My younger sister is about to have her birthday, so lately I’ve been thinking about all the things I love about her. I know not everyone has a good relationship with their sisters, but I consider my sister a best friend. She knows everything about me. She can tell what I’m thinking before I say a word. The day she left me alone with my firstborn son, she knew how terrified I was just by looking into my thought-I-was-hiding-it-well face, and I’ll never forget her hug and that gentle, “You’re gonna be alright” for all the days of my life, because in one moment, she gave me the courage to be a mom.
My sister is kind and loving and faithful and never forgets to call on one of my kids’ birthdays even though I forget to call on hers. She loves her family, loves her nephews, understands that we are never going to be perfect at this family thing or this parenting thing or this growing up thing. She gets me. And I’m pretty sure she appreciates me almost as much as I appreciate her.
Now. That’s all well and good. I get along with my own blood-related sister.
The question is, how well do I get along with all my not-blood-related sisters?
I get so tired of the fights, honestly. It’s wearying like nothing else. I don’t feel half as tired from wrestling my six boys through a day as I do from all the parenting wars that pit sister against sister and hand out wounded hearts like they make not a difference in the world.
They do make a difference.
We are all sisters, from the very beginning. And then we have children, and our sisterhood becomes something greater (or it should). Sure, we do our parenting in different ways. My sister breastfeeds. I don’t, because I never could get enough milk out to keep my babies out of the emergency room. She’s never used cloth diapers. I used them for half my children before twins burned us out.
Some of us let our kids sleep with us. Some of us never let our babies sleep with us, unless they wake at 4 in the morning and we need another hour of sleep. Some of us hover on playgrounds, and some of us keep to the peripheries, with eyes on our children but hands off. Some of us have perfectly compliant children, and some of us have fighters who will fight about every little thing, at least until they learn that it’s possible—and more effective—to choose their battles.
Some of us have one kid, some of us have six, some of us believe that spanking is the best way, some of us don’t, some of us let our kids help make decisions, some of us would never let a kid make a decision, some of us make our kids do chores, some of us don’t, some of us let our kids watch television and play on screens, some of us don’t.
Some of us have three kids smashed into one room, some of us believe every kid needs his own room, some of us are saving for college, some of us haven’t even thought about it, some of us let our kids cuss, some of us wouldn’t think of allowing it, some of us take our kids to counseling, some of us want to make sure we can handle this on our own, some of us send our kids to daycare, some of us stay home, some of us enroll our kids in public school, some of us run the homeschool operation, some of us pick our kids up every time they cry, some of us let them cry it out sometimes, some of us would give anything in the world to be home with our kids, some of us find great fulfillment in our work (and mother hood didn’t change that).
The list goes on and on and on. The point is, we’re all different. That doesn’t mean we’re wrong.
See, here’s the mysterious thing about a sisterhood: We are as different as our faces and our bodies and the shape that our lives have taken around children. We’ll never be the same. And yet we are the same.
It sounds like a paradox, but it’s not really. We all come in different shapes and sizes and colors, and we all come from different backgrounds and beliefs and socioeconomic situations, which means that our philosophies and our choices and the lenses we use to look at life will never be the same. But our underneaths are the same. We’re all mothers trying to do the best we can for these little irrational human beings who know how to push our buttons, who cling to us some days like our childhood nickname and other days can’t stand the sight of us, who wake up different people every day so we have to constantly be on our toes.
We’re all just doing the best we can.
But what I’m not saying by doing something differently than you are is that you’re wrong. That’s because I understand that your kid is not my kid and my kid is not your kid, and people who don’t spend 24 hours seven days a week with my kid don’t understand that when you have two 3-year-old twins who like to roam at night while everyone else is sleeping so they can ingest a whole tube of toothpaste or a whole bottle of vitamins they somehow pried open, even though I break a nail every time I try, you have to turn a doorknob around so it locks from the outside, or else you might wake up to the whole house burning down around you. People who don’t spend 24 hours seven days a week with my kid don’t understand that working through a tantrum with the boy prone to anxiety and depression is, in the long run, way better than punishing him for something he’s done. People who don’t spend 24 hours seven days a week with my kid don’t understand that technology turns the 5-year-old into the Whine Monster, so it’s banished from our house, for now.
You don’t know my kid. I don’t know yours. I can’t parent yours. You can’t parent mine.
So maybe we should stop trying.
Our differences are what make us beautiful. And what makes us a sisterhood is accepting each other, as is, and putting aside all the differences to acknowledge that this raising a kid thing? It’s not easy. We need each other to do it.
We’re all just doing the best we can. And that is always, always enough.
