Motorcycles, Uma and Motherhood, the Movie

As my husband and I walked out of the theater after seeing “Motherhood,” he turned to me and asked, innocently enough, “Did you ever think you’d see a movie that would so closely resemble your life?”

The smile fell from my face. I looked around to see if anyone heard what he said, hoping they had not. Thoughts raced into my head, noisily, like kids running in the back door and letting the screen door slam behind them. My life, like “Motherhood?”

Its central character, Eliza, is played by Uma Thurman – so that’s flattering enough. And despite the fact that the movie gives us a day in Eliza’s life that, if anything, is “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” for mommies, her character somehow keeps her sense of humor. Most of the time, anyway. I should be grateful for the comparison, right?

But, no, Eliza and I are very different. I don’t live in a walk-up in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. I have four children; and Eliza has two. My children are past the pre-school age, so at this point I don’t even have to think about whether to quench my thirst by stealing a swig out of their sippy cups. And I don’t wear my pajamas under my raincoat when I’m rushing my kids off to school in the morning. (Well, usually not anyway.) 

Wait, though…like Eliza, my bookshelves do hold literary journals that contain writing I did twenty years ago, heavily symbolic poems and stories that drip with meaning. And it’s true that I do often steal out of the room, leaving my girls playing at the dollhouse, and hunch over my laptop. Like Eliza, every day I tap away at writing projects in little snippets of time.   

The first part of the movie, comprised of comic scenes in which Eliza muddles, hour by hour and task by task through her morning, seems almost unbelievably over the top. It would, anyway, had I not lived such days many times myself. As she, Sherpa-like, makes her way home with laden with boxes and bags after getting supplies for her daughter’s birthday party, the filmmaker adds a nice touch. Around her neck, further weighing her down – and bringing to mind Dickens’ Jacob Marley – is a thick, steel bike chain.

And then there’s the scene in which Eliza almost snaps and for a moment actually thinks she will flee the reality of her life and escape to New Jersey. As she drives, looking panicked and desperate, I turned to my husband and whispered, “Oh I know just what she is feeling.” And I did – it made my chest hurt.

Throughout the movie, I kept thinking: No one talks about this stuff. The extreme highs and lows that occur every single day as a parent. The worry that you are losing your identity. The mind-numbing number of details to manage.  The way your heart crumbles inside you when you are able to see through all the craziness and you fall in love with your child all over again.

Not long ago, I was driving home at the end of a long day. In front of me was a guy on a motorcycle. As I followed him through an intersection, we passed another motorcycle that was going the other direction. The other rider raised his hand to the guy in front of me, in a show of solidarity. The man in front of me returned the wave.

The simple fact that they both rode motorcycles was enough for them to feel a connection and greet each other. As I pulled into my driveway, I thought “Moms should do that.” As we pass each other in our minivans, seeing the silhouettes of little kids in the back seats, we should make eye contact, raise our hands, and wave. Just to acknowledge that we see each other, that we are on the same journey, that we aren’t on our own.

Motherhood, the movie, is like those guys on the motorcycles. It’s a friendly wave, an acknowledgement. As we laugh at Eliza’s predicaments (and our own) and as Eliza haltingly expresses the complexities of what it means to be a mother and to find herself again after spending years focused on the needs of young children, we can take heart that we aren’t alone on this journey.