“I was saying to a group of women the other day that I feel that my children have simultaneously made and destroyed my life.”
When I read these words by Rachel yesterday, I gasped. I gasped because that’s what I’ve been thinking all week; or suspecting, at least, deep down, quietly.
I’m sitting here typing this in my workspace and I can hear the kids calling my name. I’m trying to snatch just a few minutes work, as I do many times during the day. Yet they call, or come in here and tug my arm, or do any number of things that make me wonder if maybe I should put them in daycare, just for a day a week, just so I can get ‘my shit done’ (as I so lovingly call it). Yet I know I will miss them, crave them, and then that idea gets shelved again for the thousandth time.
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One of the earliest conversations I remember having with my mother was when I was about six or seven years old. At the time she was either just beginning, or in the middle of, her Master of Letters degree. The house was scattered with paperwork; these papers were mostly my bedroom, as that doubled as the study as well. My bookshelves were stuffed with manila folders that often spilled out over the desk like literary entrails.
What most put my young nose out was that timeless crime all children accuse their parents of – she wasn’t paying me enough attention.
On this particular day, there were tears. I was crying. I remember her pulling me up onto the brown velveteen lounge she still has and nursing me on her lap she didn’t even need to ask the matter; she already knew.
“You’re upset because I’m busy with study, aren’t you? You’re feeling neglected.”
I bit my lip and mumbled yes.
I can’t be sure, the memory fades here, but I’m almost certain she then asked, “Do you want me to stop?”
And I think I shook my head. “No, I want you to keep going.”
This was the truth, too. I didn’t like how her books and her ideas were distancing her (or so I thought) away from me but I never begrudged her from doing it in the first place. I mean, the project looked impressive. It sounded impressive. Every so often a thick parcel of notes from her lecturer in Armidale would arrive and I thought, Whatever she’s doing must mean something.
It did, surely. She got a graduation in a cap and gown and another ‘feather to the bow’ but I’m certain the personal satisfaction she got, the pride, was invaluable, and I like to hope that as a six year old I was able to figure that out on my own.
This is where we flash forward over twenty years, to the kids who stand next to me as I’m desperately trying to write notes on my manuscript. To my children who insist on having me part of their bedroom routine; when I have to be physically in the house when I’d earlier considered escaping to McDonalds or some other late night cafe and do work, and often wish I’d just left and let my husband deal with the fallout. It’s not like I haven’t done it before.
It’s this I need, I need, which I’m sure comes off as grating or ego-ridden to some people but some of us, I’m sure, will get it.
Because they know that it must mean something.
I just have to decide now how much I want this ‘something’ because it will result in tears and the ‘You don’t love me enough’ accusations, and I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet. I just hope they’ll understand in time, too.
I often thought when Keira was a little baby that parenting will only get easier as she gets older.
I was wrong – it’s getting harder.
