I remember well the days of pandemonium with two small children and a busy career. I remember those older, wiser people around me patting my hand, “Don’t worry,” they’d say, “it will get easier, I promise.”
It’s only now that my children are in their teens that I realize it’s all a crock. Those same people ten years later tell me now not to worry—pat, pat—things will get easier once the children move out and go away to university. I’m quite sure that once they reach that stage of their lives, my older, wiser friends will then pat my hand once again, “wait until they settle down, then you can relax.”
It’s all a way to trick us moms into thinking that life will get easier, that our worries will subside once our children are grown adults. I believed that once, I think. During my early forties when I’d take mini breaks between play dates, planning birthday parties, taking the kids to swimming lessons, ballet, badminton, school functions, writing report cards, lesson planning, preparing dinner, cleaning the house… oh yes, and being a wife… to breathe, I actually believed that I’d become an expert. After all, they were my children (well, ours of course, my husband being an integral part of all this). But this post is about me, about being a mom, about being a wife, a teacher, a caregiver, a psychologist, a social worker, a chef (well, in my case, I tend to burn everything I cook). It was my career. It was my chaos—and I reveled in it. I loved the craziness. 
Now I’m in my early fifties. I nearly choke as I write those words, mostly because I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. I still haven’t grown up. I’m silly and immature in a truckload of ways, all the important ways I hope. I love to wrestle with my daughter and dance to One Direction. Yes, they’re cute. As my grandmother used to say, “I’m old dear, not blind.”
But my body aches in ways it never used to. Feels like each day brings a new ailment. I look in the mirror and hardly recognize myself. I see lines that never existed before. Those I don’t mind, but the sagging eyelids, please! Do you know what it’s like to put on eyeliner and have to stretch open your eyes, making sure not to blink until it dries, otherwise a streak of liner marks the lid making you look like an upside down gridiron American football player? I actually have to prop them up with my finger at times just to let the light in. Let’s not even mention the jowls developing. For the first time in my life, I can almost understand why someone would consider plastic surgery. Well, on second thought… What really amazes me for the first time in my life, is how I can exercise regularly and eat like a sparrow, yet not lose a single kilo. That’s just mean.
The idea of teenage hormones multiplying in a household mixed with a fifty-something woman’s changing hormones. Well, let’s just say it’s not pretty. With a body changing and feeling all about me, me, me, feeling one minute like you want to explode, weep, or laugh for no apparent reason, a failing memory where you can’t remember what you said not two minutes ago and repeat yourself making you sound a hundred years older than you are, struggling to stay awake in the late afternoon because of incessant recent insomnia, and your first real life definition of incontinence haunting you when you break into song or laughter or sneezing fit, it’s no wonder a woman feels like she’s going mad.
No, none of it’s pretty. Let me tell you, teenagers have it easy in comparison!
Still we have to keep it all together. We can’t crumble for our children’s sake, for our husband’s sake, for our own sake. Our older friends are still there patting our hands, assuring us that “this too, will pass”. Well, guess what? It doesn’t help to hear that. I want to scream when I hear that. But I don’t. I smile instead or crinkle my brow hoping they’ll notice my bewilderment, How could you forget so easily? It must be like giving birth. You remember the pain but you tuck it away in your past, in a soft cushioned nook somewhere in your memory where it can’t bite you anymore.
That’s life, I’ve come to realize. It’s not that people don’t care. It’s that people are tangled up in their own lives, dealing with these same issues, the best they can at perhaps a different time than you. All it takes is one phone call or email from a close friend telling you that their life is changed forever because tragedy has struck or because their child is lying in a hospital bed over Christmas. Perspective sets in fast.
All your aches and droopy eyelids and muffin tops and needless worrying over changes in your body, the ones that come with growing old gracefully, evaporate as they rightfully should when that phone rings.
We are mothers.
We are wives.
We are women who never stop thinking about the people we love and nurture even when we are struggling with something ourselves. But if all we have to worry about is the natural, everyday changes in our lives, and we still have a healthy, happy family, then we must let that soak in and appreciate how lucky we truly are.
I’m not convinced that things will ever get easy. We will always worry about our children, no matter how old they are. I am convinced though, that if we listen more, really listen to what our loved ones are experiencing then we’ll all be in a better place. Count our blessings. Take time to enjoy simply being together.
Susan Örnbratt 