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Pedagogy of the Gods

By Christine Louise Hohlbaum

Guilt is a substance of which most mothers have an ample supply. They carry it around with them like students do their backpacks. Never without it, guilt makes us mothers all feel, well, a little guilty.

I recently started a new job. After much internal debate, I decided it was the right thing to do. It was a conscious choice, and I am proud to say I ignored the guilt long enough to accept the position. It is something I love doing and something which has allowed me to discover a new talent I did not know I possessed. I teach English to German business professionals. For nine hours a day, I get to play teacher with a bunch of stressed out managers who find me somewhat amusing as I mime the English language to them for hours on end.

When I get home, I am plumb exhausted. My new job has given me a new-found respect for my husband who used to come home to a stressed-out mother with bad hair and even worse breath. Now I watch the kids climb on him with bleary eyes as I sit on the couch, trying to gather enough strength to lift my head, much less kiss my lovely prodigy goodnight. My husband, it seems, has enough strength to lift their lithe bodies into bed, cradle their nighttime thoughts, and lull them into a state of absolute relaxation.

After my first week teaching English nine hours a day, I felt such an urge to make up my absence to my children that I gave them their birthday presents early. It seemed a bit of a stretch to gift them both with a Barbie doll and a miniature BMW, but I couldn’t help myself. I realized the moment I gave them the presents that what they really wanted was me. So me is what they get. And sometimes it’s a bit much.

After thirty-six daytime hours away from them, you can imagine how I try to make up for lost time on my days off. I cram into an entire day what I would normally do with the kids in an entire week. Take Monday, for example.

It was 8:15 a.m., and my children were ready to roll. They had had breakfast, quality time with Dad, and were fully dressed. I still had on my PJs and had barely had a piece of toast before I found myself promising to do an art project with them right away.

First, we made butterflies out of construction paper, pipe cleaners, and an empty toilet paper roll. Then we made a bug and a tree out of the same. After cleaning up the mess (I pressed them to at least hold the dust pan if they weren’t going to be helpful in any other way), we headed for the dentist. It promised to be a fulfilling motherly experience as the lady dentist found her way into my children’s mouths with promises of toy trucks and a ride on the child-size fire engine across from the bakery.

Back at home again, my children pushed me to play Play-doh and to do another craft project from the construction paper we had left over from the morning session. It was 3 p.m., and I felt a different kind of weariness set into my bones—not the kind you feel after working a full day as a teacher, but the type of exhaustion that swims in your marrow after a full day with your children as you act as consoler, disciplinarian, conjoler, hunter, gather, cleaner, wiper, chauffeur, protector, provider, and patient guide on this life-long journey called parenthood.

Some days I feel I have something missing—if I were meant to do this, to truly do this job called mothering, wouldn’t God have given me a little more to work with than what I have? On a daily basis, I remind myself that mothers are human, like the rest of us. On certain days, I am more human than not.

When my husband came home that very same evening, I sat with bleary eyes on the couch, watching the children climb all over him in their merry and tireless way. I smiled at him, and he returned it with a knowing grin. No choice is easy when you are a parent—mother or not.

About The Author

Christine Louise Hohlbaum, American author of Diary of a Mother: Parenting Stories and Other Stuff, has been published in hundreds of publications. When she isn’t writing, leading toddler playgroups or wiping up messes, she prefers to frolic in the Bavarian countryside near Munich where she lives with her husband and two children. Visit her Web site: http://www.DiaryofaMother.com

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