Dear Katie,
Is it appropriate for you to know how much it hurts me when you won't look me in the eye? When you won't tell me what you are thinking or how you are feeling? When you won't tell me how I can help you?
How about when I give you a hug because I think it might make you feel better? I stand while some seconds pass, squeezing you - but gently! not too tight! - and I feel so much love course through me. I try to use sheer force of will to make my love find its way deep into your heart. I think to myself that if I just hold on tight enough or rub your back just right, that you will feel my love reach you, and I hope that after enough seconds pass, you will speak or cry or wrap your arms around me.
Instead, you stand there, limp, as if you are only allowing me to hug you because you think that if you do I will leave you alone afterward, until the force of your uncaring (which may not be uncaring at all, but which feel like it is) reaches deep down into me, and I start to cry, and I move away from you. I try to hide from you that I'm as upset as I am, but I think you know. I am a terrible, horrible, no good poker face. I think maybe there is a part of you, deep down, that not only knows how much I am hurt, but that takes some pride from not allowing yourself to be moved by my grief. If I break down, you can feel stronger.
I know that you are strong.
I realize, each time this happens, that I have fallen for the oldest trick in the book, despite having been warned about it since you were born and maybe even before that: I keep thinking we are friends. There are so many signs, pointing the way to friendship!
We like so many of the same books and movies and tv shows and music, and we share new discoveries with each other. We can talk for hours, or just sit and binge watch tv together, and some of my very best giggle fits have been with you. We have so many inside jokes, and sometimes I know what you are thinking just from a single glance my way. On other days, at other times, you give some of the best hugs I've gotten, and we often come to each other for comfort, and to share stories we think will make the other laugh or cry. You come to me for advice, and sometimes I ask for your advice, too. I love you and admire you and in so many ways, I want to be more like you, or I want to commiserate with you over the things we do that we wish we didn't, or the ways we felt that we wish we didn't.
But we are not friends, not really, not yet. If a friend looked at me the way you look at me on a day like today; if a friend refused to speak to me about how she was feeling; if a friend said that I could give her a hug and then stood, limp as a doll, while I did...if those things happened between me and a friend, then probably we would not be friends anymore, or at least our friendship would be lessened or damaged. I know that since I am your mother, and not your friend, my job is to take whatever you can dish out (and maybe even to recognize that in the grand scheme of things, what you are dishing out is not the worst meal I've ever had, not by a long shot), and to love you and forgive you and be here for you when you decide to emerge from the frozen, angry version of yourself that is in charge right now. I do love you, and I will always forgive you. I am here for you when you want me, and I will always be here.
I think I understand now that these days like today are what people meant when you were born and they said that parenthood would "never get any easier." They forgot, I still believe, how all-encompassing it is to take care of a newborn, how you can go for hours without being able to have one literal anxiety-free minute to yourself, and how scary it is to care for a precious human who can't give you enough signals to let you know what they need, whether what's happening is life-threatening or just mildly irritating. In so many, many ways, parenting gets easier. You can clothe and dress and feed yourself, and walk where you want to go, and tell me where it hurts. And you never ever comforted me when you were a baby, but now, on many days, you do. You are so close to being my friend.
When people said it never gets any easier, I now believe that they were coming from a place like the place I am in today, where I have no idea what to do or say to you to make it any easier. When you were a newborn, your needs were mostly limited to four things: food, a diaper change, sleep, or to be held. You were a pretty easy baby - no health issues, no colic, no developmental challenges, and it was easy for me to feel like a good mom. When you were upset, it didn't take that long to cycle through those four things, or to narrow it down and then try each of the possibilities, but now! Now there when it comes to what you need, there are infinite possibilities, and not only do I not have time to cycle through them all, but there is also a very good chance that what you need is something I can't give you. I'm sure that a lot of the time, what you need is amorphous and undefinable and complicated and layered, and even if it's something I can give you, there is no way I can give it to you right now, because it would take hours or days or weeks or months to do what needs to be done to satisfy that need. (Is the need stability? Trust in unconditional love? Forging your own independence?) It is so much harder to feel like a good mom now, at least for me. It is even harder to feel certain that I am making the right decisions with respect to you and Annabel. There is so little that is black & white, and so much that is gray.
I'm sorry that so often, I don't know what to do or what to say. I'm sorry that I get my feelings hurt when you feel how you feel. I'm sorry that I take it personally when you don't want to be hugged, and I'm sorry that I make you feel like you have to accept my hug even when you don't want it. I wish I could be stronger for you, or more compassionate, or more restrained, or more sweet, or more of WHATEVER YOU NEED AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS. But I wish I did. I am trying, even if it feels like I'm not.
You have asked me, more than once in the past few years, if I have written more of these "Dear Katie" letters, and tell you that I haven't written one in a long time. You say that I should write one again, and I have a feeling that a letter like this isn't what you mean, but here is what I have for you today. Maybe someday you can read it and find that it gives you an extra boost of compassion for your own child. Or for a friend. Or for me.
(And Annabel, my dear sweet Annabel, if your needs are getting lost in the shuffle of the angst between the other three of us, I am so sorry. I love you so very much, too.)
Love, Momma