Forward to Syra’s Scribbles VI, by Esther

Syra’s Scribbles VI will be out around Thanksgiving. Here’s a little something to tide you over till you can read it! I’m so thankful for Esther’s work on this book in the series.

My mother is a smart lady and usually writes her own forewords. However, she thought that this volume of her memoirs in particular would do well with a foreword written by me, and I agreed, for two reasons.

First, I feature heavily, but opaquely, in this volume, and writing this introduction allows me to, as it were, set the record straight. Syra’s Scribbles VI covers my seventh and eighth grade years, during the first of which I was enrolled in a private school, and the second of which was spent between homeschooling and outpatient counseling programs. My mother is relatively discreet in her summary of my issues, but it ought to be plain to the reader that I was in pretty bad shape. Reading this book myself, I could not help but wonder, “what in the world is going to happen to this troubled little girl?” Perhaps it is some consolation to the reader to learn that the same thing happened to her that happens to many troubled little girls: she remained relatively troubled, stuck in a melancholy Heffalump trap of her own construction—that is, endlessly worried about meeting an incomprehensible set of entirely imaginary expectations—until she graduated high school with decent grades and a good sense of humor, went to college, and got married. Like thirteen-year-old Esther, the Esther of today writes fiction and talks too much. Unlike her, I have a Masters’ degree in Philosophy, work as an adjunct professor, and am expecting my second child in six months or so. So things turned out just fine.

It is said in these pages that thirteen-year-old Esther discovered in therapy that her parents had unrealistic expectations of her, upon which they made their love conditional. I very much encourage the reader to understand what my poor mother did not: that this was a very real feeling, but not one that corresponded strongly to reality. Very few people, least of all my own parents, actually have such rigid expectations for a middle schooler. When I finally did arrive at the point in life where children often confront their parents’ expectations that they earn good grades, get into a particular college, and set themselves up for a particular career, I discovered to my great surprise that my parents did not care very much what I did, and simply wanted to see me happy. Their love was unconditional, I came to learn, though I made it hard for them at times. I have since begun to suspect that this highly therapized account of how my parents related to me—their boundless expectations, their judgments of my inadequacy, their contingently doled-out acceptance—was more, in truth, an account of how I related to myself. I wanted very much to be happy and successful and good; in fact, I felt that I had to, but I didn’t know how.

The second reason I wanted to write this foreword is to say what I myself learned from reading Syra’s Scribbles VI. My mother, as her readers know, is a tremendously hardworking and energetic woman. She is also brilliant (especially when it comes to her famously elegant math proofs). So I hope that neither she nor her readers will take it as a sign of disrespect that this book is to me most of all a cautionary tale. As I read it, I found myself swearing solemn oaths, come hell or highwater, to never, under any circumstances, allow myself to dissolve into such a lifestyle. There is a certain stereotype, often applied uncharitably, of the woman who is convinced she can “have it all”, who relentlessly burns herself out between pursuing a high-powered career, managing a household, and trying to appear “put together” at all costs. But the elusive dream of “having it all” is not only an unrealistic expectation for working mothers, but also for stay-at-home mothers—sometimes even more so. My mother was not content to take care of six children and her elderly mother. In addition, she homeschooled those children, transported them to and from an endless cascade of extracurricular sports, music classes, art classes, and swimming lessons; she made home-cooked meals (which they scorned), absorbed herself into their emotional life, blamed herself for their struggles, and sought out spare hours to spend undivided “quality time” with each child in turn. She executed field trip after field trip, vacation after vacation, and party after party, and read parenting books by the dozen. She barely slept. The only rest she ever consented to occurred when the stress of this insane lifestyle brought on a high fever and pneumonia. Over and over, reading this memoir, I found myself wanting to shake the narrator through the pages, and ask her, “Syra, has it ever occurred to you that the responsibilities you consider the “bare minimum”, that you do when you have a fever of a hundred and three, really ought to be the extent of your responsibilities normally?”

But inevitably, as the illness fades, she says something like, “Thank goodness the fever has broken! I think I’m going to throw a children’s birthday party with two hundred children and a homemade piñata this week!”

My oldest child is sixteen months old, and he will be almost two when the next baby is born. I do not have any particular “ideal family size” in mind, but it is noteworthy that priest who did pre-marital counseling with my husband and I prophesied, just before he sent us off, that the two of us would have six children. And if I do have six children, I can only dream of loving them with as much tenderness and attentiveness as my mother loved us. It is a high bar. But I also dream of knowing my limitations and guarding my time, of combining the love our mother has always shown for us with the peace she has found only in recent years.

Let me give an example of what I mean. When I was thirteen, my free time was spent mostly in structured, indoor, supervised activities, which required a high degree of management and chauffeuring power from my mother. But now baby Justin is that very same age, and when he’s not in school, he’s basically unsupervised and doing nothing—well, he’s finding cool sticks, riding his OneWheel around, perusing our local library, or playing video games. Syra, who ten years ago was constantly on verge of collapse, instead reads novels, teaches calculus at the local high school, chats with friends, and leaves most of the cooking to my father. She’s still got six kids, many of them living with her, and she helps out constantly with her grandson. She loves us all as much as ever, but the spirit of anxiety is gone. That is what I aspire to.

My memories from this time in my childhood are of a mother who was omnipotent: constantly energetic, always full of new plans, and doing a thousand things at once, while I on the other hand found myself sluggish, anxious, and swamped by melancholy, unable even to do the things I knew would make me happy. I could not have felt more different from my mother. But, reading Syras Scribbles VI, I see that at that time she was suffering in precisely the same way I was. We were both overwhelmed, hungry, wrestling with self-doubt and insomnia, and mercilessly oppressed by the tyranny of ruthless, self-imposed expectations.

This volume of Syra’s Scribbles shows my mother at her fiercest and most frantic, but also at her most vulnerable. It is not too much of a spoiler that at the end of this book she finally makes peace with the transition out of homeschooling. Like many good decisions, it felt at first to her like failure, like giving in. And it was giving in—but only to the will of God, who was all the time guarding her steps on the road to peace.