Pit stops on the slow lane

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

“We are scheduling your presentation for the seminar on April 9th!”

“Can you offer another class on April 5th?”

“Meeting tomorrow evening at 7 pm to finalise the draft petition?”

“A quick clarification telephone call at 4 pm today?”

The requests come thick and fast. The asks are varied, but really all the same.

It’s like the world just goes on, notwithstanding this giant interruption in mine.

I try to keep up. To be needed here and there and there too, sometimes all at the same time — now that’s a good problem to have. No-one has forgotten me. I still exist. How tremendous that even the rest of the world can see that, despite my disappearance for the last year or so, when I retreated into the slow lane as I began mothering a baby.

So I say yes, I can do the April 9th seminar, of course I can offer another session on 5th April even though it’s a Saturday, I’d be happy to meet tomorrow at 7 pm - it’s best after bed time for me anyway, and it goes without saying, I can absolutely reassure yet another client at 4 pm today about their larger-than-life crisis even though it happens to be only one in a laundry list of my priorities at the moment.

From this lane, I look sideways at the rest of you. You all seem to whizz by me. Amid the lumbering buses honking at fuming trucks, irate cars manoeuvring into spaces that don’t exist, scooters and motorcyclists following suit, and the bikes and rickshaws claiming the sidewalks. You all seem to have your groove.

Life goes on.

And so must mine.

So I say yes.

If I say yes to it all, then it will have to be done, I think. The best way to get things done is to compel their doing by committing to others - the world at large - that they will be done.

This is pretty much how I’ve pulled off the biggest leaps in my life. My first big talk on the same stage as a seriously senior internationally renowned university professor. My first big case in the Supreme Court. My first competitive run. My first experience of labouring to birth a baby.

I said yes before my thinking brain and doing body could say no. And then forced my thinking brain to get on board with it, and hoped my doing body doesn’t mind it too much.

This time I even plan for a change of scenery. We drive out to the woods for the weekend, so I can catch a break. In the silence and the fresh air, maybe I can get some quiet reading and writing time to demolish the ever-growing to-do list.

We get our toddler in the car-seat. We set up little bits and bobs of safe and fun entertainment for her. A little sticky fidget spinner on the window next to her. A silicone toy ball hanging from a silicone rope above her car-seat that she gazes at, in a trance. A little finger puppet cow. A small red wooden scooter. She settles in easily, and even naps for a bit. But she isn’t so well. Her digestive and respiratory systems are both up in arms against her. She is fussy, sleeps poorly, demands to breast-feed mid-journey about 15 times, is snotty and cold but also sweaty and hot, dehydrated but refusing to drink water, not peeing even the littlest drop, and on a food-strike.

But life must go on, right?

We get to our home in the woods. I put our baby to sleep, or hand her off to her dad, or leave her with her play things in the patio amid my husband and our friends who have come out with us, where she can spot birds and yowl at the deer and have other caring adults respond to her needs.

It’s my time to shine.

Nilgiris-green for the uninitiated, a bonus little bird if you can spot it.

I sit down with my iPad in the midst of the Nilgiris-green to read for the seminar on April 9th. My eyes glaze over, my head tunes out, my body aches at the prospect of sitting for another minute. It spaces out, and into the sounds of the woods — the calls of the peacocks, the whistles of the Malabar squirrels, and the squawks of the langur pack that is flying between the canopies above me.

The next day, I change tack. I open my planner. Perhaps I should schedule a window to prepare for the Saturday class; planning will ease my nerves about the tasks piling up. My body creaks in stiffness at being imprisoned at the desk, unmoved by the excitement of putting pen to paper after endless device time. I feel my back groan in protest silently — at the inanity of marking out time blocks to do things at a future date that may or may not be mine, when the precious seconds that I have now in the woods tick away, past me, never to return.

The next day, we drive back home. The drive is different, but it’s also the same.

That night, I try again. I sit at my computer to plan for that upcoming 7 pm meeting and that 4 pm client call. My cursor wanders to the open Substack tab on my Chrome, my fingers begin typing out a new draft essay.

If you won’t rest, I will rest for you - my body seems to be saying to me.

This morning, I realise it’s time for a pit stop. I write to them that I cannot do the seminar on April 9th, or a class on April 5th, and that the 7 pm meeting will have to wait till bed-time another day.

I do the bare minimum that needs doing. I feed my baby her breakfast. I build a Lego Duplo truck with her that she drives alongside her little red wooden scooter. I decide to take half a day off, and go out with her. I nurse her before we leave home, and the milk gets her happy high. I shower. I wear something nice. And we pick up the diaper bag and go to the play area. There, I sit in silence and send out this essay.