Enough

Today, I took Cecilia to resolve her tip and tongue ties with laser surgery. I sat there, restraining her little hands as her frenulum was literally burned away, freeing her lip from her gums. Cecilia screamed in pain and fear, not understanding what was happening to her as the pediatric dentist wiped away the blood and kept burning.

I think the whole procedure took less than two minutes, but for me, it was endless. Not only could I not stop her pain and fear until the procedure was done, but I had voluntarily chosen to do this to her. I could not explain to her that the ties were impacting her nursing ability and causing her to choke on solid food. I couldn’t describe the myriad ways in which unresolved ties can complicate things as necessary as breathing, sleeping, and speaking. I couldn’t mind-meld with her to give her the six hours of research I had done in the course of trying to make this decision for her.

How do you make sure a one-year-old has informed consent? How do you respect her dignity as a person whose body is being treated, manipulated, or cut? How do you carry the burden as a parent that you are making a choice for her body and her life in which she has no say?

Just as I did with Lizzy that horrific morning in the emergency room, I described in detail to Cecilia everything that was going to happen to her and my reasons for doing it. I kept apologizing and asking for her forgiveness if I was making the wrong decision for her. I tried to explain that I was making the best choice for her that I could with the information in front of me. And my brave little angel surrendered herself to me and to the pain and fear that followed.

I fear sometimes that parenthood is a burden that is too heavy for anyone to bear. Who are we to make decisions for our children that have lifelong ramifications in most instances? The weight of responsibility is crushing. And yet our society just expects and takes it for granted that children are intellectually useless and need an adult to mediate the world for them. And then it is these same children who become the adults that perpetuate vicious cycles of abuse, neglect, manipulation, isolation, guilt, and shame. We force drugs and needles and vaccines and sugar and junk food into their little bodies either because that is what was done to us or because it is what we are being told to do. And the child’s voice and emotions in this are steamrollered.

I know I am getting on a soapbox, but I am not going to apologize for it. Our children are people. And that little person who you are making choices for will one day grow up to make choices for others who are weak or voiceless. Put some intention and conscience and research into the choices you are making for another human being–no matter how little–especially into choices that have to do with what happens to their bodies.

The more I read and research the nuances and details of how parenting choices can affect the child long-term, the more terrified I am that I am not up to the task. Cecilia’s health, growth, literacy, ability to cope with her blindness, ability to walk correctly, and ability to manage her fear and stress are on my shoulders. The burden of responsibility is literally indescribable. I can spend the next twenty years reading and researching how best to parent and to love her and it will still never be enough.

It is this concept of “enough” that I want to talk about. For more than a year, I have obsessed over what I could have done better or differently in order to achieve the outcome where Lizzy didn’t die. I can’t get off of the mental hamster wheel of playing out different what-if scenarios. And each and every one of them involves me being smarter or stronger or better researched or healthier or more financially stable or more intuitive or more compassionate. In reference to Lizzy, who I was and what I did will never be enough. And I will likely fear and obsess for the rest of my life that if I had been or done more, she would still be alive.

In reference to Cecilia, I have worked ten times as hard and as constantly to try to do the next right thing (thank you, Frozen 2) as I did when parenting Lizzy. I do this in part because Cecilia deserves nothing less and in part because I need to be able to live with my choices for her if something happens to her. I need to keep myself to a standard of responsibility and self-giving with Cecilia that I didn’t have with Lizzy precisely because I will live and die with the belief that I did not do enough to keep Lizzy alive.

My therapist recommended in our last session that I start to think about allowing what I am doing in the moment to be enough. I confess this suggestion is challenging for me. Part of me wants to out and out rebel against it and scream that it will never be enough; I will never be enough, and my daughters will always deserve more than “enough” of what I have to give.

And part of me also realizes that I still have to eat and sleep and drink water and urinate and defecate and shower, and without making space and time for these things, I am not physically capable of being the kind of mother I want to be.

I think every sober, responsible parent asks him or herself at some point if what they are doing or choosing for their children is good enough. I contend that the answer is no. And it’s not because I like to self-flagellate or hold myself to an impossible standard. When you become a parent, you are held to an impossible standard with or without my opinions by sheer virtue of the fact that an innocent, helpless life is now in your hands and your hands alone. What matters more? What standard does your child deserve if not the highest?

We live in a world where no one can ever become his ideal version of himself. This is exactly why ideals and impossible standards are so important to set and to strive for. The Hebrew translation of the word “sin” literally means “to miss the mark.” It is a fundamental part of being human to fall short of ideals and perfection; but without those ideals setting our course, we would do nothing but wallow in the mud of self-pity and indulgence.

Being a parent is not easy. It is not convenient. Being a parent is not about you. And, most importantly, being a parent is not about being enough. In fact, being a parent is actually about never being enough, and understanding exactly why “enough” should never be your goal.

There is no tool or technology that can measure the value of a human life. Every time Cecilia smiles her gummy and gap-toothed smile or scrunches up her nose to play a sniffing game, it strikes me anew how one day she will not need me so much, and I will not be able to make her laugh so easily. Every moment with her is a moment in time that I will never get back, too precious to relate or hoard or catalog. I simply cannot describe to you the swelling in my heart every time her eyes, crossed and wandering, work so desperately hard to focus on my face, which is the source of the sound that she loves so much. I don’t know how to tell you how acute a sense of humor she developed somewhere around 11 months old. And there is no articulating the feeling I have when she rests her heavy, little head in the perfect nook of my chest and chin. Or the joy in her face the first time she clapped by herself.

If you want me to talk about the concept of enough, I will tell you that I didn’t have enough time with Lizzy and that I will never have enough time with Cecilia. There will never come a time where I feel I have loved either of them enough or shared enough of my joys with them. And too–there will never come a time when I feel I have been enough for them or that they didn’t deserve the best I had to give, even when I ran out of the strength I needed to give it.

Enough? There is no such thing when it comes to your children.