Kitty’s rambling mind and rambling thoughts. Funny when words spill forth, and you can’t control where they take you or where they land. I hope you can follow this rather convoluted string of thoughts.
It’s been so long.
In over a decade, I have not seen one shred of evidence that their mother wants them. Only evidence that her own mother wanted her to provide grand children. Which she, being the dutiful daughter, apparently did (like the way she made sure to be a “good mother” whenever her parents came to town, but not when they were out of sight).
I suspect what’s worst of all isn’t that I haven’t seen the mother’s love for the munchkins, but that they have not. To the point where the youngest once casually questioned me, spooning apple sauce out of a jar, if I thought she was really her father’s biological child. She failed to see my reaction, thankfully, because she was more focused on the applesauce than me.
I cannot tell them, But I love you more than anything. Your father loves you more than life itself. You have so much love. You don’t need hers.
All I feel is pity, truth be told.
I pity her, this mother that never wanted to be a mother. She’s bored with kids’ games; she prefers date nights to family nights; she hates driving and last minute emergencies and kid’s activities interfering with “her” time. She loves them, I suppose. She just…doesn’t like motherhood.
The youngest tells me she might be better off if she wasn’t born. I don’t know what to say to her.
It feels, so much of the time, that we’re more concerned with appearances than the child. Because we act like how the child actually feels does not matter. “They’ll figure it out. No mother is perfect. The children will learn to relate to their mother.”
I’m tired of knowing that we’re encouraging this to happen every day, “oh, just have the child, once it’s born, you’ll love it, everything will be wonderful.” Only sometimes it isn’t.
I have no real answer on what is best.
I believe every child should be born to loving parents. Loving parents that deliberately- and with full knowledge of what it means- choose to be parents. But I also know what it’s like to hold a tiny person, crying for their mother, and tell them, “Oh, your mother will be home soon,” knowing it’s a lie.
I know what it’s like to sit by that child while she’s curled up, in the fetal position, in hysterics, screaming about why she was even born if her mother didn’t understand children.
If it were any other prospective mother, I would say, “Do not have this child, if you don’t want it.” Easy, simple. At least to say those words. And yet, I am glad that she did give birth to my munchkins. I don’t know what my life would be without them.
I just hope they feel the same.