i'm not the mum i was

 

I used to find other people’s babies delectable and made no attempt to disguise it. I’d give off wafts of eau-de-despération if a baby was anywhere in my peripheral – I stank of it in enclosed spaces. I’d gush and squeal and hold out my arms, fingers playing an upside down keyboard, fluttering gimme gimme. And once gimme got, I’d cradle that other person’s baby in a way more motherly than she ever could; in retrospect, in a way Kathy Bates would, were she playing an an unhinged childless maniac small children should avoid at all costs. Misery meets The Hand That Rocks The Cradle.

I jest. I wasn’t homicidal and nor would you have to gently coax a baby out of my arms. But I was moderately painful, and the sort of person that would make half-committed boyfriends take to themselves with a cleaver so their other half could get away.

Obviously it was a biological thing. But if we were to remove the primitive urge, for dignity’s sake, and leave the aesthetic, then, I just loved the look of them. Still do – they’re squidgy and buttery like part-baked bread. Goes straight to my love for food. Not the babies – I don’t eat babies. But they have this absorbent property, and back then I’d be so utterly sopped I’d see past the revolting bits – the dying crab spittle at their lips and the dhal from their bottoms; they were simply heavenly embodiments of unaffected purity (maybe I was hoping some would rub off). I’d peer into prams, slings, passing cars just to get a glimpse of podgy new life. And if I managed to get in the path of a strolling mum, I’d make such a fuss she would have to stop; I’d get down to baby height, pause for breath and then I’d coochicoo that poor little child to death.

And it wasn’t just burble abuse. I’d get its doughy cheek in my vice-like grip and wag it. It’s something I learned from large Italian nonnas, it felt genuine, affectionate. But if I weren’t so overcome with cutesy I would have remembered my own eye-watering experiences of yanked flesh, the drawing ache at the bone and sharp pinch of rough peasant fingers which had long lost all sense of feeling and couldn’t tell a sensitive jowl from a broad bean.

I liked toddlers too. I’d find their cheek (impudence, this time) enchanting – I called it spirit and rejoiced in their bold sprints from parent-set parameters and their experimentation with putting things where they shouldn’t go. They were carpe-ing the diem. While their mothers became more ruffled and tense by their contrariness, I’d say leave it to me and I’d cajole those kids right back to good behaviour with nudge-wink promises of more child play later on. I was the fun friend, I was good with children. You’re so good with children my friends would say. You really should have children, lots of them, you’re so good. And I’d agree. Yes, I was good, wasn’t I? I wanted lots of children, one day. A rugby team.

I now have just shy of a seventh of a rugby union team, and it’s enough. They’ve pretty much exhausted my capacity for coochicoo. I love them. I’d extract my own teeth for them. But I don’t really go in for carpe-ing the diem with them, even though I know I should. And I tend to get cross if their carping gets in the way of my busy diem. My heart will tell me their shenanigans are symptomatic of having an imagination. My heart might even prod me with and what happened to yours? But my head shuts it up soon enough. They’re screaming about the house, I’ve got a deadline, the last thing I want to do in a break is play puppy dog hospital and I’d really actually like to be left alone. Isn’t that terrible? My heart breaks, but my head wins.

Occasionally I will be overwhelmed with pangs of adoration for the kids so fierce that I will simply have to play with them a while (until they bicker or one of them breaks the rules and then my head steps in with a sharp click of its steel-toed boot and says fun’s over, fellas). Please don’t misread me – I adore my children all the time. Sometimes I would just rather they were adorable – no, don’t comment, please, because I’m not entering into a you get back what you put in debate; although I know it’s true.

What I am trying to say is: what happened to mum I was? The mum I was before I became a mum? I killed her. Maybe a tinge of post-natal depression killed her, or three years of sleepless nights, or the sudden downsizing of a social life or a feeling of underachievement. And yet, back then, I wanted to achieve the status of ‘mother’... so what’s that about? I would say be careful what you wish for, but despite the moans I wouldn’t have it any other way.

What’s really is sad, however, is that I don’t coochicoo other people’s kids any more. All my tolerance gets spent on my own – and that goes for tickles and peekaboo, too. There are other people’s kids I’m fond of, but mostly I’d really rather they weren’t in my vicinity. I’m too rude to even feign interest; and then mothers look at me as if I graduated from the Myra School of Mothering.

I’m not a monster. I used to be maternal. But now I’m a mother.

 

 

 

Comments

[Rachel]

Hi Kathy and Dolly - you don't know how stoked I am someone is reading this, let alone someone who understands!!! I am a compulsive purger when it comes to my own parenting (it makes up for the all the fluff I write in parenting magazines) so please if there are any other issues you'd like me to address let me know! Please keep reading. xxx

[Kathy]

"They’re screaming about the house, I’ve got a deadline, the last thing I want to do in a break is play puppy dog hospital and I’d really actually like to be left alone".

Did you write that all by yourself, or did you read our collective minds???

Great piece.

Kathy

[dollyparton]

I feel the same way! I was unstoppable with other people's babys. now i'm like, meh.

[Alice Martrin]

Love this one! Hit a nerve I'm sure most of us have.