Plus, I’ve got kids to hush up. And an atheist husband who doesn’t come to church outside of baptisms and First Communions, so much of Mass time these last 10 years has also been the wild aerobics of disciplining, comforting, threatening and soothing small children with little more than eyes and fingertips and the occasional sharp whisper. But lately, it’s only the tween and I who attend, and church has become, like our lives, calmer. I don’t have to worry about binkies or loveys or other such cutesy names for the objects that are so integral to toddlerhood and then fall away fast and hard. We don’t bring Cheerios in Ziplock baggies or oversized rosary beads. Today, my daughter and I just sit, side by side, and she only needs the occasional reminder not to share every observation that pops into her head the second it pops.
I feel unsteady, sometimes, in the newfound calm.
Across the way, a mother and father pass twin babies with blankets and pacifiers back and forth like paperwork. The mother stoops while the congregation stands, rushing to get a bottle from her diaper bag, to quiet her nearly erupting child before it’s too late. Our eyes meet, and I see her desperation, remember so clearly that white hot panic of being a mother with a fretting baby in a quiet space. The sweat. The pin prick nausea. I’m filled with an insane urge to bring her a steaming mug of tea, dark chocolates and fresh pomegranate, to knit her thick fuzzy socks, to take her baby and shh-shh it to sleep. Instead, I smile that well meaning but sometimes patronizing smile we moms with older children bestow upon new mothers. It gets easier, our smiles say. Or maybe, my god, I miss where you are so much my uterus is crying. And also, you’re doing great.
You know the smile. You’ve either given or received it.
Babies sleep, folding into their mothers’ necks like thick cream into coffee.
Rambunctious little boys agree to hair strokes and shoulder rubs. Overdressed little girls drop clattering toys that mothers scoop up and drop into giant department store purses.
Teenagers in too-tight jeans, girls who likely stayed out too late, lying about where they were, drinking beer and going too far with boys to sit in good conscience between their parents at Sunday Mass, rest their heads on their mothers’ shoulders during the homily. The mothers, they lay their veiny hands on the distressed denim, gently squeeze.
Amidst the drafty air, the prickly incense, the up-down-up-down of the ritual, mothering becomes an active subplot to the task at hand. The peacekeeping overpowers the peace. The shepherding of tiny flocks scuttles all around us.
In quiet spaces, you can always pick out the mothers, even the ones whose babies are home or grown or otherwise gone. Look when we stand. Watch when the voices drone and the music lulls and the inherent need to be quiet and still permeates: we sway.
Motherhood is so often so loud, isn’t it? Crying babies. Screaming toddlers. Laughing preschoolers. Sobbing tweens. Yelling teenagers. Band practice. Dance rehearsal. Bouncing balls and broken windows. Fighting siblings. Shattered feelings. Outside voices all the time. Too often, we think, “Can everyone just shut up?”
But if you look closely, if you crawl inside the quiet spaces, whether that’s in a church or not, if you can observe mothers and children in these moments when silence is key, when we have only our bodies to calm our babies, only our eyes and our hands… the blistering truth of it blares.
There is so much love.
There is so much love.
There is so much love.
See how it pours into every crevice. Hear it sing.