What Makes a Good Mother?

When I was first a mother, I worried about this question and gave it considerable thought. And yet – I went back to school before my newborn infant was even three weeks old. I put my needs before his own and finished my college degree. He never knew it. He only knows it now because I've told him. I had babysitters arranged and when that didn't work out, I simply missed classes. That college degree financed a good portion of his childhood. I think I made the right choice.

Now that my children are grown, what makes a good mother has entirely changed. What makes me a good mother today is being available without being intrusive. At least that is how I see it.

I have three grandchildren who I have yet to celebrate Christmas with – on Christmas. And right now I fear that I may never get to share the holiday with them ever. They are again in Ohio and I'm not sure they are coming back.

One of their other grandmothers feels a close tie to their mother. This is fine. All mothers should have close ties to their daughters. It is good to love and cherish your children, even when they are adults. I love and cherish my own children even though they are adults. I even love and cherish Amy's daughter even though she is an adult.

What I can't fathom is Amy's total selfishness. Amy needs her children with her. She successfully coerced her other two grown children to abandon Hilton Head Island in sunny South Carolina for the Mecca-like region of Cleveland, Ohio. They were called back "home" last year after Thanksgiving.

Amy would be pleased if Sarah and the kids moved back there with or without Joe. Reasonably speaking, Joe's job is in Hilton Head. The company he works for is small and without a branch in Cleveland. Joe can't simply transfer. And he would have to give back the company van.

Cleveland is in the rust belt. Unemployment is rising steadily in the area. The steel mill is only working in a partial capacity and the auto manufacturing plants are closing. Many of the smaller, light industrial plants were there because of the presence of the auto industry, so they are closed as well. This is not a place to go to find a good job.

When doing the math of hours spent with the grandchildren, I have figured that we spend 4 hours per visit, which isn't always true, but I was being generous. We go about 3 times per month, and only for 11 months. That figures out to 5.5 days. But if we be generous and say an entire week, that is still less time in actual hours that we, the close grandparents, spent with the babies the past year, than the distant grandmother.

I can't imagine the stress placed on Sarah by her mother's unreasonable wishes. Sarah is being coached and goaded into ripping her children away from their father because as every sane person "knows" it is more important for a creeping-up-on-thirty daughter to be close to her 50ish mother than it is for a1-, 2-, and 4-year-old child to have his or her parents. Amy's desires are going to ruin five people's lives, at least.

Joe will be bereft without his children. His income is currently within the bounds of supporting a family, but child support payments, even for three kids, aren't going to be enough for everyone to live on since there will need to be two households. He doesn't make that much money. So he will be financially ruined while his ex and children still won't have the funds to live on.

Sarah will be trapped in the winter ice and snow of Cleveland, without a car, three kids without their clothing, furniture, or toys. Unless someone can figure out how to get all this stuff transported north and can foot the bill for the transfer of goods. It is expensive. She will be financially strapped, stuck indoors with three kids without the helpful parent who actually cares for his children beside her.

And the babies. The most important person in a child's life is the same-sex parent. So the grandsons get really shafted here. Joe adores his daughter too and she, at only one-year-old, appears to be Daddy's Little Girl. She lights up when Daddy comes into the room. She loves her mother, too. But she would surely miss her father.

The preschool for the oldest grandson won't be available in Ohio. It seemed horribly wrong to me to take him out of school for even the two weeks of the "Christmas in Ohio for more than month" trip as it was. He was doing so well with his speech therapy, actually beginning to speak much better. Sacrificing him for Nonny's happiness is wrong.

Then there are the peripheral people who could be destroyed or injured by this one woman's desires. I will miss seeing the babies, of course. But it will kill my soul to see my son so wounded. I understand that not all couples stay together forever. I could understand the unhappy couple dissolving their union if it was THEIR problems that caused the dissolution. This tearing apart of a family for an outsider (and yes, I do think that the older generation folks are outsiders – it isn't our family) is beyond comprehension.

But this is untenable. Every time Amy comes to Hilton Head or they go up to Ohio, the two parents fight like cats and dogs. Amy cries that she misses her daughter. Amy insists that a good daughter would be with her mother. And the stress on Sarah must seem insurmountable. Sarah must know that the place for a grown woman and her children is with the father of those children, especially since is an engaged parent who actually interacts with his kids and loves all of them.

Amy, if you ever read this – this is not about you or even me. A good parent gives a child roots, and then wings. It is time to stop being so clingy. We sacrifice for our children. it is the parent's job to sublimate desires for the good of the child. Now it is time to let the "kids" who have become parents, to let them parent. I can only hope that Amy gets everything she deserves.