Measuring Up to Anne Shirley

I’m paying bills with my 6-month-old, not-quite-independent-sitter, Reid, in my lap when the phone rings. Not my cell phone, my office phone, which means whoever is calling expects a bookkeeper to answer. In, you know, an actual office. I scoot my chair a little closer to the edge of the desk, wedging Reid between me and it, and answer with a professional, well-practiced, “Rafter C, this is Cara.” Reid lets out a frustrated screech and smacks his hand on the check register in front of us.

So much for professional.

Shifting his almost 18 pounds of dead weight to the left side of my lap, I attempt to corral his flailing arms with my left hand and look up an invoice on the computer for a customer with my right. I hang up in time to answer two back-to-back phone calls on my cell phone: the first from a fertilizer company and the second from our pediatrician’s office. Reid starts to cry in earnest and rubs his right eye as I hang up. Crap, did I lose track of time? Is it naptime already? I open the “Baby Feed Timer” app on my phone and try to remember if I fed him right when he woke up or if I waited a while, but my “wake window” calculations are interrupted by my 4-year-old, Maggie, screaming from the back of the house for more hot water.

She’s taking a bath. At 11:25 on a Thursday morning. Partly because she woke up looking like her hair hadn’t been washed in a month—I don’t think it’s been that long?—but mainly because the craft project I set her up with this morning kept her occupied for all of 10 minutes, and I already let her watch over an hour of PBS kids in direct violation of our strict “no screens on weekdays” rule.

Shifting Reid to my hip, I stand and write “Fertilizer?” on the to-do list in my planner, right below “connect w/Maggie: 10 minutes counts!”. Then I walk down the hall from my office toward the master bathroom. I survey the house, adding mental to-do’s to my already too-long list.

Sweep the floor.
Unload the dishwasher.
Water plants.
Load the wood box.
Fold the laundry I’ve already tossed on the floor and back onto the bed. Twice.

I walk into our bathroom and try to ignore the water aggressively splashed across the tile floor, despite the fact that “drying the bathroom floor” is now one more thing I have to do today. Turning on the tap, I add hot water and catch sight of myself in the mirror: the ten-ish pounds of baby weight I can’t seem to lose (that came off so easily the first two times), the dark circles under my eyes, the weariness in my face.

Sleep train Reid.
Ride Peloton.
Eat something besides a turkey sandwich for dinner.
Drink more water.

I look away, turn off the tap, and head back toward my office. But I’m distracted by the dust on the bookshelf outside the bathroom door. What is it they say about tasks that take less than 5 minutes? Maybe if I take a second to dust the bookshelf I’ll feel better somehow. Less overwhelmed. With Reid still on my hip, I grab a t-shirt off the floor and wipe the dust from the top shelf.

This isn’t the only bookcase in our home, but it’s my favorite. A Christmas gift from my dad, it holds my most-treasured books. Tattered, well-loved copies of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Jane Eyre, and all eight Anne of Green Gables books are shelved beside Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Nobody’s Cuter than You, and Harry Potter. The books tell a story of sorts about who I’ve been and who I am.

In my experience, there are two kinds of people in the world–re-readers, and once-and-done readers. I am, and always have been, the former. The feel of worn pages, a story whose twists and turns I can anticipate, and characters I already know and love are like a weighted blanket for my soul. So at the end of 2020, it was the books on these shelves I turned to. My Anne books in particular.

The set was a gift from my grandma “Rah-Rah,” my dad’s mom, when I was a little girl. She was an only child who raised eight kids, and I think she saw herself in Anne—an orphan who longed for the chaos and energy of a big family. I was too young to read the books independently when she gave them to me, so I met Anne-with-an-E for the first time through the baritone of my dad’s reading voice. I got reacquainted as a shy 5th grader entering middle school without friends, and again almost every summer of middle and high school. She was my constant, unwavering companion as friends and boys and ambitions came and went. But then I went off to college, got married, and moved more than a handful of times. I got busy and stopped reading fiction altogether for a while. So I’d yet to meet Anne as a mother myself.

In my memory, Anne was the quintessential mom and housewife. She was patient, kind, and loved to play pretend with her children in Rainbow Valley. She was delighted by her kids and by motherhood. She baked cakes from scratch, sewed rags into rugs, hosted The Ladies’ Aid for tea, and darned holes in her family’s socks, yet still had time for deep conversations with her brood. I mean, she raised seven children through two world wars before washing machines or slow cookers or cars were invented. She might as well have been superwoman.

But as I reached the halfway point of “Anne’s House of Dreams” in my pandemic re-read, I was shocked to rediscover a character I’d forgotten about entirely: Susan, a middle-aged spinster and Anne’s live-in help.

Anne was no slouch, but there were effectively two of her running her household. Of course she had time to play with her kids! No wonder she was able to keep her family clothed and fed before modern appliances and convenience foods! Anne didn’t do it all. She had help! How different and more manageable would my life be with someone like Susan “at the helm,” as she so often said?

I mentioned my revelation about Anne and Susan to my dad recently. I also asked how Rah-Rah managed with so many kids. How did she earn multiple degrees and work full time? Did she have help I didn’t remember or know about, too? Was her house as disheveled as mine?

He told me it was a different time, when mothers put less pressure on themselves to “parent” with a capital P. He said Rah-Rah was a great mom, but told me how the older kids helped with the younger kids and how she kicked them out after breakfast and expected them to stay out until dinner. He reminded me that she waited to go back to school and work until he and his siblings were older, and mentioned a housekeeper they had for a while.

Tossing the t-shirt rag on the floor, I tell Maggie I’ll be back to check on her in a minute, and head to put Reid for a nap. Though I really don’t have time, I sink into the rocker with him, as soothed by the white noise and blackout curtains as he is.

I’m so tired. So worn out from trying to do it all. Be it all. And yet, I can’t seem to stop trying.

I listen to time-management podcasts and implement meal planning systems. I create cleaning schedules and scribble notes in my planner every night before bed. I set a timer and play with my kids for as long as my schedule allows. I tell myself that if I just find the right hack, the right system, the right schedule, I can, in fact, do it all.

Except I can’t. And the most exhausting part of the whole thing is the way I constantly compare my capacity, my output, my mothering to those around me.

Laying Reid in his crib, I tiptoe back to my office. Looking over my to-do list once more, I take a moment and lay my forehead on the cool surface of my desk.

Maybe I asked my dad the wrong questions in our conversation about Anne and Rah-Rah. I did want to know if he remembered the books I love so dearly and hear more about the grandma I miss so much. But what I really wanted to know was something else entirely.

Am I doing enough? Do I measure up? Are you, and Anne, and Rah-Rah proud?

I raise my head enough to rest my chin on my stacked hands and stare off into space. What I want more than anything is for someone to use concrete evidence to prove I am doing good work here within the four walls of my home. To take stock of my completed tasks, evaluate my results, and tell me I’m enough. But life doesn’t come with performance reviews. I mean, there isn’t even a guarantee that doing a “good job” will produce the results—the happy children, the thriving marriage, the successful career—I want.

Unsure of what to do next, I stand and make my way back to Maggie and the soaked bathroom. “How is it, sweetie?” I ask.

She flings her hands into the air and shouts. “It’s the best! Thanks for letting me take a bath in your bathtub, mama. You’re the best mom ever!” I snort laugh and grab a cup to wash her hair. But as I shield her eyes and pour warm water over her head, I hear her words again.

There it is. The external validation I’ve been looking for. My kids tell me I’m “the best” all the time (often when I’m letting them do something I deem a parenting “failure”); I just don’t hear them.

When I measure myself against the women in my life, against everyone from Anne Shirley to the mom at preschool pickup to my grandma, it’s unlikely I’ll ever be the best at anything. There will always be someone with more energy, cleaner floors, more patience, or live-in help to put me to shame.

But if I’m able to wake up every morning believing I am capable of the workload of both Anne and Susan—if I continually hold myself to the standard of my memory rather than the standard of reality–then I should be able to believe my daughter when she tells me that, at the end of an hour-long Thursday morning bath, I am the best mom (for her).

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.