Читать книгу Unravelled: Life as a Mother - Maria Housden - Страница 17

It was a showdown between Robin Hood from the Dark Side and me, his mother. Will, now four years old, stood defiantly, hand on his hip, wearing a pair of green tights, a green felt cape and a red cowboy hat. A plastic bow hung like a necklace around his neck. In his other fist, he was gripping an arrow, jabbing it in my direction.

‘Grrrrrrr…’ he growled, his face scrunched into a fierce grimace, teeth clenched together.

I stayed where I was, three feet away. Crazy with fury – I had passed angry long ago – if he moved any closer, I thought, I might grab him, whack his bottom and stuff him in a closet. At that point I would have done anything to make him stop. Two hours before, I had been congratulating myself on having orchestrated a perfect day. How fast my fortune had changed.

Earlier that morning, I had woken before anyone else, washed my hair, put on make-up and packed the diaper bag. When the kids and Claude woke, I had unloaded the dishwasher and packed Claude’s lunch, then spoon-fed Hannah in her high chair while Claude and Will ate breakfast. Later, after Claude left for work, I had dressed Hannah in new pink overalls and said a brief prayer of thanks when Will, without argument, agreed to wear a clean pair of jeans and a matching shirt.

Well-rested and organized with two perfectly groomed children in tow, I had arrived at Friday-morning playgroup promptly at 10 am. Sitting at my friend Karen’s kitchen table, sipping coffee with the other mothers, I had breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Although being a mother felt the most natural thing to me, whenever I compared myself to others, I felt an anxiety that I wasn’t doing it the way it was supposed to be done. I listened without comment while friends obsessed over their children’s diets – whether foods were organic or contained too much sugar – too embarrassed to admit that I had, more than once, opened a bag of Oreo cookies at 9.00 in the morning simply to keep Will quiet in the car.

That wasn’t the only secret I was harbouring.

Something was happening with Will. In the past few months, he had begun talking back and openly defying me, sometimes poking and pushing other kids. It was as if he were overdosing on testosterone. I had patience with him at first – my parents had spanked me when I was a child, and I had vowed not to revisit the same sin on my children. I was on a mission to create perfect children by being the perfectly loving, non-violent mother.

But, as the days and weeks wore on, Will’s behaviour hadn’t changed. In fact, it seemed to get worse. And so did I. I had started yelling, which initially appeared to shock him into listening. But then he got used to it and began to ignore me again. I had tried putting him in time-outs next, but when he refused to stay in one place, I would get angrier, grab him and roughly sit him on the edge of the bed. Finally, I began spanking him – not hard or often, but enough to feel ashamed and sorry later. I also made plenty of tearful apologies to him after, which only seemed to confuse him more. But I was at a loss at what to do, and it seemed that whenever I got aggressive and angry, Will’s defiant, aggressive behaviour stopped. I desperately wanted to believe that Will’s difficulties were temporary – a problem that I could nip in the bud before anyone else noticed.

I should have known better.

Thirty minutes into playgroup, before my second cup of coffee had cooled, a piercing wail rose from the playroom. Seven mothers, including me, shot out of their chairs. Even with Hannah in my arms, I managed to be one of the first on the scene. It wasn’t pretty. As we burst into the room, Will, a plastic knight’s breastplate strapped to his chest was standing over a bawling Eric, waving his arms triumphantly over his head.

Will turned to me. ‘Eric was being mean to us!’ he cried as I glared at him, trying to assess the damage.

I helped Eric to his feet and knelt in front of Will, my back to the others so they couldn’t see my face.

‘Tell Eric you’re sorry,’ I said to Will through clenched teeth. Eric was looking at his feet, wiping his nose with the sleeve of his shirt. The other three and four year-olds were standing in a circle, solemnly watching what was happening.

‘No. He was the one being mean!’Will retorted, stomping his foot on the floor. ‘Eric should say “sorry” to me.’

Just then, Hannah, who had been asleep in my arms, woke up and began screaming. Eric started crying again and ran to his mother. I felt the other women’s eyes on me, imagining them, accusing and smug, outraged on behalf of their innocent ones. It was, I realized, a situation that could not be easily remedied. Deciding to cut my losses, I handed Hannah to Karen, picked Will up and carried him, kicking and thrashing, out to the car. Both kids screamed all the way home and anger swelled inside me. I was outraged at having had to abandon one of my few opportunities to spend time with people who didn’t need me to help them to the potty. More than anything, though, I was furious with Will for ‘outing’ me as the bad mother I was.

Now, an hour and a half later, the two of us were facing off. Will was refusing to change out of his Robin Hood costume before going to the grocery store. As I stood there, I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the sweet little boy whose slippery form had slid out of my body three and a half years earlier, the baby who had slept on my chest every day in the warmth of the afternoon sun. In a little less than four years, I had managed to ruin the perfect little being who had been entrusted to me. I suddenly felt exhausted and my anger at Will vanished. Overwhelmed by my complete and utter failure as a mother, I sat down on the floor and began to cry.

As I wept helplessly, my face buried in my arm, I heard Will’s footsteps approaching and then felt his arm slide around my neck.

‘What’s the matter, Mommy?’he asked, bending down to peek at me.

I lifted my head, wiping the tears from my cheeks.

‘I’m sorry, Will.’ I said. ‘I just don’t feel like a very good mommy right now.’

‘Why?’ he said, adjusting his cape to keep it from slipping over his shoulder. ‘Is it because I want to be Robin Hood at the grocery store?’

In that moment, I saw something I had never seen in the same way before. As Will stood there, looking at me, waiting for my answer, I realized that he was a completely unique, intact human being in a little person’s body entirely separate from me. Yes, he was dressed like a bad Western’s version of Robin Hood, but what did that matter? I was dressed as a bad soap opera’s version of a suburban housewife. Together, we made quite a pair.

I began to laugh and pulled Will into my arms. I understood then that I had been pouring so much energy into trying to make us and our lives look the way I thought they were supposed to look, that I was missing all the wonderful, unique things we already were. Just because I would never consider going to the grocery store dressed as Robin Hood, it didn’t mean that Will couldn’t. In fact, it was inevitable that there would be many, many more things that Will was going to like to do, to eat, to try, to be that I would have no interest in. His preferences for this or that had little or nothing to do with me.

And as for my frustrations with his behaviour earlier in the day, of course Will was going to have difficulties learning to get along with other kids, managing his angry feelings, deciding what he liked and what he didn’t – at age 29, I was still struggling with the same things. But the important distinction I had not been able to make until this moment was that I was not Will’s difficulty. My responsibility as a mother was to have compassion for Will, while at the same time trying my best to teach him skilful means of dealing with his feelings – and the situations he might find himself in. His behaviour, good or bad, belonged to him; what I did in response to it belonged to me.

Our differences and difficulties were not personal to each other; they were simply part of who we were. And the truest way I could express my love for Will would be to respect and celebrate both our connection as mother and son and our separateness as two, unique human beings.

‘Come on, Will,’ I said, holding his hand as I got to my feet. ‘Let’s go to the grocery store dressed exactly as we are. After all, even Robin Hood has to eat!’