Fish Tales

I am the salmon swimming upstream. Surrounding me and working against my will are the waters that carry my children - spaciness, messiness, carelessness, disrespect. The waters are crowded with negative traits. Occasionally there is kindness and love and humor, but those are the size of minnows. The waters seem to be winning. My kids and my husband tell me that I'm wasting my time, my breath and my efforts. I know that at the end of my swim is, at the very least, sheer exhaustion. And yet I swim on in hopes that someday, the package of bagels will actually end up back in the freezer or that a request to clean a room won't be met with a sneer. I swim on because I worry. I worry that the misplaced bagel might someday be a misplaced checkbook or that the anti-cleaning sneer might someday be an entry-level job task not well-accepted. I realize they can't see this - the waters are transparent yet I've been through them before and I know the shallow and painful areas that contain hidden rocks and dangers. My instinct is to protect my children from this, all the while knowing that they'll need to navigate their own way. Yet I'm not the only insane salmon. There are many of us, a school of mothers, you might say. And we're all trying different and sometimes creative ways to get through the waters. We're crazy optimists, we mother salmon. We rarely know when to quit. Perhaps our children will somehow inherit perseverance, if nothing else.