“Moms are the most vulnerable people in the world”

I never actively used the word “mother”. It was, of course, in my dictionary: M. Gorky’s novel “Mother” (about how parents and children gain mutual understanding by participating in the revolutionary movement), his slogan “Let us glorify the woman – the Mother, whose love knows no barriers, with whose breasts the whole world is fed!”, a mandatory item in the form filled out in the personnel department: “Mother is such and such, born in such and such a year, works there, lives at the address…” In general, everything is more or less official, far from my real life. And next to me was not my mother, but my mother. In the third person, in conversations with relatives and friends, I usually called her “Mommy.” A person so close that the world without her seemed not to exist at all.

Mom not only fed, dressed, braided her hair and wiped away snot – she always listened and patiently explained everything. Much later, having also become a mother, I realized what hellish work it is, without getting irritated, to find answers to children’s questions – equally stupid and brilliant: “Who are the paradoxes?”, “Why do we go to kindergarten every day at night in the winter?” – and the like.

My mother talked to me. She talked a lot – about her early childhood during the war, about school, about her student years that coincided with the “thaw”. Listening to these stories, it was as if I was mentally transported to one era or another, and found myself in very different places. I found myself in a huge communal apartment, where the partitions between the rooms were so thin that the neighbor boy, without raising his voice, asked my future mother, who was practicing etudes on the piano, to play this or that piece. Then I looked into the school class, in which boys and girls were together for the first time after ten years of separate education, and saw how the girls, who had suffered from aggression from their new classmates and led by my invincible mother, on command, lowered pieces of ice down the boys’ collars, and then they enjoy watching their defeated opponents squeal and squirm in the middle of the lesson. Together with my mother, I walked along the corridors of the history department of Moscow State University in the late 1950s, and on April 12, 1961, I hurried to the center of Moscow – in an enthusiastic crowd to greet the first Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.

What about the Soviet past? Mom took me either to Ancient Greece or to Western Europe in the twelfth century. I settled in there so much that I named a skinny, hungry puppy I picked up on the street—by association with the thin black dogs in a medieval engraving—Henry II Plantagenet. And so this sweet dog lived in our family, imperceptibly turning into Gena.

I didn’t even notice how the conditional “together with my mother” turned into a real one. I was seven when my mother first took her students on an archaeological expedition. And at ten, I also went there and heard a stern warning: “If I hear “mother”, I’ll send you home.” Not puzzled by the question of how technically it would be possible to send me from the Krasnodar Territory to Moscow, I was very scared and never squealed: “Mom! Mom!”, even when she got lost not far from our tent camp and got lost in the thorns for more than an hour and when she met a snake on the path and an electric stingray in the sea.

Mom’s authority was unquestionable. According to family legend, in early childhood I came up with a wording that put an end to any discussion: “Mom told me!” (“Mom said”). Accustomed to respecting my mother unquestioningly, I was shaking with excitement when she was invited to school to speak in front of my classmates and talk about her work. I began to panic: what if the guys would make noise, giggle, as they say, “bring it on”? Oh no! As soon as my mother spoke, the class fell silent: the age-old teacher’s dream of being able to hear a fly fly came true.

How did mom enchant any audience – from the boorish fifth-graders of the 1980s to the sophisticated intelligentsia who gathered at her lectures at the beginning of the 21st century? Of course, colossal knowledge, free figurative speech, brilliant wit. And besides all this, my mother was sincerely disposed towards people, she was not afraid of any public, but she did not despise any. Mom not only made the world a better place – she, like a kind sorceress, created for me a world in which it was quite possible to live.

The little man is sure that only he has a mother. I became convinced of this when I tried to explain to my then approximately three-year-old son that his grandmother was my mother. This message made him burst into tears. At first I was surprised, then I realized: the child’s universe had collapsed. It was as if he had to share with others the most precious thing he owned.

In reality, everyone initially has mothers. And there are very, very many mothers around. Moreover, their aspirations often do not coincide. You inevitably encounter this when you bring your child to the playground. Which of us, mothers, has not watched fierce fights for a shovel or bucket! Here it is – the moment of truth: your beloved baby is hit on the head with a plastic shovel, sprinkled with sand, kicked and spat on! And the aggressor’s mother watches all this with royal calm! It’s just that in her picture of the world the situation is somewhat different: it was your child who almost took away the property that legally belonged to them from her son/daughter and received a fitting rebuff. And by the way, both of our hands are itching. Although, of course, you can’t touch someone else’s child.

In general, it is very difficult to be a mother and remain a decent person. Am I not going to let my beloved child skip the line at the clinic? I won’t help him make a cheat sheet or find a ready-made answer on the Internet to a question asked by the teacher at home? Yes, I will turn inside out twice so that everything is fine for my son! But will it work?

Of course, those who say that the child must be released on time are right. More precisely, all life is a continuous series of such “letting go.” For the first time, do not give a pacifier before bed (an hour and a half is guaranteed, but then it will be better to fall asleep). Wait until he ties his shoelaces (it’s better to notify your office in advance that you’ll be late that day). Send one to school. Oh, I remember this day: I, like a real special agent, sneaked after my son, hiding behind the trees so that he would not turn around and see me, and I did not calm down until I was sure that he had safely reached the school and was already climbing the steps. Then you have to “let him go” again and again – to study, which will go completely differently than you imagined, to a job that he will most likely choose the “wrong” one… I’m not even talking about his personal life. When her time comes, the mother’s authority shrinks like shagreen leather.

Until this terrible moment comes, the child does not want to be “let go” at all. He has a lot of means in his arsenal to “fix” the mother in her usual positions. The main thing, of course, is illness. By the way, one of the arguments in favor of taking me, still small, on an archaeological expedition was that on the eve of my mother’s departure I always fell ill. Just like my son many years later. Various ailments struck him precisely when I had an important speech or a trip to another city. Oh, this incomparable state – speaking at a scientific conference at a time when the child, left with his father or grandmother, has no drop in temperature! And how at this moment my mother hates herself, and science, and simply everything in the world!

We mothers are the most vulnerable people on earth. After all, each of us wants everyone to love our child the same way we do ourselves – strongly and selflessly. But this, alas, does not happen. Our children are hurt and underestimated! Remarks are pouring in on the mother from all sides! I remember how my very little son and I were making our way through the usual crowd at a regional children’s clinic; he was staring at something, and a lady in a white coat passing by sternly told me: “Let him shut his mouth!” And then it started rolling like a snowball. The school demanded that he write down his homework, and the institute demanded that he answer more actively in seminars. And every time it was unclear what I could do if everything had already happened, I was born with this particular person, and there was no improved copy of him!

It seems to me that maternal vulnerability only increases over the years. Because the chances to influence the life of the offspring remain less and less, as well as the strength. I remember how my four-year-old son, not wanting to wake up early in the morning and get ready for kindergarten, gloated from his bed: “Neither I will go, nor you will carry me!” Nowadays we often remember this cheeky childhood phrase with laughter. But there was also an undoubted philosophical meaning in it. The child realized that some of his mother’s resources had been exhausted. A year ago, she could still pick him up and drag him into the bathroom. And then it became too heavy.

I don’t really like pathos, but today I would like to appeal to those around me.

While you are someone’s children, enjoy every moment. Even if you are not the only one with a mother, yours is still the only one. She creates your world. Then this titanic work will fall on your shoulders.

If you are a mom, let other moms be too. Do not declare war on humanity on this basis. Remember: your child values ​​nothing more than reliability and peace of mind. Keep the world for him – at least in his immediate environment.

Well, if you are everyone else, sympathize with the mother – the most unprotected creature on earth. But also envy. Sometimes she manages to do something for her child. Therefore, she knows exactly what happiness is.