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Socialisation, or “how school does precisely what it is designed to do”

Written by on August 15, 2011

How many times when you were in school did you get told off by the teacher for talking in class; “Put your head down and get back to work – you’re not here to socialise!” and yet later on in life we are told to put our children into school to make sure that they “get socialised”…  What’s going on here?

What’s going on is that socialisation in this context means making sure that children grow up believing that they should be grateful for being made to feel miserable. It translates well into employees who put their heads down and get back to the work that makes them miserable, all the while feeling guilty about not feeling more grateful for the fact that they have a job.

This works so neatly because, children in school are told, “You should be grateful that you can go to school. Children in third-world countries would give anything to have this opportunity that you have!” This makes children feel guilty that they don’t feel more grateful for being in school, even though school makes them miserable.

It’s very convenient for an abuser to make the victim feel responsible for his or her own misery.

Now we have a child who is socialised. Ready to take part as a cog in the abusive machine called Western Civilisation. He will take a job when he is of age, and become a consumer of resources. But wait! Not only will this child take part willingly… He will also think that he enjoys it. And it will never occur to him to resist what has been, and what is being, done to him. The very thought would make him feel guilty and he would take it no further. He will not rock the boat, because he doesn’t even realise he’s in one.

He is socialised. This is “socialisation”. This is how school does precisely what it is designed to do.

Categories: School

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Never-ending work and the day of rest

Written by on March 21, 2011

I’m finally starting to appreciate the concept of a day of rest.  It sounds old-fashioned, and I always thought it was a bit stuffy – something a grandmother would do – but maybe that was before I had a household and family of my own.  If nothing else, a child’s needs are relentless (I don’t find that a bad thing, it’s just a fact), and with housework on top of that, the weeks have a never-ending feel to them.  When a friend mentioned to me recently that she reserves Sunday for not doing any housework or study, something clicked in my head.  After giving of myself in a constant trickle to the demands of cooking, cleaning and care of my child plus the work I do from home – not a ton, but a constant trickle every single day – I was beginning to feel like a thread on an endless spool.

Suddenly I remembered watching Fiddler on the Roof as a child and marvelling at the way the family completed all their tasks before the Sabbath.  Now, that seemed kind of nice.  I remembered that even Black Beauty got Sundays off – and he was just a cab horse.  And I wondered, if a cab horse can have a day off once a week, why can’t a mother?

So I’m trialling it. Yesterday, I didn’t work on my work-from-home job.  I didn’t clean anything other than the dishes.  (I delegated some clothes-pegging and dry clothes folding!)  I felt strangely antsy – like I should have been working.  I couldn’t even bring myself to do the “leisure” things that I normally put off, like completing a craft project, preserving a jam or tweaking my personal blogs.  So maybe it will take a few weeks to get into it.  But I think I’m going to really come to appreciate my day of rest…

After all, a little while ago now we designated Friday as the Cleaning Day.  Also something I had avoided for years, thinking it was a little too grandmotherly.  But it’s worked so far.  It’s a great relief knowing that even though the dust bunnies have been reproducing in scary numbers by Wednesday or Thursday, I don’t need to worry about it because come Friday, they’ll be dealt with once again.  It’s freeing in a way I hadn’t expected.  On that note, I’d also like to inaugurate a shopping/pantry day where I get the food and meals in order for the coming week.  But more on that later.  Since it’s Monday, I might get back to doing some of the work I didn’t do yesterday – but with Sunday now my designated rest day, I don’t need to feel guilty about not having done that work yesterday!  Yay!

Categories: Balance, Homemaking and housework, Prioritising

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Free time and the good enough

Written by on March 9, 2011

I read a quote this morning.  “We don’t know what we want, but we are ready to bite somebody to get it.”  (Will Rogers.)  I had to laugh, but I sobered up pretty fast, because I realised that I’ve been a bit like this lately.  Only, it’s not that I don’t know what I want – I just don’t know what I want first. And I don’t ever remember having to decide between things so starkly before becoming a mother.

Before baby, I might think to myself, “Hmm, really could use a nap today.  Might cook up a batch of [yummies] too.  Wouldn’t mind going for a swim either.  And doing a bit of work in the afternoon.”  And I’d plan it out – I’ll do this, this and this, in that order and unless something really unusual happened, like I bumped into a visiting friend who’d been away for years or I came down with a sudden flu or something, I’d go about my day doing just what I had planned.  This, this and that.  And at the end of the day, I’d be well napped, apricot slice-d up, pleasantly chlorinated and had neatly completed some work.

This morning I dragged myself out of bed after a night of non-sleeping toddler, threw on my dressing gown backwards in haste, pottied my child and washed out the potty, drank a glass of yesterday’s kefir and oatmeal smoothie and began chopping piles of tomatoes while DD was still stumping happily around in her PJ’s.  By the time the tomatoes were on to simmer she wanted something to eat, so I gave her some smoothie and some cheese and a muesli bar and let her go for it while I cleaned up the tomato dishes.  Then I typed up a few bits and pieces on the laptop which I had not managed to do last night, and sent them off to the places they needed to go.  Cleaned up DD’s breakfast bonanza.  Did the potty thing again.  Attempted to do a bit more work while she was occupied with a pad and some crayons.  She was grumpy – we suspect teething – and by midday I was feeling haggard with a short fuse.  I became snappy and kept getting frustrated at images in my mind’s eye of a peaceful morning spent peacefully eating, cooking, working and cleaning.  Not frenetic and noisy eating, cooking, working and cleaning… Just as I was about to leap onto the sofa to give my daughter a breastfeed (which, incidentally, I’m delighted to do) I impulsively grabbed my notebook and wrote,

“Children make a joke of your sanity.

They ruin your peace and quiet.

They mess up your plans.

They don’t understand time.”

Recently I’ve been contemplating time.  (OK, I am always contemplating time… and how to create more of it!)  For instance – what is “free time”?  After all, pre-child, all my time was free time!  Even while I was working, there was no nagging reality at the back of my mind about the jolting immediacy of my young child’s needs that I would return to upon finishing work.  I could wander back home in my free time.  Lie on the sofa in my free time.  Read a book – just read it without doing anything else – not eating lunch as fast as possible during a nap time – not lying on a pins-and-needles-tingling arm while breastfeeding in a darkened room – not while cooking or brushing my teeth or anything else – just reading a book.  But what wasted time that now seems.  Maybe one day I will contemplate just doing one simple thing at a time, but that day seems very far off right now.  If I am to get anything done at all, it just gets squeezed in between the cracks in the cycle of hours.

So I am trying to learn how to be good enough and to do good enough things with my time, whether or not it can be considered truly “free”.  I don’t have the leisure of making things perfectly anymore – but I do have a new gut-originating resolve to just make things anyway – to make them now.  Art falls into this category – as does money.  So does blogging!

I find it hard to decide which things are OK to let slip and which things are better kept up to scratch.  Is it OK to whack the bread knife back after one use?  Is it OK to throw out that overripe tomato because doing so would mean the pressure is off you to have to cook it/eat it today?  Is it OK to let my child grizzle for a moment when she wants some milk so that I can write in my notebook?  Is it OK to skip lunch three days in a row?  Is it OK to go for two weeks without mopping the floors?  Is it OK to sacrifice sleep for your child?  What about to sacrifice sleep for your own external and internal goals?  Is is OK to blog when I should be doing work instead, because writing for myself feeds my soul instead of writing for money and feeding the fridge?

Honestly… I have no idea…!  I’m clueless for the answers.  All I know is that if I aim to be perfect, and do things perfectly, at the moment that might mean that I don’t even begin anything because it’s not possible to get the free time together to do things perfectly at the moment.  But if I aim to be good enough, that doesn’t stop me from seeking excellence in the things that really matter, and it might mean that I actually get more done than I even did pre-baby because it stops me dwelling on perfection and instead engages in – revels in, even – the fleetingness of time.  I don’t think I really knew time before baby.  It was something that happened to me, but I didn’t interact with it.

These days I can flirt with time. I can laugh with time.  I can challenge time to a duel.

And the things that don’t really matter?  Well, I do wipe the bread knife every second or third time I use it…  Good enough for now.

Categories: Art and motherhood, Balance, Breastfeeding, Choices, Homemaking and housework, Mothering vs housekeeping, Nap times, Prioritising, Writing

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Motherhood… limiting your options

Written by on February 27, 2011

“Babies are nice – but motherhood limits your options!”  I heard it so many times as a girl and teenager.  The original feminist catch-cry: Watch out, because becoming a mother will limit your options.

Options, options, options, always more and more of them.  As many as you can hold in your hands and then some more.  We’re brimming over with options.  It’s the catch-cry of modern life, that we have seemingly infinite options, and we’re very protective of that.

Choices, too.  It limits your choices.  That’s another holy tenet of modern living.  We have to be able to choose from a dazzling array of choices, or we feel cheated.  It’s how we’re raised, by the culture at large, thinking we want, and thus wanting, more choices than we have days to choose them all.

We become paralysed by choices.  Making a choice from a number of options means limiting ourselves, and by golly, don’t we baulk at that idea.  It’s our right, we’re led to believe, that we should never experience limits.  The sky is the limit.  The world is your oyster. We attempt to swallow this oyster whole and end up choking!

Why are we so scared of limitation?  After all, we are finite beings.  We have, notwithstanding widespread and worldwide beliefs in an eternal soul or in reincarnation, one life as we know it to live.  Our days in this life could be said to be numbered.  One day, we will die.  That’s limitation!

We can only be in one place at once.  Ate a yummy bowl of cereal and fruit at home this morning?  Well, then you had no hope of also eating your muesli breakfast at a cafe.  Damn!  What now?  Gracefully accept that we’re finite in space as well as time – or fight it, feeling guilt unnecessarily for not being able to be something that we can never be?

We are fragile.  Our bodies are complex organisms requiring a fine balance of air, water, warmth and food to survive.  A single spore or bacteria can derail us.  We have on average about five and a half litres of blood, and if we lose only a little over two litres of that blood, we’re gonners.  A lack of one basic need can kill us in a very short time.  We can survive for about three minutes without air, three hours without warmth, three days without water, and three weeks without food.  That’s how fragile we are.  Our bodies come with these built-in limitations.

Yet Western culture spreads across the world, sweeping aside with its great arm our ancient and innate understanding and acceptance that human beings are limited creatures.  The drive for dominance, whether you hold that that’s driven by natural selection, sin or plain random chance, overpowers our inner peace.  In overpowering lesser nations we also overpower the quiet parts of ourselves.  We forget, not only that we truly are limited beings, but also that it can be beautiful and enjoyable to know that you’re a limited being.

When I had a baby, I challenged myself to let go gracefully of the fact that the next few years would be in servitude to a helpless creature who needed my attention, care and love to live.  Not only a change and a limitation for a few years, but also for the rest of my life.  I would never be the same again, and in becoming what I would become, I would never become all those other unique variants of me that had existed before I walked down this path.  It didn’t have to be motherhood; taking any path will limit you due to the fact that it’s impossible to go back and take a different path from that point.  We are finite and linear.

Giving myself up to this particular limitation does not come easy, but that doesn’t mean that it’s damaged me.  The idea that limitation makes you less; makes you less of a person; makes you less of a success, or damages you in some way is a myth.  In fact, in accepting our limitations, we can become more truly who we are.  Our eyes open within the still and sparkling room which is Now.

We notice the red fleck on the back of the bird out the window, the golden baby hair left on the armrest of the sofa.  Seeing your child from the back, dressing up in Daddy’s t-shirt long as a gown, and momentarily glimpsing the future of a child grown up and wearing a grown-up gown and your breath catches because suddenly time sears and brands you.  You grab them and kiss them, suddenly knowing that today is all we ever have.

We hear a bird warble in the cool of the early morning, and it’s not that the cool morning is any more inherently lovely than any other time of the day, but we’re touched because we’re caught off guard.  Before the day begins, before the tumble of pressuring thoughts rushes in to our minds, we’re caught off guard more easily by the Now.

I don’t know about you, but motherhood made me very happy to discover my limitations.

I am learning that time is precious and that I only get so much of it to play with.  I am learning that playing is often more important than working.  I’m learning that prioritising is more important than trying to do and have it all.  I’m learning that just because you limit yourself to this option now, it doesn’t mean you can’t pursue a different option later.  But the limitations of time and presence of body and mind are very much in the forefront of my mind at the moment, with a small child demanding a large wedge of my energy and attention during most of the day.

In my last post I listed all the plans that had lately been whirring around my head and I contemplated letting go of more Things.  Well, I let go of one Thing today – may it be the start of a trend!  It was very hard, but I came to the realisation that preserving food is not a top-priority activity for me at the moment.  Although some things are non-negotiable (those who know me know that I am a little obsessed with making and preserving chicken stock, for instance) and are valid to stay on top of my priority list, but other things, such as the two bags of nectarines which I brought home yesterday with the best intentions in the world of bottling up, are not so valid in my current life.  Although I’d love to see pretty bottles of home-preserved fruit lining my shelves, I confessed to myself that we just don’t need or use that much fruit at the moment, so it would be a silly waste of my time to get stuck into preserving it by the bushel!  (But don’t worry – I’m sure we can polish off the nectarines in their fresh state quite quickly and easily!)

That may seem like such a small thing – whether or not to preserve nectarines – but at the moment for me, every minute counts.  If it takes me one hour to preserve them, that’s roughly an entire kid nap-time gone where I could have done something else which meant more to me personally or was more pressing.

I could rail against this; by putting my kid in daycare for instance – but that’s not my choice.  I know some women do become mothers and let their baby make less of a dent in their life.  And well, it’s a culture of choice.  A woman can choose her options in this society, and yes, choices for women is a good thing!  God forbid we move back to the dark ages of women’s rights.

But personally?  Right now, I want those sticky toddler paw prints all over my life.  I want my rough edges knocked off by those board books and saucepan lids.  I surrender my right to full control.

It’s a lot of effort whichever way you turn it, being a mother.  I figure I may as well let it change me.

In fact, I want it to change me.  I want it to challenge me.  I want it to limit me and force me to blossom through the cracks.  I choose it!

Categories: Balance, Choices, Modern woman, Nap times, Prioritising, The Now, The self that happens also to be a mother

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Overcommitment and the greedy peg hand

Written by on February 24, 2011

I was out there bringing in the washing one day.  It was threatening to rain, and my daughter was on my back, and I felt the urgency to get this done as fast as possible because once things get even a little bit wet I have to air them before I put them away otherwise it makes the cupboards get moist, but there’s barely any space in our place to hang or drape clothing and bedding around to air so I’d rather just get them in dry, and fast…

Pegs tempting my greedy peg hand

Anyway, the clouds were getting darker and darker by the minute, and my peg hand was just snatching at those pegs like its little life depended on it.  BUT WHY?  Why does my hand always attempt to grab more than two pegs at a time – three and even four or five sometimes, in its haste – when it knows full well that it can’t hold more than two without starting to drop the rest, or hold them all but not actually manage to operate a peg with so many others in the way!

Dropping pegs and trying to communicate to my greedy peg hand to slow down, I had to laugh at myself, because of course it’s exactly what the rest of me does.  Somehow, somewhere inside that little mind of mine, I’m holding on to this fabulous idea that I *can* do it all – all at once.  I wonder if it’s a particular trap for modern women, who are now able to pursue family, homemaking, careers, and hobbies – when not so long ago women would more likely to have had a couple of options only, and settled into that pattern for the rest of their lives.

I heard something yesterday, which I thought was really great.  A mother, who had temporarily paused her career to raise her babies, said, “I think you can have it all… just not all at once.”  I love that so much, and even though it is simple I think it is a really good little mantra for the modern mummy.

I look around my kitchen where I am sitting to write this (hands up mums whose office is the kitchen table! Woohoo!) and I am pleased to see my sourdough bubbling, my sauerkraut fermenting quietly, my kombucha brewing, my dishes drying in the rack, and appreciate the sound of the fridge humming away to itself, keeping our food cool and safe even in the summer months.  Indeed, modern life has caused us to come up with many inventions which make it possible to do more – all at once.  Without the fridge, we’d have to buy/grow food more often, cook more often, preserve and ferment more often, and eat more regularly.  That in itself frees up a huge amount of time.  Being able to make my favourite healthy foods, then, becomes an option, not a necessity.  That’s a privilege for which I’m grateful.

I’m not happy, however, with the internal pressure on myself to manage more and more and more all at once – I hate the proverbial “jugging act” – I crave peace and rhythm and space.  A little predictability and pattern.  Yet, with a toddler, I’ve forgone a lot of peace, rhythm and space anyway – it becomes easy to cave in to chaos throughout the rest of life at the same time.  But then I find myself running from one thing to the other, never finding space and silence and breath for its own sake…

How do I turn it off?  Or maybe turn it down?  This internal pressure that threatens to blow if I stop moving, stop running, stop tending to each little part of the whole.

Maybe by seeing it all as a whole and letting go the idea that life is a collection of bits and pieces that need to be juggled and managed.  Maybe by getting out of the house sometimes for entire days and coming home to a house that is just as clean (or maybe messy!) as I left it… and letting it sink in just that little bit more that if you step off the roundabout of life sometimes, you don’t actually fall off the planet, and neither does everyone or anything else.

Maybe by prioritising and subsequently, letting go gracefully of the things that are at the bottom of the list – for a while.  Maybe by allowing myself to grab too many pegs, and then absorbing that moment where all the pegs fall to the ground.  And not berating myself for that – because I do.  Every time it happens, I’ll find myself muttering to myself, “Why do I keep grabbing too many pegs at once?  Why don’t I just slow down?”  – After all, if I’m going to be gracious to myself, that involves not beating myself when I’m down (literally – well someone’s got to pick those pegs back off the ground again)!

Leaving the pegs on the ground.  Letting someone else pick up the pegs.  Getting rid of some of the pegs.  Getting rid of some of the things that require pegging.

Right now, I attempt to cook from scratch, eat healthily, preserve food, keep a semblance of household order, manage contractors and a new business, write for money, manage website admins, take walks with friends and email friends who are further away, encourage a toddler to potty train, read novels and non-fiction, study a Cert IV, craft/sew the odd article, play with my daughter, philosophise, make art, breastfeed, and plan for the future.  In short: too much, and I know it.  My head spins just looking at that list; if I go into it in detail, I actually go a bit blank.  It’s too much to think about, and I know I’m being ineffective at many of those things right now, and it bothers me.

So hopefully next time I post, I’ll have gracefully dropped a few pegs!

What about you?  What’s in your peg hand?

Categories: Balance, Homemaking and housework, Modern woman, Playing with your kids, Prioritising, The self that happens also to be a mother, Writing

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One day slides into another… all is one.

Written by on February 18, 2011

One day slides into another… the washing in a perpetual state of dirtiness and cleanliness, all being one.  The worn and the basketed and the washing and the washed and the hung and the dried and the folded and the put away.  All rolls into one.  For fullest experience of Zen, have child and do washing.

One day slides into another… drink water.  Your time of servitude to water begins with pregnancy.  You drink and you drink and you drink.  All that fluid whooshing around inside you has to be replenished.  Your kidneys are cleaning extra blood every single day.  What an amazing body!  What an amazing thirst!  Desire becomes need, and you no longer drink for one body, but two, when baby is born and your breasts begin making milk.  Thirst is no longer put off.  You require water, and you feel like you will expire without it.  But you won’t expire if you drink less – your milk would just decrease.  But you would expire – because you and your baby are one.

Now you give water to child, child tips it on floor, you wipe it up, child asks for more water.  Child drinks some, then tips more on floor.  So you feel guilty if you don’t give them another cupful because you know it will be sipped before being spilled.  You don’t want to smack.  You try yelling but your child laughs.  Then tips more water on floor.  You wipe it up, and distract.  Throw umpteenth terry in the washing basket.  One day, you find your child quietly pouring water on the floor – then wiping it straight up.  You smile and contemplate pouring a little water on the floor yourself, to see if they’ll wipe it up for Mummy.  Baby grows up and time whirls before you and all is one because it has to be, otherwise you’re annihilated by chronology.

You are one.  Mother who gave birth to the furthest star and the closest dividing cell.  I’m celebrating with every pile of terries, every hair that falls to the floor.  Every crayon mashed into the floorboards, every blue-eyed cheeky water-pouring smile.  Glad to be alive, despite and because of the facts of the everyday.  Vanishing it all away would vanish away a part of me – and my child.

My suspicion persists.  All is one.

Categories: Breastfeeding, Homemaking and housework, Mothering vs housekeeping

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Motherhood and delayed gratification – when is it OK to eat the chocolate?

Written by on February 11, 2011

No, I’m not talking about teaching your kids delayed gratification.  I’m talking about the own delayed gratification you practice every moment of your day as a mother.

Those first brutally shocking sleepless nights of the first week after your baby is born.  That feeling of loss your get as you realise that you may not get more than 2 hours’ sleep at a time for at least a few months.  And even then, unless you have a miraculous all-night-sleeping baby, or you “sleep train” your child, you may not get, for years to come, more than maybe 4 hours at a time without feeds or wails or false alarms, or those overwhelming urges to sneak a peek a their sleeping little selves just because you love them so much… which call you to their side.

Not eating until you’ve given them food.

Not going to the toilet or having a shower until they are asleep.

Not showering when you wake up because they need attention, breakfast, nappy changes or toilet trips all at once.

The long term compromises made between home life and your own personal interests and/or career path.  Compromises made every day, every week, every month, every year that passes between yours and your children’s needs, as your child grows and changes and needs, not less of you, but you in different ways.  Always one step ahead of you, loaning you the planet as they go along.

Always, mothering in a quiet, private little whirlwind which never gives up the secret to securing personal spare time.

So by the end of the day, when there are still several things on my to-do list and I’m actually ready to just crash in the bed, but I know there’s still things that need to be done and I’m the only one who’s likely to do them… that’s when I glance at a certain kitchen cupboard which I am pretty sure houses my secret little block of chocolate which I acquired a few days ago during the grocery shopping.

And I wonder to myself, have I really done enough to deserve eating a bit of chocolate?  Maybe I should dry up the dinner dishes first… oh and put them away… maybe I should have my shower first?  No but then I’d end up brushing my teeth twice… What if baby wakes while I’m in the shower and I end up racing out of the shower still half dripping and dive into bed to feed her before she wakes up fully and I fall asleep there and wake up in the morning with once again no reason to indulge in chocolate…

I’m nibbling a bit right now, actually.  Dark with orange and flecks of almond.  Yummo.  Good decision, although the guilt is still nagging while I nibble.  “Shouldn’t you have [insert household chore here] first?”

And my reply, tonight and as often as I remember is,

“No.  I’m going to eat this chocolate now.  And you know why?  Because I’m a mother and I sacrifice all day long in ways big and small, and eating this bit of chocolate is a nice gesture towards myself that I acknowledge my own existence as a person (a person that so happens to like eating chocolate!) and that has nothing to do with whether or not the dishes are dried.  Mothering is not the same as housekeeping and even though I do tend to end up doing most of the housekeeping, at the same time as mothering, that does not mean that housekeeping guilt should be added to motherguilt.  And if I have any motherguilt, it can get lost right now, because I have a happy well-fed child who is peacefully sleeping right now and my teeth will forgive me this one time so I am going to indulge in this chocolate, right here and right now, as a celebration of me and my job today well done.  So there!”

And thus was more chocolate consumed. Delicious!

Categories: Homemaking and housework, Mothering vs housekeeping, The self that happens also to be a mother

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Do you have tales to tell as a mother? Don’t die with them still in you.

Written by on February 3, 2011

My daughter’s asleep – YES!!  A late nap – but better that than none at all.  Overtiredness yesterday meant that she was still fighting sleep at 9pm – but we survived…  My daughter’s asleep!  Oh shit – free time – what do I do ?  – No, don’t say shit, you know she copies every word you say these days.  And what did she say this morning?  That’s right, you said you would stop swearing because of that.  OK shut up self: time to get to work.  Free time = spend it on something worthwhile.

Saucepans calling.  Slump in energy.  Saucepans can wait.  She can “help” me wash up the saucepans later, when she gets up.  That age where they can “help” you – such a relief, in a way, even though the mess is multiplied over by their dear and sheer toddly helpfulness.  Ohhhhh – sleep deficit.  Thank God I managed to get up this time instead of falling asleep curled up next to that soft little downy bean of a thing, squandering that rare, precious, peaceful time by taking a nap of my own, when really, I could just go to bed earlier tonight…  Oh but how soft and how downy!  Oh for that milky breath breathed into my sleepy face from that little half-open sleeping-baby mouth she still has!  What would I give right now for a nap with her?  Is it worth losing this writing time?  My eyelids droop, but I’m on top of it.  I may only have 20 minutes.  Cuddle her tonight.  Yes, I want to write today.

Being at home to write, and in a rental, I have no say over the unwittingly reckless behaviour of the man who is outside mowing the lawn.  I just pray he doesn’t hit my zucchinis, which have sprawled their way across the paths and lawn areas with cucurbit abandon.  I hope he doesn’t spray my beans, or whack my tomatoes with his deadly brushcutter.  But most of all I hope his bloody noise doesn’t wake my daughter.  Oops, there I go swearing again.  I know she’ll pick it up if I don’t stop, and although I don’t care much if it’s not ladylike for me to say the odd cuss word, I’d rather that she picks it up one day from peers, not from me.  ;)

What do I do with my writing today?  Better kick off this blog once and for all.  It’s only taken thirteen months.  Bought this domain on the first of 2010, and it’s into February 2011 already.  Did you see that?  I just measured time in months for you.  That’s because I have a baby (well, a toddler, but she’s still my baby really), and everyone seems to measure babies in months.  Couldn’t decide what this blog was going to be for, that was the problem for a long time.  Personal?  Non-personal?  Informative?  Philosophical?  Who’s the audience? – blow all of that.  For it’s here and now decided: this is my space, an open motherhood diary of sorts – and although I won’t be telling my deepest secrets, I will be being myself.

I find that these days, since becoming a mother, I have much less patience for social niceties.  It’s the sheer scarcity of time that has stunned me to the bone.  What’s the point of being pompous?  What’s the point of being proper?  What’s the point of groping for the right euphemism, when your child is groping at your shirt and attempting to help themselves to a breastfeed while you’re trying to capture an elusive phrase?  And I don’t care anymore either about talking about the grubbier facts of life, the things which aren’t clean and sanitised – neither does my daughter.  That’s why she pooed on the floor the other day saying, “Poo!  Poo!” and that’s why I cleaned it up without batting an eyelid – because it’s not the first time and it won’t be the last.  Weaning from nappies – that’s guaranteed to have you never looking at carpet the same way again.

Writing is, for me, a reflection of my need for truth and for honesty.  That doesn’t mean being uncouth or self-pityingly wallowing in the poo of life; it means acceptance of and refusing to be afraid of the way that things are.  We as modern mothers tend to hold back so much of our true heart from each other, and miss out on so many opportunities for connection.  And in this culture where we aren’t automatically born into and grown into a community, we have to forge our own networks out of the stone which is our oft-chilly social environment.  For the good of not just mothers and children but for fathers too, and for childless people and the elderly and everyone else who doesn’t fit into the above categories, we as a society need to claim back the spirit and actions of real community at a local level.  Australian mothers have recently been given by the government, 18 weeks paid leave after their baby is born.  What?!  18 weeks?  Just enough time to fall in love with your baby and realise that you don’t want to put them into fulltime childcare and trot back off to fulltime work – if at all.  Obviously Australia’s government is way behind many other developed countries in this regard – and granted, 18 weeks is a start – but it’s clear to so many Australian mothers today (and mothers all over the developed world) that our community and support networks will have to be self-generated.  Rather than be victims of unfulfilling policies from on high, we have to make our way and  generate change – and one of the first steps to making our own way is acknowledging and talking together and being real with each other.  We need to be open and real with each other before we can move together as a group of people who can require policies or society to change.

Maybe, in part, this blog is one of my little contributions towards that goal; of saying aloud some of those things which we as mothers are accustomed and cultured into keeping to ourselves, in the hopes that anyone reading will be encouraged to do the same, with other mothers.  I believe that mothers need to take back what they need to mother effectively and they need to take back what they need to be whole and joyful beings in their own right.

A huge part of mothering sanely and effectively, for me, is knowing that I am not alone.  I existed throughout an entire pregnancy without meeting or befriending a single other pregnant woman.  I looked longingly after pregnant women as I watched them walk out of the post office or library, having stood next to them and not been able to pluck up and talk to them.  I went to no groups (because I had preconceptions that I would not be accepted) and I made no attempt to go places where I would stand a good chance of meeting pregnant women or mothers.  I continued attempting to mother my child for six months alone (with a partner, but no network) without realising that a large part of my isolation and loneliness was a consequence of my own inaction.  So I made a conscious effort to change that, and am now, more than a year on, delighted daily by the friendships I have made as a result.  I’m letting go of the embarrassment of others looking at me funny.  It’s worth it for the one person who doesn’t look at me funny – the one person who actually looks at me and sees me and I see them and that’s the beginning of a friendship and then you get to follow that up and that’s beautiful.

A bid for connection is always worth making, and if you get knocked back, then just try again in a different way, or try again with someone else.  Wiping bums day in day out is no small task – it’s relentlessly repetitive, and without company and connection with others who are walking the same path it can make us feel a little insane.  Don’t let yourself be isolated – it’s too hard on you.

When you’re a mother who is more home than at work (I say that because so many mothers these days combine the two in endless variations, but many mothers I know choose to spend the bulk of their time with their children):

time

slows

down.

Yet… there’s also less of it – less time to do the things you have to do, and the things you want to do.

The urgency I feel to write now, write in the 20 minutes, 30, forty if I’m lucky and she sleeps that long comes from the same root as the urgency which compelled me to change so many of the ways I live my life since I had a baby.

Why, I could have gone on my whole life – rambling out into the unknown, wasting so many of the minutes given me for this life, just dallying by the roadside at the scraggy roadside berrybushes and eating the meagre pickings alone, when the bushes with the big juicy fruits and all of the wonderful people I was supposed to meet (including my baby) were on an unmarked path – a path that leads off the road.

Motherhood takes you off the road.  If you don’t outsource your childcare – if you stay with your kids when they’re little – you have no choice but to get off the road.  You get run over otherwise, and besides, all the best singing is going on down that unmarked path, the lullabies and the “bear hunt songs” and the wonderful songs that my child makes up and sings to herself while I’m doing the dishes; and the songs that mothers sing to each other with their stories and their toilet training tips and their traumas and their joys and their excitements of first steps and words and the self-realisation that comes over you when you birth and practise the art of being present with children and with yourself – that path is where the music is and that’s where my family’s life is and it’s where the berries are, and I don’t know about you, but my feet are irresistibly drawn that way.

“Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes

This quote has a special meaning for me, not directly about music (well, music is another story).  I’ve been writing ever since I can remember – stories, poems, articles and little rants and private prose – yet never since having my baby have I been so capable of producing words on a page on demand.  The whole, QUICK! she’s asleep! grab the laptop NOW! thing (I barely ever write longhand these days – although I prefer it for many things, I simply can’t get the words out fast enough in the scant amount of time) is a result of being jolted into reality; jolted me awake to the shortness of life, the shortness of my life.  With every word, every new skill my daughter acquires, I’m aware of a moment, a day, a period of my life gone, which I won’t get to relive.  One day all things being equal my daughter will outlive me.  If I write NOW, I’ll have something to leave her, and I will have created that which I needed to create for my own purposes and my own creative compulsions.  If I wait until she’s gone, I’ll never write.

30 minutes up now.  She’s still asleep.  But now the urgency of my bladder is getting louder than the urgency of my writing – and see, I wasn’t even afraid to write that!

Do you have tales to tell, as a mother?  Tell them, writer or not.  Tell them to a new friend – jump the barrier of politeness that some friendships remain hindered by for months or years.  Tell your stories.  Someone may benefit, someone else or maybe just you; but don’t be shy.  Don’t hold it in.  Create with your words, with your friendships, with your life.  Inside you, it may just be fog.  But outside of you, it’s music.

Categories: Art and motherhood, Connection with other mothers, Friendship, Isolation as a mother, Nap times, Writing

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Written by on June 24, 2010

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Categories: Writing

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