"an unnatural mother"

I stand in the kitchen doing dishes, partially mindful, partially absentmindedly, and I am speaking to my husband. Something about shopping in bulk at Costco for meat and stopping in at Aldi.

As I dry off a ceramic white plate with royal blue trim, I stare blankly in silence as I realize there is no response. He tells me later that he replied, and I work on deciding whether I believe him or not. I choose to believe him.

But in the moment, standing over the counter, a seething and dull ache entered my belly, and it is at this point that I want to do something very dramatic.

Walk upstairs and change quickly, exit briskly through the front door while he and the dog lie on the couch. Disappear for a bit, make my absence felt, say, see how you all do without me for the day.

And then I realize, it is all too much—and I am left reeling with my feelings and trying to understand why I felt this with such intensity, where those thoughts came from.

My husband and I adopted a dog a couple of days ago. She’s a three-year-old pitty mix with a doll of a grin and soft eyes. She’s got that greyish look, the “blue” coat, and she’s docile, with a dash of sass.

Since her arrival, she has clung to her father. She likes me, she loves him. I have reconciled this. And by reconcile, I mean scour Reddit threads trying to discover when she will love me. And then I wonder if that’s on me, which contributes to the spiral I am about to invite you back into.

In no way do I think being a dog parent is remotely close to offering the same experience as that of being a human parent, but I have chosen not to ignore the feelings that have arisen in me since Miss L got here, and how those feelings have confronted my fears about motherhood…and myself.

I make myself a cup of peppermint tea and go upstairs to our bedroom alone. I hear the dog and J rustling up the steps, and when they open the door, they find me drafting this piece.

J settles in bed, and Miss L on the floor. With my laptop, fittingly on my lap, he studies my face and asks me if I’m okay. I bumble around with my words for a bit, fighting an internal battle, where what’s on the line is if I launch a conversation into my remembered terror about motherhood and ultimately tell him I’m trying to write a piece.

“A piece about what?”

“What just happened.”

“Okay, well, tell me about what just happened.”

And so it began.

I start to unpack how feeling ignored by the sink was what I felt like, a minor blip in our usual communication, but for whatever reason, the feeling this time contained a lifetime of sorrow within it.

Like, it was foreboding and harrowing, telling me that that’s what motherhood would be for me. A new life with child, built on thankless labor and a lack of communication. And even though the landscape of that nightmare didn’t match J’s character or actions, the feeling was so intense I gave up on resisting it.

Feelings have a way of having a much stronger grip on a heart than reality. Simulation-like, pulling you into worlds you have yet to exist.

One of my favorite authors is Elena Ferrante. In her novel, “The Lost Daughter,” Leda, the main character who abandons her two daughters to pursue her career and some form of self-actualization in the only way she could understand it, says about herself, “I’m an unnatural mother.”

The line has stayed in my body since the first time reading it, and I relate to Leda in many ways. Although I don’t see myself abandoning my children, so help me God, I am concerned about the overwhelming feeling of self-loss that might overcome me. Not to say that it is inevitable, but that I do not know how to prevent it from entering, should it crouch at my door. And what’s more, I have a deeply-seated unwillingness to self-abandon, and wonder from the outside: If I am a mother, who else am I allowed to be?

I tell J that I feel like I would be an unnatural mother because there is little about traditional motherhood that excites me. I realized, standing at the kitchen sink, that what scared me most was a departure from self to self-abandonment, thanklessly for years. I am a selfish woman, and I know this. I told him that perhaps this feeling is informative, good for provoking me to desire servantheartedness all the more.

We go back and forth in his consolation for a little, and then I wept and heaved as I remembered the dog.

Sweet Miss L is sick. Kennel cough. She sits by my legs and sneezes on my flesh, small dots of snot meet skin. Walking around the house, coughing and sounding like she’s fighting for breath, and I, as much as I felt sadness, I felt annoyance. I thought, who is annoyed by a sick dog? If you’re like this for a dog, what kind of mother will you be? Annoyed at your sick child? You’re not nurturing enough for this, you’re not motherly enough—you’ll be an unnatural mother.

I continued weeping into J’s chest. I compared myself to women I have known and know, who were born maternal. They are eager to make the sandwiches and wipe the noses, nurture during the ouchies on the playground, sacrifice the hours, and be mothers.

I on the other hand, worry that I’m behind. I worry that something in my heart has been stunted and that my baby, should God give me one, would have this intrinsic knowing that all of the things she needs me to do are hard for me, just because I’m selfish and tired before the work has even begun. Worried that she’ll know how quietly, I feel that the most useful I’ll be to her is when she’s a teenager with questions and seeking advice, but that I lack the practicalities of necessary mothering.

I went home for Father’s day, and in doing so, found time to tell my own Mom about these feelings. She, unmoved in the slightest told me that when it is my time, that everything will kick in. That my toddler will say, “Thank you, Mommy,” and that I will be happy to serve my child.

And I pray for their sake it is so. And I am overwhelmed by the inner work it feels I need to do ahead of time. Or maybe an earnest prayer is needed to transform me to prepare for such a calling, to steward a life.

And then f my peace wasn’t robbed by the concept of not wanting to change the diapers and give the baths, it was taken by the remembrance of my character.

I can be a grade under a severe woman at times. But then I wonder if that is my personal indictment against myself. J tells me I am encouraging, supporting, a good teacher.

I agree, but I am not the most patient woman in the world, or the most understanding. In essence, in more ways than one, I just don’t feel “maternal.” I feel like I could be a decent mentor to a younger woman, already formed, but worry I’m not “soft” enough for the formative years.

And those are exactly that—the formative years.

But Mom says, “God knows what your baby will need from you and your husband. Don’t get down on your traits. You might need to be more stern where J is more loose. God will mold you and you will be who God needs you to be for your child.”

And should that baby come, I am confident in this. After the spirals, the fears, the consuming worry, I do believe in providence. He is able to make me who I ought to be.

With love,

Rebecca