Motherhood is tough. The chaos that pairs with the season of life when you live amongst littles has no better comparison than a zoo. I truly upped the ante adding cancer to our chaos. My husband travels a lot for work, and while in active treatment we had lined up lots of help to keep life as normal as we could for our two and four year old, but when “active treatment” ended the all hands on deck feeling left and reality set back in as appointments persisted along with maintenance drugs and the mental and physical recovery. One drug makes me just as sick as chemotherapy did and I’m often stuck in the bathroom giving my now three and five year old open season in the zoo that is our home.
Last Saturday while in the restroom I hear faint screams and fast moving foot steps as the screams and laughter get louder and louder until my 5 year old is at the door to the bathroom yelling, “she’s trying to give me a haircut, and chasing me with scissors!” I’m stuck. My 3 year old is running around with scissors and I’m helpless. The only option is to yell and plead for her to come to me and give up the weapon/scissors. My action fails, so I must risk the potential mess and walk away from the bathroom.
I walk out of the bathroom to locks of her hair all over the kitchen. Seems she enjoyed giving herself a haircut so much she thought she’d give one to her brother, who thankfully resisted the idea. There are no words to describe the absurdity of the situation and the mix of emotions ranging from despair to laughter. I want to cry, but I collect myself and the scissors and sweep up the hair before I need to head back to the bathroom. This is the story of one day, its not everyday but there is always something going on at the zoo when you have to cage the animals, haha.
My mom had cancer when I was a little girl. I don’t remember much from that season of my life or her life really. I think we took our zoo to my aunt’s house to be honest, but more and more I find myself reflecting and wondering how my mom felt going through her own cancer journey and trying to raise my brother and I. I lost my mom 11 years ago to a different cancer battle and I miss my mom all the time, but never more than on the day I was diagnosed. I can’t prove it as I don’t remember much, but I know my mom was a different mom after cancer. Something changed in her, and it wasn’t until l got to this point in my own journey that I have been able to recognize it. I want so badly to be the woman who says cancer made her stronger and gave her a new lease on life and started prioritizing accordingly, but I’m not. I am having a really hard time figuring out who this new woman is, and if I even like her. I don’t know if my mom ever figured out who the new woman was looking back at her in the mirror before cancer came back for her, but she was a damn good mom and my best friend.
Life doesn’t seem to reveal the why’s of the challenges we face, it only insists that we experience them. Being a mom is hard in any season of life, but there’s something profound about being in the same place that my mom was, pairing the chaos of raising young children with the chaos of cancer. I’m hoping that even without her physical presence that there is something I can learn from her here in this time. I’m struggling now to identify who I am after all I’ve been through, but I feel I have a clearer understanding of who my mom was. I can be upset for all that cancer has changed in my life and the struggles it will leave me with, but to understand and know my mother in a new way is something that I never would have expected and I’m almost thankful for.
