Failure is Relative in Motherhood and Daughterhood
Failure is relative has been my mantra this month, which I find I am using with greater frequency as I face the challenges of motherhood to a teenage son and daughterhood to aging parents. Most women can understand the feeling of failure we experience daily. It is as if we are genetically coded for the self-criticism that is as loud as a marching band performing in a parade. This cacophony of “you are not enough”, “you are not doing enough”, and “you are not perfect enough” can sometimes be on a such a continual loop that all other noise is drowned out.
Perhaps nothing else makes this litany of “you are not” more shrill than motherhood. At least that has been my experience. By all measure I have been an OK mother, even with all of my stuff, which is too long and complicated to recount on this blog. In spite of my best efforts, I can’t help but feel some amount of my failings whenever my son does something that is not what I would have expected. If you’ve raised a child, especially a teenager, you can only imagine how often one feels this sense of failing since they seem hard wired to be doing something unexpected every other minute.
Even with the tapestry of shortcomings that appears for close examination in that mirror of self-study, nothing has made me feel my failings so acutely as dealing with aged parents and the care for them. As more and more responsibility has fallen on me and my brothers’ shoulders, the more this has brought to the surface my own limitations of patience, selfishness, and compassion. The more frustrated I get at the cruelty of the situation, the more of a failure I feel. The more of a failure I feel, the more frustrated I get at the cruelty of the situation. When I examine the why of the hurricane-like proportion of emotions, I know all of it is centered on my abject fear of losing them, which is no longer an abstract idea but something that will happen in the near future.
As the tug of war between motherhood and daughterhood with the winning side yanking me across the finish line of failure takes place each day, this mantra of Failure is Relative has kept me from losing all hope and not succumbing to the deepest, darkest, nihilistic parts of my nature. As I field a call with my son’s dean about a Tik Tok video that surfaced from his spring break trip, as well as a call with the insurance company about my dad’s latest health procedure, I know I am not handling either of these calls with any great success. The best hope is to be able to get off without fanning the flames of both forest fires and, hopefully, having solved some aspect of the two crises.
I know this tug of war will continue indefinitely. Yet a part of me dreads the day when one side is no longer pulling hard to get me across that finish line of failure…leaving me standing holding the flaccid rope. What I’ve realized is that Failure is Relative is the only way of dealing with both sets of responsibilities of motherhood and daughterhood. I’m certain, in my worst moments, when I am silently cursing my own limitations, neither my son nor my parents see my shortcomings as failings but simply as my own humanity and the complexities of it. So, I hold fast to the mantra, Failure is Relative, as I face another crisis and another moment to test all the reserves of my strength, hope, and perseverance.