Good enough

There’s a book out there circulating that talks about the “good enough” parent.

My friends and I talk often about our own parents and how a concept like “good enough” wouldn’t cross their minds (or so we think) because they were just trying to get by with what they knew best. And maybe do better than the generation before them.

But my parents were good. They weren’t perfect, but they were good. For me to take it a step beyond what they did feels like reaching much farther than I have the capacity. Along with that, many books floating around are offering their two cents as well. All of the books are written by experts. Can you feel the pressure mounting?

Enter stage left, a pandemic.

There are times I search for meaning behind the happenings in our lives. It feels self involved to say maybe the pandemic stepped in to remind us we are incapable of perfection and striving for “good enough” is about as far as any of us should push for.

So I won’t say that.

But it has forced me to step back, over and over again and ask myself, “that wasn’t great, I wish I could do better, but given the energy I have after all that’s going on around me – is it good enough?”

I want to give my children everything. I want to raise them to be strong, caring, and considerate people. I want to keep the dark, pathetic sides of myself from them and keep the scary, awful parts of the world far away. I want them to always have joy, health, and success in life.

Yesterday a contradiction of all my desires for my children rose it’s weary head as I held my eldest child down for a PCR test. He was not happy. He was miserable, angry, and frankly acting like an anxious crazy person (said by his anxious crazy mom). My heart broke over and over again as we tried to work through his anxiety and he refused.

But I was also frustrated with him and furious with this stupid pandemic and confused about what the right thing was.

I looked over at his doctor and she could tell my decision making skills were stuck. God bless these health care professionals who are asked to step in far too often. She called in another nurse in the office and together we held my son down and the doctor swabbed as gently as a person can in that scenario.

The PCR test came back negative but what if it hadn’t?

My eldest and I drove home and he twisted his face away from me the entire drive. His eyes were full of fury and I worried that this would be the trauma he would bring up in therapy someday down the road. That this would be my “great big mistake” as a parent.

I recalled, out loud, in a soft voice, a moment where I also didn’t want a medical test and how I also kicked and screamed and threw a fit. Up until that moment I had forgotten when my mother brought me in for a blood test because she was concerned I might have diabetes…or was trying to trick me into eating less sugar?? Either way, she did what she did because my health was the most important.

“I don’t know why they have to have tests that are painful or annoying,” I said to him as I looked out at the snow covered road in front of me, “but that’s how we learn if something is wrong…and sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do.”

Later on he’d rest his head on my exhausted heart and he’d laugh at the dinner table when I described his test as my “low” of the day and he too would claim it as his low.

I was never going to be the best parent. Not even once did I think I’d achieve that trophy but I think the pandemic has tipped it even farther out of my grasp.

And maybe that’s okay.

I accidentally swore in front of my eldest today. I swear so rarely that it surprised him, and surprised me that I did it when he was around. He looked at me, and I saw the wheels turning, the pieces of me as he knew me to be before re-working themselves.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I got hurt and it slipped out. It’s not a word I like to use.”

“I know Mom,” he said.

He smiled and later told his brothers and my husband, “Mom swore.”

I rolled my eyes but the truth is, I want him to see my imperfections. I want him to hear my apologies. I want him to understand that to be human is to fail.

Still, each day I try to be enough. Maybe tomorrow I’ll even reach “good enough”.