The Cerebral Mum

If Caspar swings any more he will throw up so we are sitting in the middle of the playgound and Caspar is inspecting the bark. There is another mother here who makes no eye contact with me. She looks old to be the mother of the two girls playing, one nearing 5, the other 3. Her face is worn and her hair is dull. Her voice is strident. And constant.

She watches her girls with obvious love but constantly instructs them.

“Concentrate.” she says, but not in a way that means, “Be careful“.

“Now play on the see-saw.”

“I don’t care if you don’t want to.”

The girls are not having fun. From a distance it might appear so but up close the smiles are frozen and do not light their eyes. The older girl’s “Woo-hoo…” is an imitation of enjoyment and she harps at the magpies and her little sister, an echo of her mother.

It is unpleasant.

The girls’ father arrives. He and the woman say, “Hello,” with their bodies turned slightly away from each other. They sit down at the picnic table while girls continue to play. The father has one arm across his body, his chin on his hand. His other hand is drumming on the table. There are long silences between words.

The father gets up to go and fill a water bottle at the fountain and I see the mother lift her sunglasses and rub her eyes with her head lowered. I wonder if that grim face is her only restraint for tears.

I do not know, but I put Caspar in his stroller and we head home. I do not want to see this family leave in what I think would be opposite directions. I do not want to see this mother walk away alone.

And I am grateful that I am a single mum; not a separated mum, not a divorced mum but a single single mum. I am grateful that I do not have to say goodbye to my son over and over again, that I have never had to lose something and wait for time to ease the clenching of my jaw. I am grateful that none of my choices as a mother can be taken away from me, that I do not have to find it in me to make compromises which feel like sacrifices at a time when the whole world seems to be falling apart.

I’m grateful that I do not have to miss that thing I never had.

_{(cross-posted at www.blogher.com)}