Behind the Poem

Expectations by Krista Drechsel

“I remember shaking my head about it all, and then immediately feeling like a hypocrite because, if there’s anyone who is going to perpetuate the cycle of holding my children to unrealistic expectations, it’s going to be me.”

Expectations

We expect so much from our children
these days, I say, shaking my head, 
as if my own expectations are not sky-high, 

as if I do not ask my oldest to erase her giant,
looping letters to fit neatly in between the lines, 
as if I do not ask her to express her anger 

in grown-up ways even I cannot muster—
funnel it into a pillow, perhaps, or cover it up
with a kind and gentle tone.  

Do you think your expectations are a bit too high? 
asks the woman I pay to tell me the truth
about myself. I study the carpet. 

I am realistic, I say. 
My husband will laugh when I tell him this, later.  
At night, I dream about my daughter talking 

with some faceless woman she pays 
to tell her the truth about herself. 
She, too, studies the carpet. 

The internet tells me to communicate a confidence,
a sturdiness at all times, but I can’t help it. 
In the morning, I wake up and beg: 

I love you. I love you. 
You know that I love you, 
right?

The idea for this poem came to me one day after a conversation with a friend. We had been talking about how much our children are expected to accomplish and perform—something about how today’s kindergarteners are expected to master so much more than when we were in kindergarten.

I remember shaking my head about it all, and then immediately feeling like a hypocrite because, if there’s anyone who is going to perpetuate the cycle of holding my children to unrealistic expectations, it’s going to be me.

(Hi, it’s me. I’m the problem, it’s me.)

The conversation reminded me of a moment frozen in my mind from years ago, when a therapist asked me if I thought my expectations were a bit too high. My internal dialogue in that moment was something along the lines of: Excuse me, Ma’am. I am realistic. And I did say something like that back to her, to my great embarrassment.

From here, the poem moves onto the inundation of impossible parenting advice mothers are drowning in every time we pick up our phones or the latest parenting book.

Be confident for your children. Be sturdy. You are their rock. You are the pilot of their plane.

You are unflappable. I think those things are important and valid, but I wanted to put some humanity back into motherhood.

We are people, too. We have our own insecurities and our own stories that we’re unraveling in real time. We will get it right sometimes, and we will fail sometimes (ok, a lot of times), and we will repair and repair and repair, and then we will wake up and do it all over again.

The last two stanzas are a picture of that visceral feeling—that pit in our bellies when we want nothing more than to remind our children that, despite our own fickle humanity, there is one certainty:

We love them.

We love them. We love them.