The Joy of Motherhood: Reflections from an 80-Year-Old

I’ve written a great deal about joy over the years, yet I have rarely written about the joy of being a mother. Perhaps my reticence to share my children’s importance is a vestige of a time when women didn’t showcase their families for fear of appearing uncommitted to their careers. (Remember those days?) Or perhaps it is a response to today’s social mandate to scrub a child’s name and face from view to protect them from the “evil world.”

In the first instance, we diminished parents with the expectation that procreation was an either/or choice—that one was either a parent or an employee, but never both simultaneously. In the second, we perhaps disempower children, who must learn from mistakes to grow. More critically, when we hide the reality of family life, we ignore the need to develop the social structures that make good parenting possible, leaving parents feeling isolated, confused, and alone.

Now, as an 80-year-old, I can finally trumpet the truth: children are joys worth having. Grandchildren are even better. While children leave scars, both visible and invisible, they also leave a trail of radiant memories.

I remember launching my children in kayaks into the cold waters of the Pacific Northwest and wondering what kind of fool I was. I remember seeing them on a carnival bungee ride and asking that question for the hundredth time. I still weep at the sheer luck with which they survived learning to drive, learning to drink, and the long, messy process of becoming adults with families of their own. I still bear the welts of their angry words, which serve as a sharp reminder that they are of me, but they are not mine. As Kahlil Gibran wrote: “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.”

Ah, but the joys! Sticky, snotty hugs and the accolades for their worldly accomplishments anchor my timeline of happiness. Now, watching my grandchildren take on our chaotic world with confidence, humor, and calm is its own reward. I am learning from their patient instruction about memes, YikYak, “romantasy” fiction, and the merits of blue hair. (I am even planning to accept the challenge of “twinning” with my grandchild by appearing in public with blue hair.)

Recently, one grandchild joyously shoved my wheelchair around the local botanical garden, naming every orchid we passed. My grandson valiantly struggled to teach me the games that occupy his time, then made me laugh at the wonderful absurdity of him walking with friends while dressed as a giant banana. Rare, occasional visits from my busy children and grandchildren always leave me the same way: exhausted and filled with shared love and sheer joy.