No inner peace here

Today is Mother's Day, and I have received some of the usual spoiling from the Hubby and our little brood (breakfast in bed, flowers, a meal out, ice cream; it's been a good day.)

After a little more than eight years into this motherhood gig, and many sacrifices made for my guffers (I'd love to NOT have my C-section paunch, thanks very much), I'm at the point where I' mot sure what I've learned from all this.

When A. was born, after the first few months, I could list all the wonderful qualities I'd been learning as a new mom: patience, tolerance, forgiveness, compassion, an ability to function on less than three hours a sleep a night for more than a year (no, I am not joking.) I felt as if I was discovering my true abilities, my gifts and strength. I was a reporter and a young mother; I'd show them all this could be done. Pop in that university mixed taped of rousing feminist ballads!

Baby I. came, and Baby N., and I still felt I was doing pretty well. It was hard; I cried a lot, but I was getting better at it, day by day.

And then A. went to school. Lately, as he matures and starts doing and experiencing things I've never dealt with before, I often feel like they've handed me a newborn again (a 50-lb. one) and I have no idea what to do.

In the Gap ads, mothers are thin women with wonderfully toned arms who run through the surf with their perfect offspring, laughing and smiling at their handsome husbands with six-pack abs.

Motherhood is not like that. Motherhood is not bliss. It is hard; it can be frightening and is often downright messy.

I have learned this much: motherhood is not supposed to be sunshine and rainbows. It's not about self-fulfilment or inner peace, and I think that modern expectation is what makes so many mothers feel like failures as they deal with squalling, colicky infants at 3 a.m., or second-graders who insist on bullying their classmates, or teenagers who never want to eat and say they feel fat.

Motherhood, in essence, is about the survival and betterment of the species. Period. Little humans need a lot of things to grow and grow well, but none of them are a perfectly toned, perfectly tanned mother with a personal shopper and a perpetual smile.

Motherhood has shaped who I am, and that person is better than the one I was before the kids came along. I think that's certainly one of the benefits of motherhood. But I don't think that was the point.

The point is, motherhood is not about the mother at all.