To Be Yourself Instead

I guess I should have expected everything to go wrong that afternoon.

The art class I was teaching was supposed to be about Trompe L’Oeil, which means “trick the eye” and involves creating the illusion of a thing that isn’t really there. So I suppose it was rather appropriate that first I left the example piece of art I made at home, and then the internet wouldn’t work to show my slideshow on my laptop. It felt like I was the victim of one great big trick. I scrolled on my phone to show the children flat ceilings painted to look like domes or skylights, walls painted with false doors and windows, and tabletops painted with bills and mail. The children made their own Trompe L’Oeil by drawing a landscape and then putting a paper window frame over the composition to make a window to an imaginary world. I walked around the classroom, praising and giving suggestions as I often do, but more slowly than usual. I let the children leave without cleaning up because it took them so long to start their work put the compositions together. It took me so long to clean up that I was very late getting home.

As I drove, I realized this wasn’t ordinary exhaustion.  I’d caught one of Adrienne’s middle school bugs. I was going to be sick for a day or two.

When I got back to the house, Adrienne was on the porch with Jimmy’s boy.

Adrienne is doing better than I can say. She’s completely overcome the literacy delay from the dyslexia and is at the top of every class. Next year, high school begins, but Adrienne will be taking community college classes along with the high school ones and graduate with an associate’s degree. I’m trying not to think about that, because it hurts–  not all the wonderful success, but the fact that my only baby is going to high school, and soon I won’t have a child at home at all.

I thought that being a mother was all that I was. I was supposed to be somebody who had a baby, and then another baby, and then anther until my oldest was having a baby of her own and I ascended to the rank of a grandmother. There would never not be children underfoot. I would never not be running around doing domestic things, homeschooling little ones and cooking dinners and keeping house. That’s how most of the women I knew growing up lived their lives. That’s what I thought was normal. I don’t have a blueprint for who I’m supposed to be, if I’m not busy being somebody’s mother. But my ovaries only worked once and that was almost fifteen years ago, and now this chapter of my life is nearly over. And I try not to think about that, because I’m scared of how it will hurt when it ends.

As I got out of the car, Jimmy’s boy asked “Are you allowed to come play?” as he often does. I explained that I wasn’t because I was sick, but Adrienne didn’t mind riding bikes with him for a little while. Jimmy’s boy wanted to know if I’d planted those pepper seeds he gave me for Christmas. He’s anxious to grow peppers this year so he can make his own chili. I tried to explain that the seeds he gave me are for sweet bell peppers and we need hot peppers for chili, but he doesn’t understand, so I’m going to buy some hot pepper plants. Jimmy’s boy wants me to take him to a real garden store as well, because he’s never seen the inside of one before. He’s determined to have a hand in every part of the garden this year. I promised to fuel his obsession. We’re going to try growing melons in containers this year. We’re hoping to get a good pumpkin crop again. He is excited to plant peas on his birthday, which is the middle of March, just the right time.

We discussed all this through the screen door until Adrienne came out with the bicycle, and they were off.

I sat down, panting for breath, and I didn’t get up for hours.

As I sat there, I planned the garden. This year for sure, after planning it since 2023, we’re going to get that tree removed from where it’s growing flush against the house. That will make lots of sunny space for a front yard garden, with bachelor’s buttons, strawflowers, and white and burgundy Queen Anne’s lace. I’ll even sneak in a few milkweed seeds to attract the monarch butterflies. I planned next week’s class, which will be portrait painting. I planned the geography class for the older children, which is going to Japan this week and Korea for the next session. I’m going to bake a Japanese cheesecake for the children to eat while they watch a scene from a Sentai show. I planned and I planned, and then I took a nap, and when I woke up, I wasn’t sad.

There’s a thing I was supposed to be, and I couldn’t do it, so I had to become myself instead.

I didn’t want to be myself. My mother and nitpicking family made sure that I knew myself was unacceptable, so I tried hard to be somebody else. I hated myself from the time I was in elementary school. I think I first wanted to die so I could escape myself when I was twelve. I wasn’t at all happy to be myself the whole time I was a chronically ill homeschooling mother with the wrong diagnosis. I declared a truce with myself in 2021 when I finally got a real diagnosis and another truce the year my stalker died. I think I started to enjoy my own company in late 2024. Last year, I made a few friends besides the neighbors I happened to know on my block, and I found that I liked myself. This year I am really happy to be me. I’ve found ways to contribute to my community, as me, and not as the person I was supposed to be. That makes me like myself.

The next day, Adrienne was sick as well and had to stay home from school. This is the kind of thing mothers secretly love: a free day off to spend time with the teenager. Adrienne and I ended up sitting up in my bed watching episodes of “Little House on the Prairie” on my laptop, giggling when it was cheesy, cheering when Laura punched that horrible Nellie Oleson. We had the best time. We are two peas in a pod, and can have a good time doing anything together. I thought that the way to be a good mother was to be a persnickety tradwife who homeschooled, but putting Adrienne in school and just being a fun mom has made our relationship so much better. This gives me hope that, once I adjust to the change, I can also be a good mother in a different way when Adrienne is an adult.

There’s a thing I was supposed to be, and I failed. Instead, I had to be myself. And as I discovered how to be myself, I finally became a good mother.

That really is the key that unlocks the whole puzzle. You really can’t be a good mother, or a good Christian or a good anything else, unless you are yourself. As you are at peace with yourself, you can settle into your vocation in life. Your vocation isn’t something in contrast to the rest of you. Your vocation is yourself. Your hagiography is your own life story. The thing you are supposed to be is you. Not you in a cookie cutter stereotype, but you in your garden and your art lessons, in your neighborhood, in your community, doing the things you are good at and having the adventures you have. The only saint I could ever be is Saint Mary Pezzulo. The only saint you could ever be is Saint Yourself. And that’s a good thing, because you and I are good.

I wish that someone had told me that much sooner, but I don’t think I’d have believed them if they did.

The next day I was better, and went to art class again. I remembered the sample piece and was able to get the internet on my laptop this time. The children each made me a beautiful collage of a window onto an imaginary world, with houses and flowers and birds outside.

Evening came, and life was good.