A mission for motherhood

#2 in the series of light-lift, unworkshopped, and unvarnished motherhood essays.

Being a mum is being perennially tired. Not ordinary sleep-in-this-weekend-and-do-a-lazy-brunch-to-recuperate kind of tired. But a sloppy I-can’t-remember-where-I-left-my-coffee-oh-wait,-fuck-did-i-brush-my-teeth-today!? kind of tired.

There is the most basic obstacle in the way of not being tired. You hardly sleep. You’re either nursing through the night, or comforting a teething infant, or helping her through a bout of the flu, or just discovering the mechanics for co-sleeping with a little human who gyrates on its access through the night, while also trying to be an upstanding and gainfully employed citizen of the world. Do this long enough and it apparently permanently robs you of the seemingly natural ability to sleep.

Then there is the main agenda item – keeping a little person alive and well, which is no small feat. At any given moment, it involves having at least 16 open tabs in the browser of one’s brain — which hasn’t been in sleep mode in several months. “Should I add a little salt in her egg today?” “Oh damn, she might stick that toy panda in her mouth and choke.” “The car seat insides have to be cleaned.” “Oh wait, how do I even remove the inside inserts of a car seat? <proceed to google the car seat wash care instructions>…” And on and on. I’ve never had a voice in my head, leave alone one that is as on and relentless as the mum-voice. Always planning, plotting, anticipating, troubleshooting, questioning, experimenting, flagging, filing for later, rinse and repeat. It’s a voice I can’t ignore, because caring for a baby feels big, and real, important, and urgent. Always on the most pressing corner of that Eisenhower Matrix. I can try to catch a break, or read a book, or go for a swim, but these activities only become the 17, 18^th and 19^th tabs in my already overburdened and increasingly slower and creakier browser.

There is also the second order challenge of trying to actually do anything with a little person – who as it turns out is a conscious, free agent, with many machinations. And a mind mercurial enough to execute them simultaneously. One moment I believe I’m putting my baby down into her high-chair; the next, I discover that she has deftly flicked my glasses with her left hand and tossed them over her shoulder, all the while sneakily snacking on a paper napkin with her right! What took me 30 seconds to do as an adult individual takes me 30 minutes to finish as a mother, trying to keep up with my child – alternating between cajoling, convincing, and coercing.

Finally, there is the unending Millennial Parenting Curriculum brought to you by the internet, every parenting influencer, and the unbelievable proliferation of pop-psychology. There is an appropriate video or reel or blog for every fork in the road you might ever encounter. Your baby just gave up on eating solids? A toddler-weaning influencer will tell you that feeding your baby on a bouncer was the problem. Your baby refuses to crawl? A physical therapist influencer will show you a quadruped activity to try with her. Your baby loves eating mud? Some other type of influencer will tell you how to communicate to your pre-verbal baby that mud is not for eating. You can’t say no too much, but you can’t say yes too much, you can’t criticize effort too much, but you can’t praise outcomes too much either, you can’t have too many boundaries but you can’t follow your child’s lead too much either... Almost everything you thought you could do as a parent from having been parented as a child is almost certainly not allowed anymore.

And if all this isn’t enough, there is some kind of universal and unspoken consensus against mums speaking their minds about - or even so much as suggesting ambivalence towards - the travails of mothering. As any memoirist of motherhood will tell you, that is the kind of unseemly free expression no mum comes back from, notwithstanding even their celebrity.

It’s all just a tad much to keep up with (and keep inside you) if you are a finite person.

So I have a mission for motherhood.

I don’t hope to succeed or to thrive. I just hope not to fail too catastrophically, and to come out alive. To be okay with being average, to suck a little more at some things but suck a little less at others. To be intentionally imperfect and to see that life does go on. To stay in the moment, in the hilarity, in the nonsense, in the mess, in the confusion, in the uncertainty, in the giggles, in the oxytocin hits, in the squeals, in the tossed food and the spilt coffees and the long baths and the slow diaper changes and the playful mimicking and the gurgling and the cooing and the yowling and the giggling and the everyday silliness of being with a kid who will be this person only once, only today, only now. And to write about all of this when I can.

Wish me luck — I’m so damned tired that I sometimes forget that this is my mission.