It’s the middle of a summer morning and I’m watering my houseplants. I’ve sent my two miserable, quarreling children to the third floor playroom. Part of me is listening for the next fight to break out. Part of me is so tired of listening that I’m ready to leave them to their own devices until lunch time. There seems to be no solution to their endless conflict — the younger one’s never-to-be-reciprocated adoration: “Will you play pet shop with me, please?” and the older one’s soul-curdling disdain: “That’s a baby game.”
With a sigh, I step out onto the front porch to water the impatiens. “Patient Lucy” — if only I was more like her. I put down the watering can and begin to deadhead the plant. She lets me pluck off her old blossoms without complaint. The simple routine task is relaxing and I sigh again.
From somewhere in the neighborhood, I hear the sound of happy children playing together, their excited voices giggling and shouting. Children pretending together, sharing their toys, enjoying each other’s company — that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
Are they at the house behind us, the one that’s been empty for a while? Has a new family finally moved in? I picture them outside, exploring their new yard, while their mother unpacks her dishes. She checks the window every few minutes, smiling at their excitement, imagining the happy life she’ll make for them in this new home.
I’m suddenly intensely and unreasonably jealous of this imagined mother, whose children play so nicely together, who love each other and are kind to each other and even take pleasure in each other. Why are her children like this while mine are not? Why do my children bicker and tease? Why are they mean and uncooperative with each other?
I’m sure the fault is mine. I haven’t taken enough time to teach my children how to play nicely together, how to love each other, to be kind and cooperative. I myself have not always been as nice, as loving and kind and patient, as I should have been.
I’m not always a mother who delights in thinking of the happy life I’ll make for my children, but rather, one who often relishes the thought of every moment I can manage to occupy them so that they leave me alone. How long, for instance, have they been upstairs without me checking on them even once?
I turn around guiltily to go back in the house, when something in the voices of the children shifts and they come closer. Is that wonderful mother bringing her wonderful children over to meet us? Has she seen the toys in my yard and the bikes in my driveway and imagined her children would have playmates nearby? I panic at the thought of these happy children coming to my house and discovering that my children are nasty little monsters, panic more at the thought of their mother coming with them, to let me know, with her disapproving expression, that she pities me for my failure.
But then, I suddenly realize that I know these voices, that they are, in fact, the voices of my children, my own children, drifting down to me from the open window two stories above my head. For at least this one moment, my children are the happy children. For at least this one moment, perhaps I too am a good mother. Relief, gratitude, and love flood me, and I go back inside to be with my kids.