One of the best decisions I made in the past year was to get a zoo membership. We are lucky to have the most amazing zoo here in Cleveland. It even has indoor exhibits for the wintertime, and I take my daughter at least 2 or 3 times each month.
Of all the cool sights and sounds at the zoo, I’ve decided that the most amazing to me is the particular sigh of the moms in the parking lot.
It’s the sigh I hear almost every mom make when they first arrive. They get both of their kids into the double stoller, they get their diaper backpack on, and that’s when it happens. They sigh, and then say something to themselves like, “Okay,” or “Here we go,” or even, “Alright, we made it,” as they lean their body weight into the stroller to get it going. Sigh may not exactly be the right word- it’s the type of exhaling you might hear a sprinter make as they stretch near the starting line of the 100 meter dash.
They think no one heard this, but I did. They think no one knows what it means, but I do.
Each mom sighs because she has already done a full day’s worth of work and it is only 10:30 A.M. She was up three times last night with the baby, but had already promised her preschooler that it was zoo day. She tried to feed her kids a semi-healthy breakfast and monitor them while simultaneously packing lunches and diapers and a change of clothes for the baby and extra sippy cups. It was a fight to get her 3-year-old to put on his pants and shoes. It was a fight to get her 1-year-old into the carseat. She has already expended far more emotional and physical energy in the last 3 hours then she used to in a whole work day at her demanding 9-5 job. She chugged down half a cup of cold coffee but forgot to eat breakfast herself. But here she is, she made it.
The sigh is each mom’s way of embracing the day, bolstering herself to take on the joys and the challenges. She will laugh with her toddler at the monkeys. She will reason with her 3-year-old who wants to buy the candy from the zoo store. She will change a diaper while singing a song to her older child in a cold, echoey restroom. She will break up and comfort the crying argument that ensues between her two children when one insists that he can’t share the bench in front of the otters. She will teach her one-year-old the animal names and noises even though what she really wants to do is preserve her quickly draining energy by staying silent. Then she will argue with her crying kids to get them back in the car to go home so she can make them dinner.
Later on today, there will be someone, some well-intentioned, clueless person (hopefully not her husband) who will hear that she spent the day at the zoo with her kids and say something like, “that sounds like so much fun!” or “I’d love to do what you do. You’re so lucky.” And, you know, that mom is so lucky in so many ways. It is a privilege to live this type of life. But it’s also so much more difficult than others can normally understand. It is far more difficult than people can even put into words. It requires much more patience, quick-thinking, resiliency, persistence, emotional regulation, and tenacity than any other job I’ve ever had without question, and I only have one child.
There’s a post going around Facebook right now that I keep seeing called “Invisible Mother” by Nicole Johnson. In case you haven’t seen it, it’s about the thousands of tasks moms do every day that go unseen and unnoticed. It compares these invisible moms to the medieval builders of the great cathedrals, who spent decades building structures that would not be completed in their lifetimes, and spent endless hours carving engravings that would never be seen by people because of their height. They carved because these small statues would be seen by God. The message is that even though no one else notices all that moms are doing each day, they can take comfort in the fact that God sees all their work and the sacrifices they are making.
It’s a beautiful metaphor and if it brings moms comfort then I’m all about it. I could not agree more with its central premise; that God sees all the work they are putting in even when it’s invisible to the world.
But, I also don’t totally like it, because it’s just not enough. I want so much more for moms than that. I want other people to notice and understand the work moms are putting in all day every day. Because it could change other people’s perceptions, and thus their words and actions. It could change the way families operate. It could even impact societal attitudes, behavior, law, policy, etc.
I don’t want moms to feel invisible, even if they are comforted in knowing that God sees them. That sounds to me like misery and suffering. The God I have learned about, the God of the prophets, wanted people to take action to end human suffering. It is not selfish or extreme to expect people to see, notice, and understand the work moms do.
Cathedral mom, if one of your children is a girl, are you okay with her growing up and doing tons of invisible work, taking comfort only in the fact that God sees what she is doing? I want a lot more than that for my daughter.
At the very least, let’s support each other, moms. Let’s notice each other. Let’s pay more attention to that sigh in the zoo parking lot and hope that one day, everyone will really understand what it means.
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