Guest Post: Sophie's Choice

For the past 20 years, being a mother has defined me and shaped me more than anything else. Nearly everything I do is filtered through that lens. But I am the mother of one boy, and as such, there are aspects of parenting that I will never experience--being the mother of a girl, for one, but also that inexplicable math of loving another child just as much as the one you already have without the first love being diminished.

After reading my friend Laura's explanation of how it works, though, I have a better understanding of how it is to love several children equally but also, occasionally, have favorites.

Sophie's Choice

by Laura Hankins Rand

I have four children. Or rather, I have four adults. The youngest is edging towards 30. I have been asked a few times over the years by an occasional rogue acquaintance if I have a favorite. I always respond with a resounding YES. I love seeing the surprised face and the wicked interest in such an unexpected and ill-advised response. We are supposed to love all our children equally, at all times, in all circumstances, world without end, amen, praise to the father, son, and Holy Ghost.

But I submit that every parent has a favorite. Oh yes, I believe this. Let me explain. When my second child was born, my oldest was 5. She was the center of the world. She defined everything a child should and could be. Her father once said, “I know I will love this new baby. But I also know that I can never love another child as much as I love this one.” Oh, the things we think we know until we experience them. I told him that love isn’t something we parcel out. Love is limitless. We would love the new baby with every bit of intensity that we loved the first.

I was right. And we went on to have four children, two girls, two boys. After the second girl, he admitted defeat and confessed that he loved her as much as he loved our singular first. Then we had our third – a boy. His father admitted to me (was he slightly ashamed?) that he had never felt this way before. It wasn’t that he loved this boy more than our girls. He just loved him differently. And when we had the second boy – the same. He was our last. We knew this. He was special for many reasons, not the least being he was last. The special position that somehow parents with multiple children understand.

Now our house was full – four busy children. Two exhausted parents. We never thought about degrees of love. How could we – we never had a spare moment. But looking back over the years as they and we have aged, I see more clearly the scope and breadth of parental love, the bursts, the pulsating underlying foundation of it all.

This week, one of my children had emergency surgery. He is now asleep in our guest room, recovering well. He is my favorite.

In 2006, I became a grandmother for the first time, by my second daughter – the one I knew somehow I could love as much as my first. I helped coach her through her delivery and saw her baby before she did – from the vantage point of the end of the hospital bed. That day, as she breathed and sweated and worked so hard, my favorite child had a baby.

My oldest, my very heart, was in a horrific car accident. The car rolled over, the glass shattered, and my favorite child walked out of it without a scratch.

You may have heard in the news a couple of years ago about my third child, my oldest son. He was attacked by a group in Asheville, his cheekbone and glasses broken, and left in a parking lot. It was on the local news. What the news didn’t say was that he is the favorite child of Laura Hankins Rand, who was at the place of business the next morning, demanding an answer for what had happened in that lighted parking lot with security guards inside the store.

And it’s not just about when they are in pain or life-threatening situations. That sense of favoritism arises when a child, a favorite, is teased by classmates. Or when he gets 2^nd place in the spelling bee. When she is in the school play and lights up the entire gym or makes the valedictory speech at graduation. And when his or her heart is broken by an adolescent crush or as an adult by a spouse. The child who needs me in that moment, my focused attention, my lap, my shoulder, my praise, my laughter, my discipline (yes, even that), is my absolute favorite.

Sophie’s Choice it is not, thankfully. There is an undrainable well inside of parents. It is given either in the labor and delivery room or upon leaving the hospital as a gift of grace. No child can use it up. No number is too many for each to receive the full scope of it. It is not divisible, only multiplicable. There may be some trigonometry involved. Not sure.

Now I experience this same bounty of love with my grandchildren. I had only one for 6 ½ years, and in July my second was born. The first one expressed some attempt at grappling with the measure and limits of love. He said he understood that now I love the baby more than him. I sat him down, looked him in the eye, and said, “Absolutely not. I love him. I love him in his own special way with all my heart. But I will never love anyone more than you. You are you and I have special love for you. The baby has his own special love. Do you understand me?” I hope he did.

Should you ever run into me and just can’t hold back your question, go ahead. Ask me on any given day who my favorite child is. I just might smile properly, lower my eyes, and say, “Favorite? Oh, I love them all exactly the same!”