separation anxiety

My childhood memories are a pretty mixed bag. As with most memories, it's not entirely clear to me which of them are actual recollections and which are fabrications--either from a story I heard, or a dream I had... Very few of them are from the days before my sister was born, but there is a memory that I swear is true from when I was a toddler, maybe two years old, that haunts me from time to time. I was at a party, and it was dark outside. I think the dress I was wearing was white and ruffly (but that might be imposed from a photograph of me taken around the same time). I just remember walking around, weaving between grown-ups' legs, and feeling happy. In another memory, I remember sitting in my living room with my parents and my brand new sister who they had just brought home from the hospital. I was not yet three. The only thing that is clear to me is the color yellow. Maybe her outfit? A blanket? The furniture? The sun shining through the windows? Or is that the color of what I felt? My parents' relationship was already on the rocks, and I'm sure the tension in our house was palpable. Yet I'm comforted by these two memories. I'm pretty sure I was a happy kid.

Whenever I realize that my kids' lives are still too young for lasting memories, at least in their conscious, grown-up minds, I feel a mixture of sadness and relief. I'm sad that they won't remember the fun days their father and I shared with them. All the cool places they've been, and the people they've met. Then there are days I'm glad they'll forget. Grouchy Sundays or exasperated bed times or days when I just didn't have much to give. Now that we're separating, I'm even more afraid of what their minds are processing, storing, re-visiting. Do they feel abandoned when it's Jeremy's night and I drop them off at our old house? I have no idea.

For better or worse, I've braved the world alone with my twins from day one. And that makes me feel like a Super Badass. How silly I think it is when moms have a second child and suddenly feel like they can't leave the house. Other days, I go to bed with a heavy heart thinking about the ways in which I lost my temper over the spilled water, or the public tantrum, or bedtime power struggle. And, on those days, I feel like a Big Fat Jerk.

My mom had a really bad temper when we were little. I remember seething after a spanking, swearing that I would never hit my kids. I understood very clearly then that the spanking did not teach me anything about why what I did was wrong. All it did was make me angry and afraid. And now I'm the mom, and mine are the buttons pushed, and mine's the big hand popping a little bottom, and I recognize the anger bubbling behind the hurt and wounded eyes. And I want so much to be the mom I thought I'd be.