The Cerebral Mum

I think Caspar must be having a growth spurt. It’s only 1:14pm and he’s already gone done for his second nap. In spite of it looking like her would be done to just one nap a day soon, it’s now gone back up to 3. Or perhaps I’m just not as “present” for him and he’s bored and having no fun. I don’t think that’s it though. I think that really would be a self-pitying, un-motherlike thought.

Well, maybe not un-motherlike. Mothers worry. Mothers try to do what’s best and there is never a real answer to that. I think we’re fine, though. I know I don’t have the energy and zest that I would like, and if that was going to be some lifetime thing I think that would upset me. But I don’t think that it is a lifetime thing. I don’t I am scarring him for life because I am sad right now. And I do my best to keep our days busy for him. Or busy enough. I still enjoy him. He still makes my heart light up. Right now, the light is a little dim, but it is a light nonetheless. So it’s okay.

He probably has become a little more demanding than usual in the last few days, which is evidence that he is very aware that I am not as focussed as usual, but he is such an easy, placid boy that it is not unbearable. It is not making me feel more stressed or pressured or overwhelmed. It is not making me feel like a failure. And that’s good.

Really, it’s just a reminder when I drift into my head to snap out of it, to be in the day as best I can. Knowing that there are many mothers out there suffering depression whose depression is tied up with their young children, I think that I am fortunate that mine is not. At some stage, I guess, I will have to consider how becoming a mother has effected me, my psyche, because I need to question everything I think I know. My thinking has become rigid. I think I have less capacity for empathy at the moment. I think I have become judgemental.

But when I do examine it, although I think I will still feel as i do now, that our relationship is an easy one, that he is a wonderful human being, and that I am a good mother for him. That I have the resources to make good choices, that I have the capacity to love him as needs to be loved. That it is easy to love him. I do not have the same expectations of perfection for my child or for me as a mother that I seem to have for myself alone, or for other people. Those expectations for “them” - that nebulous, imaginary “them” - need to go.

I think that when I speak about the world and social issues I am careful with my words. I don’t make accusations or use ad hominums to bolster my opinion. But I think that somewhere in me there is some sense of self-righteousness that takes away the good part of doing that.

And now it is 1:42pm. And he’s is crying to get up. Just a little nap. So off I go to be in his day.

One thing that you will not see me writing about here is the reason why Caspar is “fatherless”. This is not because I have any qualms about airing my laundry. You’ve probably noticed already that self-censorship is not one of my strong points. The reason I won’t discuss the details is out of respect for the privacy of others. Well, one other.

A while ago now I wrote about a scene I witnessed at the park; a father picking up his kids and the mother walking away alone. I do not have to go through that. While being a single parent and having a fatherless child would not have been my first choice, I was able to accept the way things were when I found out I was pregnant and when my expectations were confirmed. I was not overwhelmed by a sense of rejection and I did not feel daunted by the prospect of parenting alone. I never considered not doing it, regardless of the circumstances, and my anticipation of Caspar’s birth was an unadulterated joy.

I know many women in more ideal situations (on the surface, at least) are not as lucky as I was in that respect. Possibly, I was just another example of a fool rushing in where angels fear to tread. I am often an example of that. In fact, you could carve it on my headstone. But I digress…

I believe (and read that as, I think, considering all the knowledge I currently have at hand which is subject to change, and very aware that I am generalising) that the nature of fatherhood is fundamentally different from motherhood. Not qualitatively different, but different nonetheless.

Motherhood is physical from the outset. There is physical relationship with your child before they are even born, for better or worse. For a father, things are not so concrete. For a father, the path toward parenthood begins theoretically. I have known men who were highly involved in the pregnancy, who were fascinated by every change, who attended every appointment. I have also known men who were completely disconnected from the process, focussing solely on the logistics (dealing with the physical world), until they physically held their child in their arms. I have even known men who did not feel really attached until their child was older and capable of more sophisticated interactions with them. All of these types of men have an equal capacity to be great fathers. It’s just that fatherhood can sometimes be a slow burn.

There is some science to back this up. A man’s hormonal responses* - his production of prolactin and cortisol which assist with bonding - are dependent to a certain extent on proximity, both during the pregnancy and once his child is born. With work often taking men away from home for long periods of time, it is not surprising that, for some, the connection comes more slowly.

Motherhood is an amazingly powerful thing. It is immediate, it is a fait accompli. It has physical presence and if by some awful twist of fate there is a disconnection, a woman has a long, hard road to travel. Society does not allow a woman time for her motherhood to be a journey. But for men… There is something so very beautiful in watching a man evolve into a father, seeing him mentally shift from his theoretical role as protector and provider and start taking pleasure in the scent of his child’s hair. There is something beautiful in watching a man fall in love.

Fatherhood is also an amazingly powerful thing.

When Caspar arrived, I really wanted his father to meet him, newborn, and breathe in his scent. I did not want this in order to change the way things were (biology has its limitations) but there would have been something symbolic in that physical act of holding him, even for just that one moment, before returning him to me. I would have liked to have been able to tell Caspar that his father fell in love with him and entrusted him to my care.

His father lives with Caspar’s existence only theoretically and I ache for him. I think that the idea of your child is perhaps a harder burden to bear than the reality of him when you cannot be there, or have chosen not to be there. Especially for a man. Without having experienced that physical presence, Caspar’s father has nothing to hold on to. He is left only with his theoretical role as protector and provider, a role he will never play. Knowing him, I imagine this is difficult. I imagine that he sometimes feels torn between his choices and his sense of moral obligation. I imagine that he will have a long, hard road to travel in order to resolve this conflict within himself. I imagine that one day, when he evolves from a man into a father, he will feel that connection for the first time and there will be a sense of loss alongside his joy.

Perhaps if he had held his son, he would have had something concrete to sustain him. There would have been action on his part; entrusting him to me would have been a physical act. Symbolism and psychology and physiology are not so very separate. I would have liked him to have the memory of Caspar’s newborn scent to carry with him on that road.

*Thank you to The Anterior Commissure for this link.

Yes. He’s turning one. It’s wonderful. And it’s too fast.

A party date is set. The 21st. I’ve let people know but it’s time to get those invitations out. I ditched my picnic idea - it is too inconvenient to get us to a location convenient for everyone else. If only a few people come, well, that’s a bit depressing but it is the way things are until we move.

So a yard and a barbeque and a birthday cake. Home made, of course. And no balloons. Caspar is terrified of balloons. It is the first thing he has ever really been afraid of. He cries and clings and buries his head on my shoulder briefly before turning back to make sure that round and colourful air monster isn’t coming for him.

So definitely no balloons.

I bought some invitations yesterday and some 90 cent crayons as his present. Today I’m off to get some nice paper to print off as Wishes to send along with the invitations so that everyone who can’t make it can fill them out and send a birthday message for him. I’m hoping that I will also find a secondhand, Caspar-height table for him to sit and scribble at and I will get some colouring paper. After that, and the beer and the meat, all the preparations are done. It’s not the best party I have ever planned (And a generic invitation pad? Who does that?) but it will do.

So now I just have to deal with the fact that this first year almost over. Just the other day when I dressed him, I thought I’d try on one of the oversized polo shirts that my Mum had bought for him in July. Contrary to my expectation, it fit perfectly. It almost made me cry. Some of the welling tears were of pride. (Pride that he is growing? Does that count as an achievement? Well, yes. When you’re a mother.) The rest of the tears were for being forced to acknowledge that there is not a lot of baby left in him.

I remember when he was a baby and I went to the the supermarket and placed him in the infant seat as I usually did. Looking at him there and trying to do the straps up, I realised he was far too big to be in the infant seat any more and was ready for a real trolley. But I felt so silly for not realising this that I left him there and did my shopping with some chagrin. And it was just the other day that I realised I no longer have to carry him from the car to the house and then go back for my shopping bags.

He can walk, stoopid!

I can carry my bags and he can hold my finger and we can walk into the house together. Change just happens in the blink of an eye. Sometimes it takes me a while to catch up.

So on his first birthday he will wear his big clothes, feed himself cake, put his hands on his head, clap, dance, say dah-gah, play catch, lead everyone else around by the hand and tear the paper off his presents himself. As he should.

It freaks me out and bring tears to my eyes.

And that is how it should be as well.

Before I write this post I would like to state for the record that I think motherhood is easy or, at least, the first year is anyway. So far it has been just as I expected and all those women who annoyed me while I was pregnant with tales of how I wouldn’t find time to bake muffins or sleep for the next 20 years (among other ridiculous claims) and who, when I disagreed with them, shook their heads and sighed at me as though I was delusional have been proven wrong.

I state this because although motherhood is work, the negatives get focussed on to such an extant that new mothers are virtually encouraged to be overwhelmed by the whole experience before they’re even out of the gate.

But those thoughts are worth an entire post in themselves.

Although being a mum is easy (the love you feel really does wash everything else away) there is one thing going on right now that is getting to me. And any and all advice is welcome.

Caspar has started to hit and scratch me. A lot.

This behaviour isn’t unexpected but I wasn’t expecting it quite so early and I haven’t got a handle on how to deal with it when he is only (almost) one. It’s not like I can explain what he’s done wrong and send him on a time out: He’s far too little to understand “consequences”.

The only tool I have in my arsenal is to firmly say, No!, with my serious face on which works very well when he’s touching things that he’s not allowed to touch but isn’t so effective when he’s having the 1 year old’s equivalent of a tantrum. Trying to work out what is causing the behaviour seems to be the most important thing and I do have some answers.

Teething makes him stroppy but can’t be blamed entirely. It all boils down to boredom and frustration, which is understandable as his mind races far in advance of what his limbs and hands can do but it still makes me feel a bit shite for not having taken him out anywhere at all this week. At his age there is a limit to the things I can do to amuse him at home.

Apart from making a concerted effort to find new games to play to reduce his boredom and frustration (and reminding myself not to take it personally), is there any way to handle the scratching and hitting now that will help when his assertiveness really kicks in?

(I would also like to state for the record that I remain firmly convinced of Caspar’s perfection and see this behaviour as just another sign of his brilliance and strength of character.)

30 poems in 30 days. A simple enough task. It is now Day 22 and I have written only 10 poems for the project. I have never been very good at finishing things. I am a great procrastinator. Take for example my novel and this painful confession:

I began it in 1994.

Even allowing for 3 computer disasters (which left me computerless for roughly 5 of those 13 years), a lost manuscript (recovered after 7 torturous months) and a ritual burning of about 200 pages (somewhere around the turn of the century), it is a fairly unimpressive effort. At the moment I could not even tell you what state it is in. I hadn’t finished word processing the copious notebooks and scrap paper I filled with my insane scrawls during the penultimate computer crash before the last one occurred.

And then I got pregnant.

I worked my butt off during my pregnancy to save as much money as I could before entering the realm of single motherhood and have not touched my novel since. And I won’t. Work will not begin again until Cas and I have moved back into the city and I am no longer in the in-between. My rough estimate is that about 60% of it is written but it will require some major structural editing as I have been writing it disjointedly for years.

When it does get published, we’ll just avoid mentioning the year 1994 to the critics. Marcel Proust I am not.

But back to that original thought I haven’t yet finished. I am 12 poems behind with only 8 days left. Even excusing myself for the days I was hanging over the toilet bowl as though I were in my first trimester, that too is a fairly unimpressive effort. I’m not being hard on myself. It’s just a fact.

So do I try and catch up? Do I give up? Do I let it go and finish each assignment at my leisure?

I would like to finish the 30 poems in the allotted time; because I chose to participate; because it is hard; because leaving everything to the last minute, until it seems everything is about to implode, is no longer a habit that works for me.

I am a mother.

I used to thrive under pressure; write papers which earned High Distinctions on the night before they were due, work 17 hour shifts on two hours sleep and then go back for more, frantically fill page after page until I was dizzy from the pace of it and I could no longer see. It’s not that I don’t have the stamina any more: I never had it. It’s because I don’t have the drug.

Adrenaline.

I was an adrenaline junkie. Life just pushed so hard that there was never a chance to be tired, and if it didn’t push me hard enough, I made it. I ran on my second wind for years and I loved it. Motherhood has its own hormonal highs but it is nothing like that rush of blood to the head. Motherhood is not strenuous. It is neither a sprint or a marathon. Motherhood is a slow shift.

I was about to launch into a long paragraph about how working in hospitality is like being a rock star but that would be another digression. Let’s just say that it is driving, physical work and it has it’s own momentum. It generates energy and you feed off it. You get caned all night then you clean up and hang out, drinking and smoking and seeing who can tell the most scurrilous stories about the guests.

But the slow shifts - the ones where you’ve polished every bottle, restocked every fridge and wiped every surface twice - those shifts are the killers. Your body isn’t pumping sugars to your brain and you have time to think. Usually, I would think about all the other things I could be doing if I wasn’t trapped in that bar or restaurant, standing at attention like a palace guard. I would be annoyed by the lack of customers, and then annoyed when a customer interrupted whatever boondoggly task I’d found to do.

Babies aren’t very demanding. Their needs are simple, they sleep a lot, their movements are limited and they are easily amused. But in that first year we have to stand at attention constantly and all the things that used to get done in large blocks of time have to get done in pieces. We cannot let the house go to wrack and ruin while we play at whatever is more interesting and then tidy it in a frenzy all in one day. We can’t immerse ourselves in a book and read it cover to cover. Babies’ needs are too constant and not constant enough. There is too little to do but you aren’t free to go and do something else.

This manic insomniac who burnt the candle at both ends until she crashed and and then lit the next one with glee needs to find new ways to get things done. There is not enough pressure but there is no valve to release what is there if it builds up. You can’t put babies on hold. You can’t call in sick. You can’t take a mental health day. You can’t just say, Stuff it - I’m going to the beach.

So I will try and get my poems done but in all likelihood some won’t make it within the 30 days. I’m trying to realign the way my energy works with the requirements of my new life (which I love!) but it is a trial and error process and I don’t have the answers yet.

I do know, however, that it hasn’t done me in!

One of the things that I’ve learned about being a mother is how incomprehensible time is. While I was pregnant, the possibilities of Cas’ whole life were running through my mind. I never thought about having a baby, I thought about having a person, and suddenly things like life insurance and a will and a college fund became things I had to consider. Now.

I was very aware of him throughout what was a wonderful pregnancy, a pregnancy during which I felt more comfortable in my skin than I ever had in my whole life, during which I felt more beautiful than I had in my whole life (except for that last week once I had stopped work, and the week after that when it didn’t look like he had much motivation to enter the world), during which I felt so connected to every breath, every heartbeat and every mood of the child growing inside me. But in spite of my awareness it was still a surprise to meet him. I was surprised by the separateness.

I don’t mean that I felt disconnected, or felt less of a bond, but I didn’t realise how immediately he would be a person, that he didn’t need to grow into one. He came into this world an individual, limited by his inability to hold his head up, or speak, or feed himself, but an individual nonetheless. He came into the world distinctly himself, no longer a part of me, and I found myself waiting eagerly for him to grasp that first toy, to see that first smile, to hear that first babble, I found myself waiting for his individuality to be translated into the movements and the language I could understand, wanting to learn more about him, to learn more about us. I felt privileged not see him become, but to see him be.

With motherhood time becomes both too fast and too slow. This is a cliche, I guess, but it was something I could conceptualise yet did not know. With every new skill, new expression, new sound, I wanted the next, and the next and the next, but as all these things started piling up, I realised how quickly time passes. It is odd to be so impatient when the world is spinning too quickly. It is odd to want time to stop at the same as I want all my tomorrows.

I long for my baby and my boy and my man in equal measure.

And the possessive pronoun in that sentence makes no sense to me. He is so far from being mine, this individual whom I clothe and feed and bathe and lay down to sleep. Motherhood is both temporal and eternal. We get to watch our children unfolding day by day, yet, in those transcendent moments, we can see them complete.

I am a caretaker. Even as he clings to my legs for balance, I am a caretaker. Today when, for the first time, he walked the length of the room without a hand to hold or furniture to lean on and he came to me, all those future moments when he will be walking in the opposite direction were present.

I can’t wait to see him to walk out into the world, into his own life, but I am grateful that for we humans this takes so much longer than it does for a foal to first stand on its tentative, sticky, newborn legs. I am grateful that we get to hold onto the present and the future for so long, even though I know when that day comes, I will wish it had been longer.

Tonight I am struggling with what I want to say. It is too complex. So tonight you get to read this poem by Wallace Stevens. Forgive the tristesse. I am sad for someone. But it’s always darkest before dawn.

Another Weeping Woman

Pour the unhappiness out
from your too bitter heart,
Which grieving will not sweeten.

Poison grows in this dark.
It is in the water of tears
Its black blooms rise.

The magnificent cause of being,
The imagination, the one reality
In this imagined world

Leaves you
With him for whom no phantasy moves,
And you are pierced by a death.

^{WALLACE STEVENS}