-image via Google
I am staring at a crack on the wall that looks like the outline of a country that has never existed. My mind wonders about its people, the colour of their skin, the climate that inevitably composed the colour of the skin of the people, as if a melodic orchestra was responsible for the kind of lives these people would face, a Pied Piper that controlled their lives, their fate, tumultuous or priviledged.
My baby taps me gently on my knee, pulling me away from the incoherent chatter of the millions of imaginary people on the phantasmal country on the wall. She wants to lie down on the mattress. She wants me to lie down with her. She wants to have her nap. This I decipher from the tiny expressions on her face, the subtle movements in her pudgy hands, the groans and sighs that come out of her mouth, the signals of which I have learnt, and have learnt to learn, because she is non-verbal at three-years-old, to differentiate one request from another. She wants to lie down on the mattress. Okay. She wants me to lie down with her. Okay. She wants to have her nap. Mama's coming.
I put her on the mattress after wrestling with the bedsheet that kept threatening to pop up, and I lie down next to her. While she’s nursing, my mind wonders if I should stop nursing her. It reminds me that it didn’t quite work out the last time I attempted to make her stop. Crying. Lots and lots of crying. It was a loud, unhappy cry, yielding to her emotional frustration, irritation, disappointment at being duped by her own mother. I thought you’d be here forever, it had said. You said you’d be here forever. And then of course, I cried at having deceived her. Of breaking a promise I never made in the first place.
This second child of mine has taught me that each child is different. She has taught me that it is okay that each child is different. As her mother, I am learning from her, her cries, her cues, her decisions, her choices. I am learning that I too can make choices, for them, and for me.
I try to breathe. I sometimes forget to breathe. I sometimes forget to breathe that I gasp for air as if I was drowning in the fierce sea waters and then realise that I wasn’t actually dying. No need for arms flailing, no need for pushing my face up to the surface. The air is here. Welcome it. You are safe.
My mind wonders again, to her sister this time, lying down now next to us on her stomach, feet dancing in the air. She’s reading the book I bought her at the second-hand shop. $0.50 for an Enid Blyton classic. Bargain.
I wonder if her imagination has brought her up the Faraway tree yet. I wonder if she’s met the Saucepan Man yet. I wonder if she is enjoying the book yet.
I pull myself back like the red string tied to a child often lost in fairytales. I tug at it, it tugs back, a signal for my brain to translate as safety.
I have been trying to be more present. It hasn’t been for entirely unselfish reasons as a mother. I’m writing, I need to write, and I keep reading, over and over, across pages on guidebooks, on free online writing courses, in books by people who’ve done it before, who’ve been there, who’ve done their writings and who’ve been satisfied by them. They all say the same thing:
Be present.
And so, every few minutes, whenever I find my mind starting to wander and wonder, I pull it back. I feel, I smell, I hear, I taste, I see. I breathe.
I found I liked being present as much as I could be, because I have two daughters who are growing every day. I dream that I’ll have the power someday to reverse time, or to stop time, and that when we finally have a life to live, instead of waking up just to survive, I could still have these pudgy hands to hold, see those dancing legs balancing in the air, I want to lie down on the mattress, I want to lie down on the mattress with you. I have deprived my daughters of childhoods, robbed them of innocent playtime, good food to eat, good food to waste, for all these years. I blame myself for the decisions I made that have brought them here. In forgiveness, I ask them to be given their lives back
They say the minutes go slow but the years go fast when referring to how children seemingly grow. I am telling you now, that that phrase is patriarchal pressure to make us mothers feel even more guilty than we already feel, for not spending time enough with our children, or as in my case, for not being attentive enough when we are spending time with our children. They forget about all the other things mothers need to organise in their heads, the schedules to rearrange, the lists, oh my god so many lists! and they forget that we are humans too, who also sometimes sees a crack on the wall and imagines an entire civilisation living on it.
It’s never enough.
As I sit back down at my desk, my daughters now weaving their limbs into each other on the bed, having a nap, I realise that no mother will ever be present enough, no mother will ever be enough, so much so that they are overfilled with attempts to be enough that they are just right, just enough, after all.
I may have a better ending for this rambling later, but since I am a little under the weather, and because I am a mother with schedules to rearrange and lists to write, to tick and untick, and because I am a mother wanting to be more present, this shall be enough for now.
The people living in the country that doesn’t exist in front of me, agree.
I feel your pain every time I read your letters Lisha, the pain of thinking we’ve ‘done it all wrong’ when we can only do it the way that comes naturally and it’s good enough, more than good enough, it’s perfect! The pain and guilt of trying and failing to wean hungry mouth from breast, two and a half years with my son, two and a half years of broken sleep, of him sapping me of every ounce of strength I had… it was long but I survived and so did he when I could not continue… despite the guilt and the tears and the screaming!
We can only ever do our best lovely and it’s always enough because we are their mothers… xxx
Beautiful! There are so many places we chase "enough." But in parenting, it's particularly poignant. Can we ever give our children "enough" love and attention? My two boys are 32 and 30. I still have a longing in my heart to know that they feel my love for them--and that my love, and my ability to communicate it to them, is truly "enough."