When I am measuring, measuring, measuring, there is no way I can appreciate the delight of my daughter

While ratios and decimals and fractions terrified my classmates, I adored them. I thrived on applying principles and solving the challenges step by step. But mostly, I loved the clarity the world of mathematics offered. Yes or no. Right or wrong. There was no ambiguity. It was not a creative essay you poured your soul into, only to get a subjective grade and some vague comments.

I constantly asked questions: How long? How much? How far? How late? I loved collecting data — trying to gather enough points so I could make sense of the world. I even graduated with a degree in mathematics.

For years, my obsession with quantifying my world served me well. Then I got married and had children. I carry the same old measuring equipment, but no matter how hard I try, it never adds up. There is no magic number to tell me how many hugs and kisses I need to give my daughter or how many times to tell her I love her. Or how many times I can lose my temper and not be called a bad mommy. There is no gauge that indicates whether I’m giving my newborn what he needs.

But still, I count and count. I count the night wakings, and meticulously measure what’s left in his bottles. How many wet diapers. How much weight she gained. I grasp onto any data I can gather, and when the numbers don’t add up, I collapse. My daughter stops growing at four months, and my world disintegrates. From then on, I study their growth charts obsessively, although my babies are so petite that they didn’t even feature on the curve.

Aha, my inner mathematician declares. Finally, there it is in black and white—the proof. I have failed. This crucial job I have — to feed them so they can grow — I have failed. But my sweet babies, they defy me. They are small but perfect. They reach their milestones, they smile and giggle and crawl and walk. But still I cannot relinquish my calculator or abandon my weights.

The calculations are relentless. I have been at work for five hours, but my baby was sleeping at the babysitter for 93 minutes of this time, so do I have permission to dash to the stores straight from work instead of dragging him in and out the car? I am desperate to get out alone to a yoga class, my postpartum body is achy and lopsided, but one hour is all I am allowed. I dash home the second it ends.

My husband doesn’t escape my measurements either. I watched the kids for three hours on Shabbos afternoon while you slept, so now it’s my chance. Even though he has chronic fatigue and is doing his best. I was up five times with the baby, so you need to get up at dawn with the toddler.

But it doesn’t help. These measurements I invent offer no comfort or guarantee. I am desperate. When will I know? When will I get a percentage to be sure I’m doing okay? How can ever I succeed if there is no final exam and mark to prove my competency and value?

It’s exhausting, carrying around all this equipment. Constantly trying to squash my experience into a nice square box, clean and closed. The mental calculations; the searching for the mythical right number. Because my children are the ultimate unquantifiable entity. They are little souls in formation, spontaneous and constantly changing, full of contradictions and growth. No matter how hard I look, there is no box to check that says, “I did enough, I loved them enough, I cherished them enough, and I taught them enough.”

Somehow I end up at a shalom bayis shiur I don’t really plan to be at. The teacher discusses how in marriage, it’s easy to get caught up in the counting who did what and when game. But, the teacher says, there is no blessing in the measuring stick. And I know that she is speaking to me. I, the keeper of the measuring stick. And finally I get it.

There is no blessing in all my mathematics. I imagine she meant it in a spiritual sense, in the heavenly realms. But there is more. Because there is no way I can see blessing in my life when I am dragging around my scales and weights and rulers. When I am measuring, measuring, measuring, there is no way I can appreciate the delight of my daughter sprinting into my arms after school or my baby’s giggling with delirious delight when I play peek-a-boo.

If I am constantly taking stock of who did what and when and for how much, and how many times he forgot to take out the garbage this week, there is no way I can appreciate my husband’s endless kindness. There is no joy, there is no light.

It’s time for the measuring stick to go. The blessing is here, all around me, waiting to be invited in. Each moment is its own, unique, offering joy and pain and disappointment and love. There may never be a final grade, but I choose the lightness of the unknown and trust that who I am is enough.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 449)