Says Who?

A Question I'm Still Learning to Ask

Not the first time, I finished a project the other day and looked at the clock. The kids were getting out of school soon. Perfect timing. I could pick them up. My son didn’t need to do it.

Not that he had anything more pressing to do. In fact, school pickup is his assigned job. And it’s not that I was finished working. I’m still catching up from the summer and am, in fact, climbing out from beneath a pile of waiting projects.

So, why, then was I ready to pack up my laptop and head for the school? For the same reason I’m buried under a mountain of overdue work, actually.

This summer, my boundaries got really slippery. The kids were home. My husband was even home on medical leave. Everyone was always around. They needed me. But more than that, I wanted them to feel like the priority. To know how much I wanted to be with them. And the best way to show them was to be with them, at the expense of everything else. To show them they mattered more than my work. Than myself.

Wait, did we just go back in time? YES. But how? It’s complicated.

But here we are, back to school. Back to work. And I’m officially relieved of school pickup responsibility. One of my adult sons lives wth us and carpool is part of his arranged contribution to the household.

I had another project to start but once that thought arrived, that I could pick them up, the old tape started playing. I was already out, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Besides, they’re my kids. It’s really my responsibility.

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Was my older son taking on too much? Was this parentification? Was I making him go out just for my convenience when i was perfectly capable of doing it myself?

And the younger kids really don’t like riding in the car with him. They don’t like his rules. They like me. They want me.

I could surprise them! Frankly, it’s the least they deserve.

And really, how much difference were a couple hours of work really going to make ayway?

And then the kicker: Are a couple more hours of work really more important than my children?

Well, fuck.

Except a little alarm was quietly going off in the back of my brain. The one I’d ignored all summer long. Hello! We’ve done this work. Remember? Your brain is lying to you!

My son isn’t being forced to raise his younger siblings. This was an arrangement we’d made for our benefit but our son’s too. There is purpose there.

The kids were safe. They had a ride. They might prefer me.

But I used to know that the children preferring something doesn’t automatically make that thing my responsibility.

That: Just because I could do something, doesn’t mean I should.

So, I didn’t go. I started my next project. And part of me felt like shit about it.

Mothers feeling guilty about working is definitely not breaking news. And being raised Mormon adds quite a few tiers to that shit cake.

But interestingly, this slice tasted less like the doctrine I was raised with and more like one I made myself.

There was no bishop’s voice in my head. No one quoting The Family: A Proclamation to the World. No apostle speaking over the tabernacle pulpit about my divine role as another. No messages from Heavenly Father that day regarding my children’s afternoon transportation.

Instead the argument sounding in my head was in my voice.

I care about not parentifying my children.

I care about being available.

I care about whether my kids feel loved.

I care about not becoming so consumed by my work that the people I love get the leftovers.

Those are my values.

And somehow the voice in my head knew exactly how to use them. It didn’t use the church’s outdated rhetoric. It used mine. What matters to me.

When I wrote for the magazine, most of my work happened during naptime and bedtime. Or in whatever scraps of time I could grab.

When a deadline bore down too hard, my husband would corral the kids while I hammered through the last of an article.

I often typed with one baby strapped to my front and another strapped to my back. No one explicitly told me this was how it had to work. I just knew I was already bending the rules by working. A venture outside my diving role and purpose. But there was no direct criticism or correction. I just knew.

I grew up swimming in stories about good mothers.

They were told over the pulpit in General Conference. In primary, young women’s and relief society lessons. Over time I assembled in my head a composite of the perfect Mormon woman.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

She was gentle. Self-sacrificing. Consistent. Hard-working. Patient. She served.

She never uttered the sarcastic thing that would have slipped out of my mouth automatically.

She baked bread to lift the weary. And had fresh cookies waiting when the kids came home from school.

Everyone had clean underwear in their drawers and never had to tear madly through laundry baskets full of clothes on the way out the door to school.

She noticed the needs of others and filled them. Without a request or a complaint.

Then she did more.

She disappeared behind the image of the savior which filled her countenance.

The messaging that women shouldn’t have work outside the home faded out as I got older. But what stayed was the idea that work should bend around what really mattered. And that “no success could compensate for failure in the home”.

The kids and the home came first. Work was a cute way to fill the time left behind when kids went back to school. It might be helpful someday if something should happen to your husband.

My work fit well inside those bounds. But if my child had a need, my work took a backseat. My needs did too. Forget about wants.

I don’t believe that anymore. Or at least I don’t think that.

I’ve invested years of work reevaluating what I was taught about women and motherhood and work and sacrifice. I no longer believe a good mother should erase herself in service to her family.

I certainly no longer believe my kids’ preferences should dictate my schedule.

My work matters. I protect time for it. (Usually)

So where, exactly, did the I-could-pick-up-the-kids thought come from?

Here’s where things get weird. Our beliefs don’t necessarily stay in the same language or voice as they were when we learned them. When we rehearsed, recited and sang them into our bones. They grow with us. They age with us. They acquire knowledge and information. They learn new concepts.

They get access to therapy language and parenting books and feminism and Instagram. And whatever else we’ve been feeding our brains for the last twenty years.

They become harder to recognize.

Good mothers have to be 100% available for their children no longer gets me. An easy-to-spot lie.

I don’t want to parentify my son is harder. That’s something I actually care about. In my brain and my heart.

My kids would be happier if I went is even harder. It’s true.

And then there’s: I’m already out. I could.

That just sounds like common sense. Efficiency.

They are rules I lived by long enough that they had become part of my operating system. All sewn in tight.

I’m not saying that every uncomfortable thought I have was originally Mormon conditioning. There’s not some perfected version of me underneath it all, and if I could just shake off all the chains of my upbringing life would be sunshine and roses. I do not believe that.

That’s not how people work. I’ve got my own problems. Baked right into my brain.

And some things I was taught as a child are still very important to me. They’ve survived examination and re-examination and been found valuable and true. Some values I learned inside Mormonism are values I consciously choose now.

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A belief isn’t false just because I learned it at a church I no longer believe in.

And sometimes I probably should pick up my kids. Sometimes my son might need a break. Sometimes two more hours of work genuinely aren’t as important as what my family needs from me.

Picking them up or not isn’t really the problem. The problem was what the voice said it meant if I didn’t. If I could make their lives easier and chose not to, I was selfish.

The problem was not stopping to ask whether or not I actually believe that.

There are certain sentences that used to run my life that now register as red flags.

I should.

I’m supposed to.

I can’t just…

I need to explain.

I should be able to handle this.

I don’t want to be difficult.

A good mom would…

That would be selfish.

It’s not that these phrases are automatically wrong. But for too many years I treated them as a given. True unless proven otherwise. Without ever making that decision.

So I’ve been trying this question:

Says who?

Not SAYS WHO? while throwing two middle fingers up at anyone looking my way.

Actually:

Says who?

Where did I learn that?

What do I think would happen if I didn’t do it?

What would it mean about me?

Do I still agree?

Or is this outdated information?

Does it belong to someone else? Is there voice hiding behind mine?

Sometimes it’s family. Sometimes culture. Sometimes fear. Sometimes experience. Sometimes something I actually believe.

And sometimes I have no fucking idea. That can be useful information too.

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My son picked the kids up that afternoon.

They rode home with the brother they who drives them a little crazy.

I worked. A little more. Not an earth-shaking amount.

Part of me still believed the voice and wanted to go. That it would have been the nice mom thing to do.

Part of me was pretty sure that a mother with her priorities in order wouldn’t have needed to think this hard about whether she should choose her children or two stupid hours of work.

The voice did not disappear just because I caught it this time. But I’m getting better and better at spotting it.

I wasn’t really choosing between my children and my work.

I was deciding who was doing school pickup. Just that day.

When I first left the church, I thought leaving meant nobody got to tell me what to do anymore.

I didn’t understand how long it would take to notice all the ways that voice was living inside my body. It took years to install. I'm not getting rid of it today. But one says who? at a time I can continue to distill my own from the scripts that have been running my life.

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