May 24, 2002

• Space.
  ..the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Peace and Quiet. Its 8 hour mission, to allow a mother to rediscover who the hell she is...all on her own.

  
  

  Today is my day without my kid, a day that she goes to daycare, and I have ostensibly the whole day to myself.
  I need this day like a drowning man needs water, like a PMSing woman needs chocolate. I.need.it.
  I wonder often why it is, that while I totally enjoy my child and love the fact she is around - that by the time Friday comes I would cheerfully swap her for a trained budgie. I mean REALLY.
  By Friday, I am tired of having conversations that remind me of my druggie days. Sample:
  Me: "Mouse, would you like toast or yogurt?"
  Mouse: "Bob the Builder has a hat".
  Me: "That's cool. Toast or yoghurt".
  Mouse: "Um...Blue."
  Me: (fuck this shit).
  And note, it's not that she doesn't understand me, she just is directing the conversation in the way she wants it to go. Toast is boring, blue is not, apparently.
  So anyway. I adore having 8 hours to myself.
  
  Sometimes by Thursday night, after I've read, sung,tucked, re-tucked, sung, banished monsters and held sippy cups, I am fantasing about solitude while I am singing my current take on a lullabye standard. And it shows.
  "Rockabye babeee, please will you dream. Mummy is tired and about to fucking scream. If you go sleepies without a fuss, Mummy will not want to run under a bus." (try it, it scans quite well).

  
  

  All of which I suppose makes me either a supremely honest mother, or a bad one. I prefer to think the former.
  
  I doubt any mother, especially one that is into her kids and actually does things with them, doesn't feel like I do at least once a week. If you are actually trying to relate to your kid, and help them on the road to peoplehood, and assist their learning and ensuring that they are picking up social rules (such as not running around a restaurant at lunchtime like a tasmania devil) and trying to interact with them - hell, it's much more exhausting and wearisome than just plopping them in front of a video. At least that's what I tell myself.

  
  

  I am a better mother the other 6 days a week, for getting a break. And she seems to like me more on Saturdays then she does on Thursday nights, so I assume the feeling is mutual. For all I know, she is mentally fuguing when I am blathering away to her, thinking 'what the fuck do I care whether this is an apple or a persimmon? Will it matter when I am in a metal band and shagging groupies?'
  
  What I don't get though, is why admitting that you need a break from your child, is somehow considered to be a shameful secret. Are you supposed to be triptrapping thru the tulips 24/7 at the thought of yet another round of Let's Make Playdo Snakes'? Is it not completely understandable that you want some time to read a book without pictures, or write or think or loll about in bed like a dead pasha?
  
  I didn't lose everything I was, when I had a child. I didn't suddenly become a woman who was OKAY with not being able to take a leak without a pair of knee-high beady unblinking eyes watching. I didn't all of a sudden decide I LIKED being covered in various food detrius or feeling like a mama baboon with her baby on her for hours and hours.
  
  I still need some personal space. I still need some time to remember that while yes, this is the most important thing I've ever done - it doesn't mean that I can change into a whole 'nother person just because the baby books and the stepford mummies say I should.
  
  No one can keep their cool for the umpteenth time in a row that juice is being spilled deliberately. Sure it may be 'boundary testing' and it may be a necessary part of child development and blahblahblahexperts, but I can tell you - by the third time, it just appears willful and naughty to me - and I am gonna shout. Loudly. And if this is happening for the 1000th time and it's Thursday night - I will start mentally composing 'For Sale Cheap: One Toddler' ads.
  
  No one can be THAT interested in child stuff all the time. It's boring. It's boring to help with jigsaw puzzles that you can do in 2 seconds but have to draw out to 15 minutes. It's boring to read about Daisy the Duck when you have the new Anne Tyler stashed in your bedside table. it's boring to ooh and ah over scribble that may or may not be a flower. And it's hard to be enthusiasic and interested and passionate all the time.
  
  So there. I said it.
  
  And in two hours, my kid is going to come home waving a scribbled creation from preschool, full of her day and who hit who, and I am going to love every minute of it. Because I am back to being me, and she is back to being her, and we look at each other with fresh new eyes. She'll give me a heartfelt hug and follow me round the kitchen, and I'll be interested in her day, because I wasn't the one orchestrating it. I'll be interested in her conversation, because there's been 8 hours of silence before it - and the silence became deafening. I missed her. She missed me.
  
  And if it takes one day a week for us to regroup and gather our collective forces for the week's journey ahead - then that can only be a good thing. I love my kid, and she loves me. But we are separate people and we always will be. And knowing this, makes me a good mother. Oh yes it does.
  

  • 2:34 am
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