Mommy Matters: Romantic Love, Reincarnated

by Jill Miller Zimon

As a parent, I’m immersed in a love that can be downright disgusting, like when I held my sick infant daughter over a kitchen sink – a la Michael Jackson’s kid over a window sill – only to have her redirect the torrent into my face. I still laugh at what I must have looked like just before, during and after she erupted.

On the other hand, Valentine’s images of Cupid, couples and candy rarely elicit more than a smug smile from me anymore, especially when they accost me from retail displays bigger than a heap of on-sale Christmas decorations.

It’d be easy to blame this reaction on my dislike for commercialization. Even my children’s school sends home a class list with guidelines on how to give valentines in an equitable way. I’m sure, however, that some kids still receive a shoebox full of villains, and no princesses or superheroes.

Maybe it’s because ghosts of Valentine’s Days past haunt me. I confess to daydreaming about what might have been if a certain college beau hadn’t dumped me after I’d guzzled champagne at a sweethearts dance and passed out. And I’m still waiting for another ex-boyfriend to return the painstakingly produced and expensively framed needlepoint I gave him. Fifteen years ago.

But the fact is that my desire for the romantic love of Valentine’s Day has been displaced by the all-consuming love of raising children. Romantic love attracts and enslaves us to one another like the red in a rainbow transfixes and immobilizes us with its beauty. But after it sweeps us off our feet, it binds many of us to parenthood, where we encounter a different kind of passionate love.

The extreme love in parenting is as loud as three kids cooped up in a minivan for five hundred miles with nothing to do but create imaginary friends whose voices rival the noise level of emerging cicadas. And this love requires self-sacrifice. I’ve lost track of how often I’ve asked, "Who needs to go to the bathroom? Why don’t you go at this stop? Would you please go now?" only to forget to go myself.

Every parent knows that being able to say no – over and over and over – is another mainstay of loving your kids. Some folks call this tough love because it’s hard on the kids. But based on my experience, I think it’s called tough love because of what I hear back from my kids after I say it: I hate you. I don’t love you anymore. I wish you weren’t my mom.

Still, this love can compel you to do things you swore you’d never do if you had kids. Massive birthday parties at game arcades. Nail polish on boys. Saying your preschool kid is under 2, or 3, or whatever age gets in free.

Perhaps the most powerful form of love I’ve discovered as a parent is the love that manipulates me into doing things I never thought I could do, even if I wanted to.

When my daughter was 22 months old and wanted to be Madeline for Halloween, I refused to buy a pre-fabricated costume or get anyone who knew how to sew to make it, even though the last thing I’d sewn – nearly 30 years before – was a flowered pillow that looked more like a pitchfork than the tulip I’d designed it to be.

After a friend told me about no-sew costumes, I thought I had it made. But by midnight, the day before our neighborhood Halloween party, and three hours into directions for dummies, I’d wasted yards of felt and innumerable glue gun glue sticks. After I confirmed that no overnight mail service existed that could deliver the pricey pre-made version on time, I realized that quitting was not an option and I was duty-bound to re-trace, re-cut and re-glue until I got it right.

By 3:30 a.m., Madeline was complete. And I’d inadvertently glue gunned a tablecloth to my dining room table.

In a nod to the fact that I wouldn’t be experiencing such love for my kids if I hadn’t felt romantic love for my husband to get us started – and keep us going – I appreciate receiving Valentine’s Day tokens. But come February 13^th, or maybe a week earlier if my kids guilt me into it, I’ll be at that dining room table with them, taping shut store-bought cards in the shape of princesses, superheroes and, no doubt, a few villains.

Because I’m their love slave now.

Jill Miller Zimon is a freelancer writer who lives in Pepper Pike, Ohio with her husband and three young children.