Invisible

You are invisible. Or so says my gmail header. But is provides an
interesting description for this stage of my life.

When I go to the grocery store with my three children, or to
Target--these are really the only two places I go with them, unless it
is to the park or the post office--I get the same sort of treatment,
non-verbal and verbal. I am a nearly invisible herder of three small
people who are adorable and annoying at the same time (I could almost
hear the man behind me at Costco yesterday... "really, she has to shop
with ALL THREE?") I am dwarfed by their liveliness, and by the
spectacle we make as a four-some. But I am assumed to be nothing more
than an at-home mom with concerns for her kids, her grocery bill, the
cleanliness of her home and her children's manners. I know people
assume these things about me because I assume them about other moms I
see when I am out: often wearing sweats, or the same old zip-fleece,
like me. Trying to decide and price-check and carry on a conversation
and herd at once. Talking on the cell phone in the grocery aisle. At
Target on Tuesday morning at 10 AM (who else is at Target on Tuesday
morning at 10 AM except us?)

Women like us, who go to Target at 10 AM on Tuesday morning, what more
could we have to say to each other--to contribute to the world--whose
concerns are limited to what kind of toothpaste our husbands prefer or
whether there is a considerable difference in the quality of Gold
Medal flour versus the generic market pantry label? Who ponders if it
is worth purchasing the cheaper cat food, wondering about salmonella and
food recalls and making impulse purchases on natural cleaning supplies
and gentle-smelling hand-soap. Those of us whose days are reduced to
walking behind small children and sweeping up their crumbs, putting
their clothes on in the morning and taking them off in the evening,
wiping their noses and bottoms and plates--acting both as nurse-maid
and dress-maid and cook and royal servant--what could we have to
contribute, after a day of this, to society at large? What about
after a week of this--or years?

Sometimes I feel like a fake listening to NPR. What does it matter if
I know about the state of the economy, or Barack Obama? Sure, it
matters since I am a citizen. But it is going to make my
son sit up and eat his carrots? Because then I would be interested.

I am interested, though--terribly interested. Which is the problem.
It would be easier to be so wholly confined to this private kingdom of
my home if I was not so interested in the outside world. I have
become curious about almost everything--physics, which I never paid
any attention to in high school or in college--biology, plants--my
goodness, how little I cared! How little I listened! I want to know
the names of the flowering plants in our over-grown yard, and the
trees and shrubs in our neighborhood. I am curious about the
neighborhood of birds that overlays ours, the hundreds of homes that
lay around and above our roof, and all the voices I hear in the
morning calling to each other--cajoling, mocking, annoyed. laughing.
inviting. I am so interested in what they are trying to accomplish
and communicate.

I know that it is out of the new stillness in myself that I have
become quiet enough to take interest in things like birds, and what a
baby means when it says hello without saying anything. These are the
things that have no place in the public square--babies, with their
drool and senseless babble. Birds, which tend to poop on our nice
cars, nest in our gutters and make themselves a general nuisance. Toddlers,
who are forever in the way and holding us up. I spent the first few
years of my time at home resenting that I was suddenly shut out of the
adult world, with the exception of watching BBC films and reading
novels. But even then, i felt more like a voyeur peaking in on
something that wasn't rightly mine, that I had no right to participate
in --than an actual participant. But suddenly, after six years at
this, I have discovered something: it is these small, things, these
shabby and overlooked and --to the world-trained eye--worthless
things--that are so full of brilliance.

Take, for example, the way my eight-month old baby looks at me
when I come in to get her in the
morning. She does not know words yet, but she speaks the most perfect
sentence of joy and fulfillment when I pick her up. Her eyes, her
whole face--her whole being becomes so bright with pleasure I am
caught in my tracks. Every time. More than once I have listened to
her grunting and complaining in her crib, and complaining myself about
my half-finished task, being interrupted, never having space or time
of my own... I march up the stairs, slowly--open
the door--and that look stops me dead in my tracks. I find myself a
five full minutes later smelling her sweet head, singing to her,
kissing her fat cheeks--when I remember I have a pot of soup on the
stove that has now boiled over, or one of the older kids is on the
potty, or my tea kettle is still whistling.

But this experience of seeing pure, unfiltered pleasure in the face
of a baby, is not something that translates easily as a thing of
value. It cannot be bottled and sold or marketed. It is not
interesting to bankers, investors, even pastors or lawyers or
teachers. It is a private communication, like a love letter, and,
like a love letter, loses its meaning when shared. Best kept private. As are toddlers, who don't know the difference between a personal question
and small-talk, and birds, who don't know when it is Saturday morning
and time to stop singing.

I wonder that now, after these six years, motherhood has become such a
joy to me.