Patience's Limit is at 2 a.m. in the Morning

At 2 a.m. in the morning, I am not a good mama. I am not patient or kind, or loving or tender. I am not playful or silly; I am not full of guidance or knowledge. I’m just tired. I just want to go back to sleep.

My almost-2-year-old daughter, Mitike, doesn’t understand this at all. During the day, her mama laughs with her, and throws her up in the air; she encourages her to talk and talk, and she pulls out all kinds of interesting toys for them to enjoy together. During the day, her mama thinks Mitike is hilarious and endearing and sweet and cuddly.

In the darkness of 2 a.m., though, Mitike’s mama frowns when Mitike starts talking; she lifts her finger to her mouth and whispers, “Shhh. Sleep now. Shhh”; she shakes her head disapprovingly when Mitike crawls out of bed and pitter-patters over to her favorite books and toys. Over and over, Mitike’s 2 a.m. mama picks Mitike up and lays her back in bed – less and less sweetly and more and more insistently each time.

At 2 a.m. in the morning, Mitike’s mama is pathetically and entirely human.

In two months of parenting this sweet and amazing little person who is my daughter, I’ve mostly been awed by her. But, as Ali often reminds me, Mitike is still two years old. Though she will sit happily beside me in a coffee shop for an hour, though she will tirelessly wander Alaska’s outdoors with me, and though she is the kindest and most generous tiny person I’ve ever known, her two-ness still manifests itself once in awhile– occasional tantrums at naptime, middle-of-the-night attempts to play instead of sleep, silly jealousy of my attention – even to the microwave, crazy crying because she was not allowed to hold some obscurely dangerous thing, like a jar of cayenne pepper, or a hot iron.

It’s in those moments that I realize with dismay that my patience actually has a limit – even for my sweet little daughter.

Witness: one afternoon, after a trip to Costco and then a visit to Tim’s class’s field trip to the salmon hatchery, Mitike began sobbing as I took off her coat. Over and over, she cried, “Where’d it go? Where’d it go?” She was inconsolable – hitting at me, throwing her toy car across the room, sobbing enormous tears that streamed down her face. I assumed she was tired, scooped her up and took her upstairs. Her crying escalated. She thrashed around on her bed, hitting the walls, sobbing “Where’d it go? Where’d it go?” I stared at her in dismay – she looked insane -- nothing like the little girl with whom I spend most of my time. I ran through a mental checklist of her special things: we had Bunny with us in bed, she was clutching her toy car and her toy helicopter, all three of her Obama campaign buttons were secured to her shirt. Nothing was missing. She continued to sob. Every time I moved to comfort her, she hit me or tried to scratch me. Now I was upset – and confused. I began to cry, too, and then my patience ran out. I took her by the elbows and shook her once, but firmly: “WHAT DO YOU NEED?” Of course, she began to cry even harder. I scooped her up (not very gently) and hurried downstairs and out the door to the car. I threw open the car door and gestured angrily to the inside: “WHAT do you NEED?”

And she stopped crying. She peered into the car’s interior, saw the pile of Costco groceries we had purchased hours earlier, and breathed a deep sigh: “There it is, Mama!” She smiled up at me, her tears magnifying her brown eyes. We went back upstairs, she let me lay her down in her bed, and she fell asleep in ten minutes.

I spent all of naptime feeling like an awful mother. The poor child had just wanted to make sure we’d brought the food home, and I had lost my patience with her.

Or return us to 2 a.m. in the morning. Mitike has been awake for over an hour. First she wants warm milk (“Mawk please, Mama?”), which I happily get for her. She cuddles up to me and lies still for about 2.3 seconds. “Caca,” she whispers in my ear. “Caca.” I want to encourage the potty-training, so I fall for the ruse. I lift her up and carry her to the bathroom, where I unzip her pjs, undo her diaper and set her on the potty. In accordance with a sleep book I read, I do not turn on the lights and I do not make eye contact with TK – the sleep book insisted toddlers will fall easily asleep again if parents do not encourage them to play during nighttime wakings. TK finally tires of sitting on the potty in the darkness and whispers, “All done.” I lay her back in bed. She lies still for 3.4 seconds this time. “Baby beluga, Mama?” I do not respond – I pretend I am sleeping. “In the kitchen!” she says hopefully. I still do not respond. She struggles free from my arms and pitter-patters over to her toy kitchen, where she proceeds to cook a plastic hamburger in her tiny frying pan. Normally, I would find this incredibly endearing; at this moment, I have – again – entirely lost my patience. I stand up, walk over to her, sweep her up and plop her down onto the bed. “Sleep,” I mutter, and I can feel my clenched teeth. I am too tired. Then I actually wrap my arms around her and firmly hold her there -- though she struggles again to get free – and let her whimper-cry herself to sleep. Ugh.

As she finally begins to breathe deeply, I again feel like a mother who is in dire need of patience lessons. I want my daughter to fall asleep every time knowing her mama loves her – not like she’s restrained in a mama straight jacket.

What would I do if, instead of TK, I was supposed to parent one of those toddlers I see at Juneau’s indoor play area – you know, one of those toddlers who is always screaming red-faced at their parent, or who is throwing sharp objects at another child? My toddler is extraordinary – I am constantly thankful. If I lose my patience in the rare times she behaves like a normal 2-year-old, I’ll never make it through her teenage years.

I've confided my worries about my lack of patience to my friends who are mothers -- who have survived or are surviving their own children's toddlerhoods. They've hugged me and then laughed kindly, telling me stories of how their own toddlers' limit-pushing drove them to startling cliffs: one woman kicked her son off the bed in her frustration; another locked herself in the bathroom to shout the "f" word over and over; a third took a day off of work to remove every single item from her daughter's room as a punishment for her behavior; a fourth strapped her toddler in the stroller, gave her a pile of unhealthy snacks, and jogged in the cold rain for two hours so she could calm down. Toddlers drive even the kindest, most serene women to a kind of insanity.

And then I think about what my friend Becky says about parenting toddlers – that it’s like working for an irrational boss who puts work assignments in front of you at odd hours, when you’re feeling your worst, and demands he needs them done NOW. No one’s capable of good work in that environment – all one can do is struggle through and hope for the best.

In other words, I’m learning slowly that motherhood’s about forgiving myself -- again and again and again. It's about telling myself that my lapses in patience and tolerance are okay, as long as I wrap my arms around my little girl and love her, still; as long as I love myself, still. It's not easy, especially for this lifelong perfectionist. I’ve read many, many books on parenting and adoption and racial identity, but now -- in the midst of it -- I see motherhood doesn’t contain “right” and “wrong”. It contains human beings – human beings struggling to love each other tenderly, even at 2 a.m. in the morning.