Nova hears with his heart. He speaks my unspoken thoughts, he reads my face like a book, he understands complex problems and always has the simplest compassionate solutions. He is a thinker and a dreamer. Of all three of my children, he has seen me at my worst. He has basically witnessed me growing up. Throughout the years I have become more calm and rational, but on occasion, still tend to lose it. He comforts me and offers me love when I feel at my most unloveable. When I feel everyone else has deserted me, he holds me and tells me things will be alright. He has the spirit and glow of an angel. I have never known one little soul to hold so much love and understanding. The place where these traits hinder him is in the older brother/sibling relationship. He adores his sisters, but strongly wishes that I could be exclusively with him. He enjoys our deep conversations, rocking in the rocking chair, drawing, and making up stories, dancing in my arms, or learning about new things together. His sisters are a blockade. They require a great deal of my attention.

Ayda, my third child, is an easy laid back child. She's rarely bothered. She has this sing songy nature about her. She always hums and babbles. She's the most pleasant baby I've ever had the pleasure to love. As I type this she is sitting in the floor rolling a ball back and forth and clicking her tongue. God knew that third child had to be like this or I would have left long ago.

My second child, Ember, causes my internal organs to knot up so tightly that my eyeballs bulge. She causes fire to rise to my cheeks and tears to spring forth at the most unpredictable moments. She can be unbearably cute with her shrill voice and bouncy nature. But I shit you not, somewhere underneath her curly tossled hair, there are horns. I remember reading about Libras a while after I had her. In the book Sun Signs There is a saying that goes: Dimple on the chin, devil within. Well, it's nice to know someone knows what I'm going through! I don't need to repeat all I've written about her before, nor do I wish to eternally stigmatize her with my words, for I know that one day she WILL grow up and gain the control and maturity it will take to function in the world. I just need to get this out of my system. I'm going the cathartic literature route. It's my genre...

I feel like a failure. I know they are not old enough for me to feel that I've completely failed. I know that there is time to fix the inconsistency in mine and their behavior. I know that they will grow up and take their mental machete to the overgrown emotional jungle they were raised in. They will create new routes, methods, and mechanisms to make their world their own. But it doesn't stop me from being obsessively aware of EVERY thing I have done and will do wrong. They know I'm insecure with myself. Even though I'm pretty consistent with the actual parenting I do, I'm inconsistent with how I feel about it. I know I should stay calm and in control, but I also know that, for me, there are barely any breaks. Even in the evenings when a husband would normally walk in the door and, like two streams merging, the force of their unification would be enough strength and power to move mountains, I'm still alone. I do this alone most days. I have since the beginning. My husband is driven to work. Even when he's home he has just one more email, another phone call, or some research to do. This adds to my feeling of failure. How and why did I or we choose to do this, obviously, before we were ready? Don't get me wrong, I tried and failed miserably to not keep having babies.  

I love my children with a passion so strong, a force so unbelievable, that my heart literally burns in my chest.  It's not them it's me. I'm not sure what brutal cocktail of emotional tolerance I have, but it makes me ill equipped for the heartache and chaos of parenting. I'm suffering through this and my biggest fear is...so are my children.

Today my son proudly handed me a Mother's Day card. It was beautifully colored. On the inside it read:

Dear Mom-

Happy Mother's Day. I love you even though you do some crazy things and one day can you keep me home from school.

Love,

Nova

This card turned my stomach! How can my children tell me they are scared of me and tell me they want to be with me all of the time, in the same breath. I do yell. I've never denied it. But I am by no means abusive. Perhaps there are days and times when people might hear me and assume that I'm abusive without the overall perspective of my full committment to my children. I'm not the sit-in-a-chair-turn-my-back kind of mom. I'm fully immersed giving most and, some days, ALL of my energy to my little ones. Of course I yell! Of course I have said things that weren't nice or even belittled my kids. My daughter pays no mind to her safety. She doesn't hesitate to run out into a parking lot to look for me if she doesn't see where I am. At least she finally stops when I'm with her. My daughter will deliberately pick up things and hit her brother for sheer pleasure. Smiling as she bangs him repeatedly over the head while he squeals and cries like a little girl. She will ask me for a sandwich and then right as I'm trimming off the crust she will change her mind. Then after I refuse to make her something else, she throws herself on the floor vociferously proclaiming with assurity that I no longer love her and I'm the meanest mommy in the world. I know this should slide right in my ears, circumvent my psyche, and be buried in the deepest part of my frontal lobes, but I am weak. In these moments I yell. I do believe there are times when it's OK or, at the very least, understandable to yell. Parents used to spank, some still do and, of course, yelling can damage a child's self esteem just the same, but let's not forget that humility is also an important attribute. Admittedly, I AM scared of my children. Not because they are stronger or have more authority but because they cause me to doubt my own. Their presence triggers repressed or purposely unresolved issues, with my own childhood or within my temperament, that cause me to replay every situation and feel like the bad guy. They know this. THAT is where I have failed.