The Invisibility of the Brooklyn Mother

It’s as if once motherhood erupts out of us, we are unseen. The world looks away as it asks us to nurture and inspire, just not in the way we used to- with out sexuality and our youth-so that we might go unnoticed.

Once, coming out of a dive bar on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, I threw up in my own hair. I was twenty-one years old. A fun-loving sprite who loved to throw darts, dance, and drink until I hurled. I was searching for something; what that something was I couldn’t ever say. But the act of searching promised something glamorous and untouchable, and so I kept at it. That was exactly half my lifetime ago. Now, at the age of forty-two, it seems as if I am just now learning how to walk instead of run, or at least I’ve been learning how to sit down when I’m tired. Today I’m a mother, not a sprite. Yet, that title seems too often to become a be-all end-all for women. It’s as if once motherhood erupts out of us, we are unseen. The world looks away as it asks us to nurture and inspire, just not in the way we used to – with our sexuality and our youth – so that we might go unnoticed.

“Oh, you’re a mother, that’s so nice. You must be a great mother,” people say when they meet me. Often, I want to shout, “Yes! It’s great! But I’m also a writer, and a teacher, I’m a great friend and I love to learn!” Instead, because I don’t want these strangers to only see the “mother” in me, I begin speaking of the past. “You know, once, I used to dance on tables. Once, if I had too much to drink, I would put my hair in a side ponytail and sing AC/DC songs. Once, I worked in restaurants. Once, I was a bartender.” Once, once, once. Meeting new moms, or making small talk at the supermarket, I strut those memories around like boxing trophies. After all, when I was younger, my youth was an elixir that helped me stay relevant – or so I thought. 

There is a truth about motherhood that no one wants to admit. My very womanhood as a mother in her forties is a powerful cloak of invisibility, and that twenty-one-year-old self is still somewhere inside of me, afraid to look. The day I was leaving that bar throwing up in my hair, I was on my way to another bar. Some nights it was dinner, sometimes drinks. Then it was always boyfriends, or bowling, or boyfriends. There was always a boyfriend, a man to match my mood. There was always one hero on the way in, and another write-off closing the door in my face. I carried one diamond sparkle clutch, one lipstick, one pack of green minty gum, and one dwindling credit card. 

In pictures from that time, I’m always smiling and I’m never happy. In fact, I was always passing through Brooklyn at that time looking for something original, unique, magical even. I was always on the move, running from a friend’s house to a restaurant, to a Brooklyn bar. I was always searching, trying to find that one real instant of significance or substance, the true occasion that would change my life. What no one tells you at twenty-one is that those junctures don’t exist. Coming out of my Brooklyn bar twenties and heading toward my thirties, I changed my own life. One morning I woke up and said “Enough, enough, enough,” three times like a mantra. I slipped out of my heels and put away my shiny tops. I was tired. 

When I have the memory of vomiting in my own hair, it’s because I am walking through Park Slope with my three-year-old son, searching for the tax office. I pass Commonwealth Bar on Twelfth Street and Fifth Avenue and recall a terrible affair that lasted as long as a hangnail and was just as uncomfortable. I walk past the corner where my wallet was stolen. I look through the window of the coffee shop where my heart was broken. I strut by the bank when I left the one who was never the one. 

My journey to the tax office stupefies me. I reach into my backpack to search for my water bottle and pull out a half-eaten Ziploc bag full of goldfish. I have children now, and a husband. I don’t drink anymore. I don’t even want to. I am Mother, Madre, Ma, Mama, Mom. I am Mami. When I write about it, my life sounds boring, mundane even. In the elixir of my youth, I measured life by the dangerous risks I took, by adventure, by never sitting still. But something about this new self has erased something crucial and it is my spirit’s job to figure out what that is and come to terms with it. Even in the comfort of my children, of my family life, I left something behind that I never really let go. 

I begin many of my conversations leading with the phrase “My kids,” or, “This weekend, my kids,” or, “The baby is….” Or, “You know I have three kids.” It gets a little ridiculous for the listener. In Park Slope I look around to see armies of baby strollers outside of restaurants. Women everywhere rush their sick children into doctor’s offices. There are rosy couples with bundled newborns meeting their friends for walks through Prospect Park. None of us have anything to say to one another. We’re all exhausted, and besides, we can’t find the girl who used to throw up on the sidewalk, wipe her mouth and keep going. We miss her a little bit. We feel guilty for saying it, for writing it. 

If I tell the truth about my life, most mornings I am ok. I say that I don’t really want to find her, that I don’t need her anymore. And it’s always when I stop looking for her that she appears. One morning, trying my best to do an at-home yoga routine, twenty-one-year-old me shows up when I bend forward to do the easy pigeon pose.

“What’s wrong with you?” She’s chewing that minty green gum, leaning against the window. She appears sparkly in a sequined top and ripped jeans, a Guns N Roses jean jacket covering her chubby arms. She twirls one strand of wavy brown hair around a pointer finger.

“Don’t lean on the window, you’ll hurt yourself. And we’re doing yoga now.” I try not to look at her. The video suggests that I breathe into any pain I am feeling, and when I deepen my breath, twenty-one-year-old me glows.

She pops a big teal bubble and the crack when it pops spits in my eardrum. “Yoga? Who even are you? Let’s go dancing. Remember Saturday nights in the East Village? Let’s go meet somebody.”

“Um, we’re married now,” I lean into the pose trying my hardest not to hold my breath, trying to remember what I’m doing here on the floor at five a.m. before Brooklyn starts to hum.

“Well, nothing ever used to stop us,” she looks around the apartment. “Hey, how many kids do we have?”

“Three.” I realize I have just woken up and she is just getting in.

“We have three kids, and you picked the smallest apartment on the planet!?!? Are we a good mother?” She’s walking around the room now.

“Yes, most days. But it’s hard.” My hip is killing me. Some instructors say hips are where humans hold anger. What am I so angry about? What is she so angry about?

“Why is it hard?”

There’s a long space between us and I consider ignoring my past self, but I know my own persistence all too well. “No one listens to us,” I begin, “No one hears us when we need help. We always feel bad, like we’re not doing a good enough job. We always think our kids are going to grow up and hate us, nothing is enough. We’re self-critical and we wish someone would help us. We have no time. We can’t read a chapter of a book without falling asleep. There’s always a lot of laundry. Also, we’re kind if invisible.”

“Help?” Her eyes widen, “we never need help. We’ve never needed help. You just need a drink. And we are NOT invisible.” I can tell I’ve insulted my own self by the way she starts to fade as I gently move into the next pose, an extended child’s pose that challenges the yogi with the quintessential self-care catch-phrase.

We are NOT invisible. I think of setting this intention for the day. But in Brooklyn, as the spring creeps up on us, as the winter plays peek-a-boo, we are invisible. Some days we are invisible. What I’ve come to realize is that at twenty-one I was also invisible; I was just self-involved. I was fun, and funny, exciting to be around and that really hasn’t changed much. I still love to dance, just in the living room, in my pajamas. I still clean up vomit, just not my own. Some days I’m still confused and searching. When I ask myself on the yoga mat, “why anger?” The answer comes in gently. Many days I feel angry at the way the world has labeled me, as if “mother” is the only thing I have inside. My twenty-one-year-old self knows why she is angry too. She can’t find her peace; she looks ahead toward my yoga mat for the wisdom she hasn’t yet grown into.

On a Wednesday morning, weeks after I find the tax office, I spot a group of mothers in Prospect Park. They are having a sing-along and reading time for all their tiny babies who gather on the cool, crisp grass. One woman has a pink streak in her hair and a naked woman tattooed on the back of her neck. One holds a rainbow bouncy ball; she looks drowsy and ready to go home. I take a seat on a green bench not too far from them. My daughters are in school, and my husband is taking a nap with the baby. In my moments of free time, I have stumbled upon my tribe. All the women in the circle are different. They all look different, must have different jobs, they raise their children differently. In the scheme of things no one really notices them. They’re inconspicuous in their sneakers, searching the bottom of their strollers for juice boxes and tissues. I squint my eyes from the sun hitting my bench. And there, watching babies grow and mothers thrive, I understand that the adult woman does not exist without the young girl. The sparkly bar hopping youth can’t draw breath without the forty-two-year-old who is able to sit down and take a respite. 

“We are NOT invisible,” the twenty-one-year-old-self whispers in my ear. 

The woman across the park with the rainbow ball throws it up into the air as high as she can. The ball seems to pause at the top of the sky before crashing down again into her arms. Some of the bigger babies laugh. A wind spreads across the grass and everyone tightens their already zipped coats. Traffic honks from the streets, squirrels jump onto branches, everything is distinct in its nature.

I walk home to read, and to write, and to mother, and to be, and to become.