This morning I read a beautiful reflection over at Writing Wilder, on reclaiming herself this coming year. It took me back to a space I know so well and I found myself rambling on in her comment section - always a sign that there’s something more for me to dig into. What memories flit through my brain when I read her hopes, her plans for 2024:
I want to remember how to be a person outside of motherhood.
This is where I go.
Summer 2017
We still have a guest bedroom because we haven’t yet turned our second bedroom into a kids’ room. We planned to cosleep before birth and didn’t feel the need for a nursery, though I mildly mourned the chance to decorate one. That guest room lasted until Corinne was almost 2, when we moved her into a twin bed in there (and one of us often ended up sleeping with her).
This summer, she’s not yet 1. I’ve come down with some sort of sickness - a passing 24 hour thing, thankfully - and it’s the weekend, so I can hole up on the guest bed and let my spouses take care of the baby. They bring her in occasionally to nurse but for the most part I am left in peace. I read an entire book, the first one I’ve finished since before she was born.
For a few hours, I am a person first, mother second. It’s fleeting.
Winter 2019
I’d night weaned Corinne a few months earlier and she is down to just wanting milk before bed and occasionally in the morning. It’s been over two years of being an on-demand wet bar but the end is in sight. I need my body back - part of it, at least - because now I’m growing another human. A few months without being chewed on is all I ask.
My grandmother dies and I fly back to Maryland for the funeral. The first time I’ve ever spent the night away from my child (not counting the one inside me). She’d occasionally fallen asleep with Victoria instead of me, without milk, so we know she’ll survive this. It’s my out. A little reprieve.
It’s easier, when they’re still inside. Somehow you’re less conscious of how much they’re taking from you.
Summer 2022
I lay on the floor of the cabin on a thin mattress, sandwiched between two bodies. One is almost 3 and the other is almost 6 and neither will go to sleep without me. We’re in upstate New York for our annual vacation; the days are lovely but the nights are rough. Both kids will roll out of the tall twin beds, so we drag pillows and mattresses to the floor for the duration of our stay.
The cabin is tiny, too small for a family of 5, but we make do. It is here, nearing midnight, that the first lines of what will become māternus barrel into my head. I can’t shake the image.
I am a body to be used - to grow, nourish, comfort these beings I brought into the world. My skin feels too tight. This is what I wanted.
Today
Both kids are in school 8:30-3 every day, when they aren’t sick. This season has been a doozy. I take the train into Chicago twice a week and ride to the 20th floor to my little cubicle, decorated with pictures of my kids of course. Corinne is home sick; Joshua and Victoria are tag-teaming childcare and work responsibilities.
I’m slightly sore from last night’s Pomsquad class - an hour I’ve carved out for myself every Monday. There is no guilt over leaving the children. When both my partners were working full time and I “wasn’t” - parenting and house managing not carrying the same credence - it felt wrong to ask them to watch the kids in the evening when they finally had a chance to relax after work. It didn’t occur to me then that there was no relaxing after work for me.
Bringing in money earns me the right to leave the parenting to others, but that isn’t true. That right exists regardless of financial contribution. I've learned to go out for a walk for no reason other than I deserve a chance to be alone with my thoughts. I’ve learned to claim me.
I realized with a laugh a few days ago that I am neither child’s favorite parent - what a 180. Corinne latched onto Victoria hard when I was pregnant with Linnea and has never let go; Linnea has become a total daddy’s girl. It’s a freeing feeling (even if slightly bruising to the ego) to not be the mandatory one.
And, beautifully, they’re growing up. They still have oh so many needs, but they don't demand as much from a sensory standpoint most of the time. Now I've got one tearing through chapter books and one content to look at the pictures in graphic novels, and we all three will sit on our couch with our books.
In those moments, they are a part of me but also apart from me, and it feels like we're each coming into our own.
I'm so honoured to have helped inspire such a beautiful reflection. Thank you for sharing!