Claire started coughing two weeks ago. It was a painful, dry cough — the mean kind. The kind that barks its way out of children’s little bodies, forbidding them to nap during the day or to sleep at night. The kind that makes a mother’s shoulders rise and her eyes squint and her brow furrow right alongside her coughing baby girl, knowing that this kind of cough is – a dooms day sentence, of sorts – contagious. Claire stayed home from school (which wasn’t wanted since she had just started), and I held my breath waiting for the next girl to fall.
I sound dramatic.
Maybe I’m being a little dramatic. 😉
You learn as you go in mothering that contagious coughs and other germs can be recovered from, so getting too tense about your baby being sick is a waste of precious energy. Mama only has so much energy to spread around, after all — best not waste it on what can’t be changed. Especially since that energy is depleted almost exponentially, as Mama nurses her sick baby all day long and all through the night. Buckling up when your baby gets sick isn’t just a figure of speech. Every Mama knows it’s exactly what you do, and that you don’t undo that buckle till the unknown, rough road of illness up ahead is finally far behind you.
You can get through one child being sick. But what of the times when that contagious child turns your total casualty count to four?
Two days after Claire started coughing, she had improved a little, but Emmy woke up with that mean, bark-of-a-cough bursting out of her little body, too. Within two days, Chloe had the cough. A few days went by with Emmy and Chloe coughing so badly, and then to add to the ride, a stomach flu manifested itself within this coughing virus, and suddenly I had two stomach sick babies. Coughing so hard till the insides came outside, they cried, cried, and cried. I slept for 1-2 hour stretches before jumping up at the barking sound of my next shift starting, buckets and rags and mops in hand.
Claire was totally recovered by now, and Emmy and Chloe were more on the mend, but Miss Olivia wasn’t left unscathed — she came down with the stomach virus first on Monday morning, and Sis is still trying to get over it. Twice now we’ve thought she’s been okay, but then she gets knocked down again, all while the stomach bug has taken one last victim (I so hope): Claire. Two weeks after coming down with the cough, Miss Claire came down with the stomach bug. To my despair, basically, we have come full circle. 
I can count on one hand the number of times all four of my sick baby girls at one time. I can count with one finger the number of times I’ve nursed my sick girls simultaneously: these last two weeks. I hung on okay for a while there, but by the time Olivia was sick, I was unraveling. I’m not one to be okay with things “just happening” in my life. I like to find reasons for events — to give experiences meaning. It’s my way of coping. The purpose of this seemingly endless experience of my girls being so, so sick was initially hard for me to pinpoint. Was the whole thing a dose of maddening torture as I never slept? Of actual insanity as I went from one mess to another?? Was it a taste of what it’s like to slowly, painfully die?!?
Leaving the drama scene, my mind realized something constructive as I kept thinking about why these last two weeks might be good for me, somehow, someway. This was the epiphany: my body can run the endurance race that is motherhood while wearing exhaustion. My body has proven that. I can make it through an entire day of work after sleeping in one-hour stretches. I can solely nurse a baby with my own body for months on end while keeping the rest of the family alive. But what of my mind? Can my mind handle the exhaustion? Can my mind be pushed to the absolute limit and still choose to think constructively? Can my mind be stretched beyond thin and still choose to react to triggers respectfully? This rough road of illness was a test for my mind. Yes!
I was grateful to have spun my reality in that way by the time Claire fell prey yet again. Knowledge is power, and I now knew that I could choose to either feel completely defeated and angry at what just didn’t seem fair, or to feel driven to prove Life wrong by showing up as someone who could maintain her dignity in the face of said unfairness. My body is up for the challenge. Can my mind be this time?
Today, the girls still home from school, we ran away to a favorite place and gently, easily, happily played in our favorite red sand. I sat watching the girls leave our world and enter their nearby world of make believe, and I nearly cried that they were all okay. On the mend! I think? On the up! I hope? Sitting back with time to think, I thought of how tough these last two weeks of been, and then I thought of the colloquial phrase, “tough as a mother” and wondered — am I tough as a mother? What does the word “tough” even mean?
“Tough: something that can stand up to adverse conditions; something able to endure hardship or pain.” The word tough comes from the Old English word, “Toh,” which means “strong, firm,” and “tenacious.” The two together – the work-horse female body and a relentlessly positive mind – make up being that tough mother, and my goodness, am I ever being molded into that mother. These last two weeks were absolutely terrible! I don’t want to re-live them ever again. But of course, somehow, someway, I will. Whatever hard, terrible thing that comes my way next, will, too, be a test for my mind. Life will keep shelling off the layers around my mind till that wonder inside of me is finally free. Just as having four babies in a relatively short time unearthed the strength of my body, my mental strength is gradually getting unearthed by Life, too. It’s a beautiful reality, really. My tough mind is in there! Every hard thing I endure will get me closer to my innate, inherently tough mind.
I want to make it known that I see tough mothers, physically and mentally, in every woman around me. We can all see each other physically and we know what we can physically do, and I just have to believe that if our invisible-to-us-minds could be given the same chance to be seen, we would be even more blown away by what our minds do. We all carry so much, and I absolutely believe that while a lot of us might feel pretty mentally sloppy, we are carrying our loads so well. Not perfectly, no, but perfection isn’t the point. We’re here to do a good job with Life – our level-best job! Inherent in that fact is that we’ll still struggle, no matter how much we know about being “tough as a mother.” Truly, how unrealistic would it be to expect that struggling mentally – even in the face of knowing and trying – isn’t going to happen. Because it is going to happen! Being tough like a mother doesn’t mean being an iron robot. It means learning, applying, and trying. Again and again and again.
I mean this so genuinely: the tough mother in me sees the tough mother in you. We are all in this together.
xoxoxo,
Jeni
