It is a suffocating summer morning. An electric fan whirs pathetically from the kitchen corner as the baby wriggles in my arms, frantically trying to nurse on my neck. With my free hand, I load the dishwasher with breakfast dishes while in my mind I prepare a grocery list for the company we expect over the weekend.
My two oldest children are in the throes of an argument over who broke what rule in the card game of “Uno” they are playing at the kitchen table. Through their escalating chorus of “Did not! Did too!” I am vaguely aware that someone is saying my name. Above the noise, I shout some general threat about taking away their cards and outlawing “Uno.” I close the dishwasher and head for the rocking chair to nurse the baby. Her sweaty flesh sticks to mine as she begins to nurse.
Now I realize that the someone saying my name is 5-year-old Ambrose. Standing beside me, he is growing desperate.
“Mamaaaaaaaaaa…” he moans.
“What?” I finally answer. My voice betrays more than a hint of irritation, but Ambrose is undaunted.
“This is for you,” he says.
His sweaty face is smudged with mud. His eyes are solemn. Clutched in his grubby fist is a wilted bouquet of lavender and mint from the herb garden.
Oh the guilt. I can almost hear the reverse signal of the mother-guilt dump truck as it backs up to bury me in reproach. My sweet little boy brings me flowers, and what do I do? First I ignore him, and then I snap at him. The mother-lode of mother-guilt.
I apologize. I hug him and kiss him and thank him profusely. I make a fuss over the flowers as I find a vase and put them in water. Ambrose is satisfied with this, but I can’t escape the nagging feeling that I am a terrible mother.
Shortly before the baby was born, I read Ambrose a children’s book about a little girl who feared losing her mother’s affection with the arrival of a new sister.
“Love isn’t like a cup of sugar that runs out as you give it away,” the storybook mother had explained.
“How corny!” I remember thinking. Of course I don’t worry that I’ll run out of love for my children. The fact is, however, that sometimes my energy and patience are like a cup of sugar, and a rather small cup at that. When these run out, I worry that one of my children, particularly Ambrose, will feel slighted.
As the third of our six children, Ambrose is what child psychologists would call a “middle child.” A middle child, I remember my college psychology professor explaining, occupies an uncertain and often overlooked position in the family. Suffering from a lack of attention and always unsure of his role, the classic “middle child” vacillates between grown up and infantile behavior, swinging unpredictably from maturity to immaturity.
Sometimes I do marvel at Ambrose’s maturity. Recently, while riding his bike at top speed, he hit a rock and went sailing over the handle bars. From the living room window, I watched with horror as he tumbled to the gravel driveway below. I was ready to race to his side, but then Ambrose got up, briefly examined his bloodied palms, wiped them on his jeans, and got back on the bicycle. No kisses required.
At other times, however, I marvel at his immaturity. For instance, the other day he was drawing pictures when his older sister commented that perhaps his drawing of a cardinal could use more red in its feathers. This well-intended “criticism” reduced Ambrose to tears and my ensuing attempts to compliment his drawing only infuriated him. He crumpled up the paper and flung his crayons to the floor.
“Everything I do is bad!” he wailed with the scrunched up face of a quick-tempered toddler.
Having grown up as a middle child in a large family myself, I recognize the uncertain, precarious, middle position Ambrose occupies in our family. I expect more of Ambrose than a baby, and yet he is not afforded all of the privileges granted to the older children.
He seems to have the worst of both worlds, I sometimes think, and the mother-guilt dump truck kicks into high gear. Grown-ups no longer gush over him and excuse his bad behavior as we do for the littlest ones in our household. On the other hand, he is eager to read chapter books and swim to the raft at the lake by himself, things he is not quite old enough to do. The ultimate injustice is that by the time he can do these things, they will no longer seem newsworthy, as attention will have been re-focused on his older siblings’ next big achievements.
I must admit, however, that most of the time Ambrose appears blissfully unaware of the cruel hand the fates have dealt him. Perhaps it’s because he hasn’t read the right textbooks, but he doesn’t seem to know that he is supposed to bemoan his “middle” circumstances.
For example, the other day, he overheard me tell someone about a distant cousin of his who is an only child.
“What is an ‘only child?’” he wanted to know.
When I explained that his cousin has no brothers or sisters, his eyes grew wide with wonder.
“No brothers or sisters?”
He was quiet for a moment as he considered the concept. Oh no, I thought. Was he contemplating the joys of his own bedroom and his parents’ constant, undivided attention? Was he envisioning a life where he always chose the bedtime story and never had to share the last cookie?
Apparently, however, his real thoughts were far from these. Bewilderment clouded his face. “Who does she play with?” he finally wondered aloud before heading outside to join a game of hide-and-go-seek.
I am not the only one who notices Ambrose’s lack of “middle child” angst. A friend I visited recently gave me a box of toys her children had outgrown. My kids were keenly aware of this treasure as I put it in the back of our van and we headed for home.
“Mama,” Ambrose announced from his car seat. “I think the new toys should be for the little ones…like me.”
His large green eyes blinked innocently in my direction.
This ploy was more than his older brother Eamon could stand.
“Have you noticed,” he complained, “that Ambrose is a little kid when it’s good to be little and he’s a big kid when it’s good to be big?”
I had to smile. For an enterprising boy like Ambrose, being the middle child is not a disadvantage, but a unique opportunity. This summer, he was old enough to stay up late and study the constellations with his father and the other “big kids.” He was big enough to go to the airshow when the “little ones” had to stay home. Sometimes, though, he is small enough to claim first dibs on new toys and he reserves the right to throw an occasional tantrum if the mood strikes him. He maintains hero status with his younger sister while enjoying the advantage of his older brother’s example. He may at times have the worst of both worlds, but he has the best of both worlds too.
“Ambrose,” I challenged him, “Are you a big kid or a little kid?”
“I’m both,” he told me with a devilish grin.
I’ll have to reserve the mother-guilt dump truck for other, more worrisome parenting issues. Whether my college psychology professor likes it or not, my middle child is not maladjusted. He is comfortably positioned in the midst of our family sphere, with the luxury of choosing when and how quickly to grow up. As I watch him I realize that Ambrose has found a blissful balance, centered among siblings, in the middle of it all.
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
Danielle Bean is a freelance writer and mother of seven. Her newly-released book is My Cup of Tea: Musings of a Catholic Mom. Read an excerpt, order your copy, and read her daily musings at: www.daniellebean.com.
