Excellence in Motherhood

Kind of a strange topic here. But I figured this site was the best place to explore these thoughts.

I have many strongly-held beliefs, three of which will be the subject of this post. These three beliefs of mine are as follows:

1. true excellence is revealed on our worst days
2. excellence in motherhood demands consistent, unconditional love of the child
3. parental influence on the emotional development of the child over time looks like one of those "long tail" charts:

Let me expain these three cryptic notions a little bit. Our "worst days" are those in which we are behaving in a way that is almost universally unattractive to our peers. Examples of such worst days include behavior that is self-destructive, other-destructive, escapist, paranoid, or other suchlike.

This first belief asks: "OK, so you're having your worst day. Still, what is it that you're good at on that day?" For example, the worst days in my life have been other-destructive in nature. So the question for me would be, on the days in which I have been in a white-hot rage, what was I still good at? Quick answers for me include doing syllogistic reasoning, and shooting a jumpshot.

If that's true, and my belief #1 is correct, that would suggest that, over the course of my life, I have displayed excellence in these two activities. Sure enough, there is some evidence for that. Got it so far?

So the next belief -- about excellence in motherhood -- is about the child believing that his mother loves him completely, and without reservation, every waking moment. It doesn't presuppose any particular road toward getting the child to believe that. As they say, there are many ways to skin a cat. But still, there are some obvious roads (like, for example, answering cries of distress of the child).

The final belief in the above list is the most scary. What I mean is, under this belief, for my toddler daughter, the greatest impact of parenting on how she will emotionally handle the onset of puberty, and handle dating in her twenties, is already done and over with. The game is over, the fat lady has already sung, and the fans have long since departed the arena.

Obviously, there is a great deal of parenting to do between now and then (our daughter is only 2 years, 8 months today). But what I'm suggesting is that the biggest, most dominant emotional highways (i.e. neuron pathways) in my daughter's brain have already been constructed and it serves daily rush-hour traffic now. All that's left now to build in her brain are the emotional sideroads, and the intellectual road system.

Whew! That's a lot of weird beliefs. You probably disagree with some or all of them. Be that as it may, bear with me for the conclusion of this post.

This is all by way of saying that my wife cathy is the greatest, most excellent mother I have ever known. In support of this statement, I will apply the three beliefs above. First, I will suggest that cathy's worst days are self-destrutive in nature. (Belief #1).

And I will further suggest that what she is still very good at on those worst days is giving until there is almost nothing left of her. What is it that she can give to the point of self-destruction? She can give consistent, unconditional love to a child (Belief #2). (Corollary: on those worst days, don't ask her to hit a jump shot or solve a puzzle.)

In the first two years of my daugher's life, with the food sensitivities and fast running motor with which this girl was born, life in our house was difficult, to say the least. Then there was the husband (me) who is (was?) a borderline psychopath, and who, even at his best, um, didn't much help out in those early years. These factors combined to have produced the perfect conditions for testing my beliefs above (that's the glass-half full way of looking at those days ).

Safe to say that my poor wife experienced more than one "worst day" in those first two years of our daughter's life. But, as I've said, even on those worst days, cathy was still an "excellent mom". You can imagine what kind of mom she was on her better days.

Conclusions?

• Our daugher is one lucky little tike. She will never know what it feels like to doubt her mother's love, and thus probably will rarely, if ever, spend much time doubting her self worth. (Just a guess here, based on my beliefs above.)
• I'm in awe of my wife. I admire excellence wherever it is found, even in domains that do not interest me (e.g. champion Olympic gymnasts, genius in chess, etc.). But motherhood does interest me greatly.
  

When I first met my wife 8 years ago, on instinct I suspected that she would turn out to be a fine mother. That instinct was proven out in 2006-2007. But even that accurate instinct back in 2000 didn't know what "great mothering" would look like.

I now know. It's awesome to behold. One interesting thing to me that is that even my wife's circle doesn't seem to know that they have a mothering savant in their midst.

Maybe that's because our American culture has no idea what comprises excellence in motherhood. Well, if so, here's my attempt at a definition.