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July 19, 2004
Monday, 19th July, 2004
It’s Pixie’s first full day at kinder today. Since starting in February she has only done half days from 9 to 12.30. Today she had to pack her lunch and she’s staying until 3pm. It was so cute to pack her lunch. The Steiner schools are very environmentally conscious and have a ‘no-plastic’ policy, so I had to wrap Pixie’s sandwiches in a linen napkin and she carried her lunch in a little cane basket. She looked like Little Red Riding Hood, with that little basket in her hands. You’ve gotta love the Waldorf schools, they have the guts to dictate to us what we can put in our children’s lunches: health foods only, no lollies or chips are allowed on the school grounds. In Pixie’s little basket she has a wholemeal vegemite sandwich, some snowpeas, carrot sticks and dried apricots. It is such a relief to me that they have a health-food policy. I would hate it if my kid had to watch other children eating lollies or chips at school; what if she decided she should eat crap for lunch too? !!
And so this morning I did the kinder run, for the first time since Scarlet was born. Maybe I’m just a totally incompetent, over-protective mother, but I found the whole experience shattering. It was 8.30 am, a freezing cold wind was blowing, I had to rug Scarlet up, then load Pixie in the car, then Scarlet, then Pixie’s bags and coat, then Scarlet’s sling, my coat, my bag. Then I had to drive through peak-hour traffic to Pixie’ school, which is unfortunately 20 kms away. I had at least TWO minor altercations with other devil-may-care drivers who were doing STUPID things in the busy traffic and almost drove us off the road. Didn’t they know I had a precious, precious, PRECIOUS baby on board?!! Bloody idiots! Then when we arrived at school, 10 minutes late because I couldn’t bare to drive more than 50kph, I had to bundle Pixie out, put her coat and hat on, and put her backpack over her shoulders. Then I had to put the sling on, put my coat on, get Scarlet out of her car seat, put her in the sling, put her hat on, wrap my coat around her, grab my bag, lock the car, and walk Pixie to the Kindergarten. By the time I’d signed her in, chatted to the teacher, walked back to the car, loaded Scarlet back in and drove home, the entire exercise had taken 1 hour and 15 minutes!!!
It was exhausting, it was cold, it was miserable for Scarlet, although she didn’t complain too much, and it was dangerous. Maybe I’m suffering from some kind of mothering-mental-disorder, but I DO NOT like taking little babies out into the world. I HATE bundling them into the car and I become completely paranoid when I’m driving. I am convinced that everyone on the road is a bloody idiot, and I trust no-one. I become abusive to tailgaters, am convinced everyone is going to drive out from side-streets without seeing us, don’t trust people to stop at red-lights, and I feel that the current speed-limit of 60 kms is WAY too high. Am I insane? Or does this traveling affliction affect other new mums as well? I feel like I’m traveling with the crown bloody jewels in the backseat and wish I could strap a neon sign on the top of the car that said, “Stay well clear, highly contagious lepers inside!”
Maybe I’m insanely over-protective, but I just want to keep Scarlet bundled up at home…for say, the next five years!!! Yes, I suffered from this same over-protective mothering disorder when Pixie was a baby too. I can’t help it, I just feel so incredibly vulnerable with a little babe-in-arms, and I am plagued by this deep-dark-hideously-ugly fear that something awful could happen to them. Sometimes at night, especially if I’m over-tired, when I lie in bed in the dark I can’t stop from imaging all the awful fates that could befall us. Yes, it’s horribly morbid, and I do my best to push it away, but it’s always there, just below the surface…the incredible fear of a mother…what if something were to happen to my baby! ARGH! And so I keep us cocooned at home, warm and snug and completely house-bound. But even then I don’t feel completely safe. Every bloody time a car goes hurtling down our street at break-neck speeds my heart skips a beat. In a split second I have imagined it hurtling through our front yard and crashing into the house, endangering my PRECIOUS family. The other night it was really windy and I imagined the huge gum tree in our backyard crashing onto the house and crushing my babies! Believe me, danger lurks everywhere when you’ve got a helpless new baby to protect!! Moments like these I want to strap both my girls to my chest and hide under the doona forever. Mothering really is a tough job…it’s like your heart has been ripped out from your chest, sliced in two, each half attached to the sleeve of each of your two little girls, where it clings gasping for rhythm, open, exposed, dripping blood on the pavement, waiting to fall off and get squashed into oblivion. Yes, I’ve got it bad!
Do you think it’s normal to feel this way? Perhaps it is an in-built mothering instinct to keep us home and safe while our babies are little and helpless? Or maybe I’m just certifiably insane and need some heart-toughening drugs! Maybe someone should reach across the cyber-shores and slap me around a little bit! Argh! I cannot watch the news on television at all anymore…it’s far too sad and scary. I can’t watch a movie with ANY violence in it at all. Nor can I watch a movie with death in it. Nope, too hard. I can’t read sad stories in magazines, particularly if they involve parents and children. I just feel so bloody vulnerable!! Like an open wound! If anything were to happen to my children I would die. It’s that simple. And suddenly…danger lurks everywhere! This is the price we pay for loving too much…knowing that suddenly we are dependent on ANOTHER thing to keep living…not only air, water, food, the beating of our hearts, but suddenly we find our very lives depend upon the health and safety of our babies!!!!! And their health and safety depends entirely on…US!!!! And that’s okay for them, because they think we are GODS, but we know all too well how frail and fallible and all-too-human we really are!! ARGH!
Hmm, well, now I’ve whipped myself into an existential frenzy I guess I should distract myself by talking about something really bloody mundane. But at times like this I realize how badly I need some spiritual faith. Try as I might, that little elixir still eludes me. I was raised by a skeptical agnostic mother, and as much as my intellect is satisfied with the very different spiritual worldview I now hold, it still hasn’t really seeped into my emotional heartland. How do you get faith when you weren’t raised with it? Deep inside there is still a little child who feels scared, afraid, powerless and vulnerable. And mothering just highlights that all over again. My birth experience was a classic case of ‘no faith’. I didn’t trust, and couldn’t let go. I was hell bent on trying to control the pain, and just ended up paralyzed by it. I am convinced it is a psycho-spiritual flaw that stops me from pushing those babies out, not physical in any other way than symptomatic. I won’t push those babies out because I’m not convinced it isn’t going to rip me in two!!! Argh! No faith! And now I am house-bound with my new little baby because I don’t feel safe and protected when we go out in the big bad world. Argh! No Faith! Yes, my mothering experiences lead me again and again and again to the feet of the Goddess, and yet I still cannot lay my head on her lap and let her mother ME! I need to believe I too, am being taken care of, and yet it is so hard to convince the agnostic child within (who absorbed this worldview while playing at her mother’s feet!) We mother’s have a lot to answer for. I can’t believe I’m still carrying around my mother’s baggage at the ripe old age of 36! It seems that what we learn at our mother’s skirt-tails may haunt us for a lifetime! Think about that…and it will drive you insane!!! ARGH!!!
Well, I think I’m just thinking too much today. I must go and DO something seriously mundane, like fold some nappies or iron Jay’s underwear (it would give me some perverse pleasure to see his face when he opens his undie drawer!), so I can keep my rattling mind AWAY FROM THE BIGGER PICTURE!!!! Ahhh, so THIS is how people become obsessive-compulsive about housework is it?
I must go, some seriously mundane busy-ness awaits me.
Eloise.
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