It’s raining gently outside and we are all sandwiched together in an overcrowded classroom on chairs of varying heights none of which are suited to their inhabitants, waiting for the performance to begin. Round face toddlers sit on the laps of their Mothers, absentmindedly drumming their feet on the ground, cautiously taking it all in. All of them that is except for my toddler who having sat quietly on the floor for 25 beautiful seconds and established that this is in fact what is required of him, is now bolting around the room eager to establish what is not.
I stand and walk calmly to retrieve him from the door handle that he’s now clinging to as if his life depended on it. Behind the door waits his brothers preschool class about to begin a riveting performance of ‘Scarves For Sale’ which from what I gather between screams of the toddler torpedo involves a band of monkeys taunting an innocent bystander with their erratic behavior, which if I’m being honest seems a little too on the nose. ‘Eeeeeeeeee’ shrieks the torpedo into an otherwise quietly waiting room as I peel his white knuckled fingers away from the handle. I make a joke to the watching crowd, bet they can’t wait for him to come next year I say. And everybody laughs dutifully, not because it’s especially funny but because they recognize that this is about to go very poorly for me and they want to lend a helping hand as best they can.
I am now at this point in my life, 2 for 2 on ‘spirited’ offspring. Every room in our home is fitted with a latch at a height only an adult can reach after our eldest son was bewitched by what we like to call the great rampage of 2019, in which he would mercilessly enter any room made available to him and upend its contents in the time it took one adult human to use the bathroom. Now his brother ready to take up the mantle has taken on somewhat of a ‘hold my beer’ mentality.
I’m 2 for 2 on children who during diaper changes scream like their life depends on it, contorting and thrashing their limbs around like an olympic wrestler trying to make gold. I beg you not to even get me started on the car seat, or a stroller, or a cart, or a highchair at the table. I am 2 for 2 on possessing the kind of children that causes strangers to stop in public places and offer unsolicited parenting advice whilst I try to stop them from licking the floor. 2 for 2 on children who when faced with a park full of suitably scaled toddler climbing material will instead head boldly towards the highest and most precarious piece of equipment and climb without ever even looking back over their shoulder.
The older one now passed the stage where his base instinct is to determine how quickly and efficiently he might place himself in grave and mortal danger has moved on to the no less stomach churning pursuits of surviving preschool playdates after two years of social deprivation. As he stands on the collective precipice of kindergarten, he appears overnight to have turned into a very small teenager with even worse impulse control and undulating emotions, all skulking walks and ‘YOU ARE MISUNDERSTANDING ME I FEEL COMPLIFISCATED’. Our last playdate ended with a blunt force trauma to the head by way of a lightsaber and me trying, yet failing, to take deep breaths behind the wheel of our car.
And all of this would be funnier I guess if I wasn’t so tired. If I wasn’t so close to the edge. If my nervous system wasn’t permanently (irrevocably?) fried from 5 years of constant heightened awareness and trying to do a good job. From trying to shepherd us all through the world by the skin of my teeth. I know it will be funny one day. The kinds of stories we scatter on the Sunday Dinner table, untouched by time and exhaustion they’ll take on new meaning. That determination will hopefully have got them somewhere that brings them and with it me, peace. But for now all of it would be funnier I guess if I hadn't staked my life meaning on doing a good job at this. If I’d had a better understanding of what doing a good job would actually look like.
My phone will ping when I pull us wearily into the driveway. The women whom I love, who watched me hug the crying preschooler who was overwhelmed by his performance as ‘monkey who takes red scarf’ whilst one handedly restraining the screaming toddler into his car seat will tell me that I’m doing a good job. Because they are the best kind of humans you can find, the ones who are on your side and can tell when you’re close to the edge. They’ll know I shouted earlier today and will again later. But still they’ll persist. But I’ll dream of them not having to send it. I’ll dream of being her, the effortless mother I thought I would be, with the effortless children. Because I thought doing a good job would look so different than it does, feel different at the very least. I thought it would feel certain. And stable. The antidote to everything I grew up with.
I cried when we found out we were expecting a second boy. Because gender is a construct and an identity one can only build for themself, a belief I hold deep within my bones, but sex, sex does seem to have some pretty real world toddler outcomes. And I just really, really wanted it to be different the second time and maybe a girl might have promised that. It wouldn’t of course. It’s my problem not theirs. I wanted the sense of control I thought would come with having arrived at what I had spent a lifetime imagining would be my calling. To finally find the purpose and ease I had spent my life in search of. But instead I got a lesson I guess I was apparently not done learning. That nobody wins at Motherhood, we’re all just surviving. Doing our best. Holding it together with duct tape and a pathological burden to love them.
Right there with you. And a baby on top 😅
Oh darling, you write this with such feeling. Just remember you are doing an amazing job. You are everything you should be. Everything you were meant to be. You are exactly what those boys need.