying flat on her back. Don’t be a wimp, a voice in my mind urged. I couldn’t get over it any more than she could.

No longer thinking even a bit rationally, I crouched low and shot her a wicked- witch stare. She squeezed her eyes tight. Incensed, I pulled her to a standing position and demanded that she look at me. Are you trying to give me a heart attack? I hissed. Then, she turned her head, before looking back at me with a glare of her own: Are you ready to cut it out? I realized that she was mirroring my behavior. Everybody’s watching you, she huffed. You’re embarrassing me.

The rest of that evening is erased from my memory, but I suspect there is a box with a photo from that night buried somewhere in the dark of my basement: a snap of the two of us taken by a troop leader that shows my sulking child draped in her Brownie sash, and me, wearing a strained smile.

In the years after my daughter began hawking Scout cookies, I worked hard to better control my “Mama-Mad.” Deeper experience as a mother, and the willingness to look at myself with introspection, helped me to develop both the confidence and the better self-regulation that is necessary when stressed by single-parenting. Learning how to reach out to other women and become part of a sorority of friendship and support proved invaluable, too. Through those relationships, I became better able to gain the needed perspective on my own mothering—including the unrealistic expectations I placed on myself, and sometimes, on my child.

Later that morning, long after my caffeine jolt had subsided, two other memories popped into my mind. Had either of the events I recalled occurred years earlier, I would have considered them serious “Mom-disses.” One was a text my millennial daughter had sent me after I’d offered her some motherly advice: SHORTEN YOUR MESSAGES, MOM, she’d written, all in caps. THEY READ LIKE A DAMN BOOK.

The other memory also involved a text I’d sent her. Instead of responding by tapping words back, however, this time she used her cell phone to call me. That picture you sent me of your manicure with the beige polish? she snorted. I know you said you’d gone to the salon because you’d had a rough day, but I’m sorry, Mom. Your hands look creepy. I didn’t even have time to feign indignation before she added: That’s definitely a dead-lady-in-the-funeral-parlor shade.

How lovely to remember how hard I’d laughed at these recent exchanges—so different from those years when, as a taxed, reactive, and insecure young Mom, I would have responded defensively, unable to trust that I knew the difference between my daughter’s pure sass and her droll humor. Back then, I would have slammed down the phone’s receiver, letting loose with a how-dare-you-talk-to-me-that-way coda as the shrill termination of our call.

Although my days of mothering in the trenches are long past, the Mama in me cheerleads for the pandemic parents—especially the young mothers, who worry that they may be “losing it.” Part of me wishes I could gather them close and reassure them; part of me wishes I could offer them a vantage point they do not yet possess. I wish I could say, it will get better, even as I acknowledge that my own past vulnerabilities may not perfectly mirror their own. Nevertheless, I continue to think of them as I reread that Times article. With compassion. And more than a little respect.

Best,