Inspiration
Euphemisms
By Anni Gibson
Inspiration
I’m going to write a book someday. I’ll call it Parenting Euphemisms or Everything About Childrearing That No One Really Talks About. It will be filled with gloriously helpful tidbits that your mother – in fact no other mother—dared tell us, lest we women run like hell from pregnancy and all that comes after it.
My book will contain honest definitions, like the one that calls out that the term “fussy baby” is a euphemism for an infant wailing its lungs out until Mom and Dad are ready to give her back. “Oh, the baby is just a little fussy today.” Waaah, Waahh, Waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh.
It will also explain to young mothers that all babies cry, especially when Mom, herself, is starving and needs to eat. No one ever talks about this. Everyone discusses, ad nauseam, the lack of sleep, but I don’t recall a single warning that every time my husband and I sat down to dinner, the baby would begin to cry. I remember my husband cutting my meat for me, so that I could eat with one hand while nursing. We later realized that this was why some brilliant soul invented the baby swing…so parents could actually gulp down a meal during the evening “witching hour.”
{Now, I am almost 20 years beyond that stage of parenting, yet I am still encountering new and, perhaps taboo, aspects of the experience from a mother’s point of view. And more euphemisms. For example, everyone has heard of the Empty Nest Syndrome, but no one ever really talks about the emotions involved. Letting go hurts but it is rarely discussed. Yet as I query other moms, I am finding it is a nearly universal experience. Children grow up. They don’t need you anymore and this hurts.
Once, his world revolved around me. I was his oracle, his taskmaster and even his pal. I remember the days before he could talk, as I waited with anticipation for him to express himself so that I could find out what was going on in that maturing and, of course to me, fascinating little brain. We had wonderful conversations, first about bugs and where milk comes from and, much later, about why poverty exists and what we should do about it. I went to every game he played and every play he helped put on.
And now, because I have done my job well, he is moving on. Once I was part of 100% of his life. This dwindled over the years, naturally and almost imperceptibly as he moved through elementary school, junior high and high school, until now, all of a sudden, he is an adult. And if I want him to grow independent and function on his own, I’ll be lucky to be part of 5% of his life. In truth, the rest is none of my business unless he decides it is. And this hurts.
I’ve talked to other mothers and my feelings are not unique. Yet we mothers, given the derogatory “Empty Nest” label, seem to suffer in silence and wander through this period of parenting alone…as though it were our fault that we have these feelings.
Did I somehow miss the parenting class on letting go? I went to the childbirth classes and the early childhood lectures – even the sessions on drug and alcohol prevention. But these were all about the children. Now I need a parenting class about me. About how to move beyond identifying myself first and foremost as a mom and find myself again…or perhaps for the first time, given that all the previous roles I fulfilled that were more about others than about me: daughter, wife, mother, employee, volunteer.
Yes, it is time to get beyond the Empty Nest euphemism and on to the task of self-discovery. If I work it right, it should even be fun, trying new things, meeting new people, learning new skills…that is, once I get through the pain.
Anni Gibson is a writer and creative writing teacher at Women Writing for (a) Change in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her first volume of poetry, Unfinished, was published in May 2007 by Woven Word Press. Her work has also been published in Westview Journal (Southwestern Oklahoma State Univ.) and Sanskrit (Univ. of North Carolina, Charlotte).
