See you on the other side

When your other mother becomes someone else's mother

My friend’s son made this for the teacher. 😇

I was chatting with another parent in the parking lot at pickup a few months ago when her daughter ran up, her little lip trembling and tears running down her face. She was no match for the teacher, though, who was an even bigger wreck.

Mrs. T., my son’s second-grade teacher, started maternity leave the day after Valentine’s Day. My husband volunteered for the class party and reported that she gently kicked all the parents out of the room last few minutes of class in order to have a few minutes of private time with the kids before leaving this stage of her life. I asked my son what she told them, and he refused to say/claimed he couldn’t remember. Maybe that’s for the best. It should be sacred, perhaps.

Mrs. T. was in the classroom the day we toured the preschool with our firstborn son in 2015. She taught him in both first and second grade and was his teacher during the pandemic. She led the kids bravely and positively through it. Trying to match her energy at home—’til I learned to stop trying—was really hard. She made signs that said, “My teacher misses me,” drove around, and put them in front of her students’ houses. She was just one of those magical teachers who could make an entire busload of children silent with a single fluttering hand gesture. I’m glad my younger son got to have her, as well, at least for part of a year. It was the most relaxed schoolyear for him in a series of hard years.

So, of course, I came to give Mrs. T. a hug on her last day, wishing her safe passage and the wind at her back and so on. I was just one of dozens of people doing the same, so I made it a very quick goodbye. I had to laugh at what a hormonal barrage she must have been going through and how tired she’d probably be that night.

Later that night, I texted with a witch friend who also has two boys who had Mrs. T. as a teacher. She and I were deep in our feelings about what lay ahead for her. We remembered how shell-shocked we were after we had our first kids and how wrong we were about what maternity leave and postpartum would feel like. How the setting sun could bring a sense of dread, how we began to understand some really dark shit we couldn’t fathom understanding before, how we wondered if we would ever feel free or happy again. Did that lay ahead for her? What would she be like on the other side?

There is something babyish-sad when a mother figure in your life goes on to become a mother to her own children. I remember when my teachers had babies when I was a child, but this feeling really hit me in my 20’s when my therapist went on maternity leave. It is so self-centered, of course—how can you leave me? But also, there is just a type of melancholy knowing that someone who has cared for you in any sort of maternal way, even if it’s professional, will soon have a new “kid” they choose to prioritize. It kind of makes you feel like you were the practice before the real thing came along.

There is a new element to this feeling when you are a parent yourself, and you witness, from a distance, someone you’ve spent meaningful time with cross over into new parenthood. The rational side of me knows that the sweet mystery of impending new motherhood clicks into reality pretty shortly after the baby arrives, yet we still like to imagine the mother/child bond is insta-formed, and life is frozen in loving perfection like a Willow Tree set. Even though I know better—knowing better is what this whole newsletter is about—there is still a part of me that’s like, “Oh, sigh.”

I get that little feeling when we drive by the hospital where the kids were born like it was a sweeter time than it really was. What a sweet time when I got my labia stitched up, and 12 hours later, had to pass a very irregular poop frighteningly close to those stitches. The terror of realizing we couldn’t take the nurse who knew how to make our baby take a formula shooter home with us, the stress of realizing that the carseat we’d carefully installed was in fact too big for the baby who was three pounds smaller at birth than we’d anticipated. The bloody chunks. What a pink cloud, right?

The challenges of giving birth and new motherhood weren’t simple. It had its sweet moments, but it was scary, stressful, exhausting, and boring also. Maybe part of the bittersweet feeling of watching new moms cross over is me wondering whether those feelings were wrong, and I’m a little afraid of those first-time moms might get it right, technically and emotionally, off the bat.

Why don’t I know better than to remember a pink cloud that didn’t really exist? Here I am now, dealing with later-in-life maternal stuff like the school board and baseball schedules and ADHD medication shortages and trying to both think about and not think about gun violence. Maybe the wistfulness is more like empathy for when someone becomes a parent for the first time crossing into the unknown and then the more gradually known. Do I feel bad for or jealous of the new mom who has no idea what’s ahead? Actually, despite these bittersweet feelings, hardly any jealousy, to be honest. The photos and videos of those early days are sweet, but I would absolutely not go back to the first-time newborn days, no way. But that knowledge has been hard-earned. And all of Mrs. T’s new knowledge will be hard-earned as well.

So maybe instead of a “those were the days” or “cherish it!!” or “you don’t know what you’re in for” sort of farewell, maybe it’s just more like a stiff upper lip fare-thee-well, have a good journey type of thing. See you on the other side. Actually, maybe we won’t see you on the other side at all because you have your own kid now, and my kids are no longer your kids. But good luck and godspeed.

PS. Mrs. T’s baby boy arrived exactly one day after she began her leave, like a good prompt boy.

---

End credits

Thanks for reading Evil Witches, a newsletter for people who happen to be mothers. New here? Here’s what the newsletter is all about.

If you are not already a paid subscriber, I hope you think about it. You get access to intimate, funny and helpful chats and extra context, plus you sponsor this ad-free content. Now is a great time to subscribe since I have a deal running thru Mother’s Day:

The Evil Witches archives live here. If you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions for the newsletter, you can reply directly to this email or leave them in the comments. We live on Twitter and Instagram as well.

---

One witchy thing