A step too far

 

Part of the process of motherhood is submission. This submission is what makes motherhood sit so uncomfortably with feminism. To be a mother you have to let someone else’s needs be more important than your own (for a while). This submission to a new hierarchy and the inequality with which this submission is experienced by men (fathers) and women (mothers) is where I think many mothers get lost. Boundaries you’ve long held sacred, negotiated and fortified are suddenly and willfully demolished. But boundaries are what keep you intact and emotionally healthy as a person, their removal leaves you at risk.

I struggled hard with this submission and when I finally gave in to it I think my daughter’s needs flooded me like a dam bursting.  I tried to be good at submission the way I’d tried in the past to be good at carving out my boundaries. I remember my non-parent friend coming from London to stay with us. In my previous life she and I had enjoyed nothing more than late-night chats, cocktails, and vegetarian tapas at cult film nights. Now here I was, staying afloat, but barely, amidst the flood of needs that was my baby daughter. I remember my friend’s many questions about this submission and her amazement with my transformation, my capacity to give. I remember also my pride – look how good a mother I am, look at what I am enduring.

On her final day with us I took her and I and Lauca out for coffee in a cute little cafe. Not only was I an attentive mother to my baby but I was with it enough to be organising coffees in cute cafes. Lauca, just learning to walk entertained herself by re-arranging the coffee shop furniture. Without even breaking conversation with my friend I whipped sugar sachets over to Lauca as soon as I detected her losing interest in the furniture. I am good, so good at this. The conversation was engaging and when Lauca finally bit through the sugar sachets and I had to remove them I left her to look for ideas of her own. What she found was my purse – a goldmine so rich in entertainment that a year later she is still thrilled to get hold of it.

She sat delightedly on the not-so-clean floor of the cute street cafe and scrubbed my lovely purse along the ground. Scrub, scrub - through fallen bits of food, street grime and people’s footprints. My friend winced. That’s my Kate Spade purse I told her. He bought it for me when I gave birth to Lauca. I had always wanted a really nice purse and he bought me a Kate Spade of my choosing, from New York. He had to find a website that allowed him to rent a US postal box so he could get the Kate Spade delivered and sent on to Australia because Kate Spade doesn’t post internationally. It took ages to work out for me. I love that Kate Spade purse, I said with a chuckle. (Look how fucking good I am as a mother, look at my casual sacrifices, look how I have submitted to the role). My friend looked at me in horror.

- I think Lauca really needs to find something other than your purse to play with. 

And that’s when I realised I’d gone too far. I’d let go of my boundaries in the beginning out of necessity but I’d lost sight of them altogether along the way. I was losing myself. That purse was special to me, it meant something to me and it wasn’t going to be the end of the world for Lauca if she couldn’t play with it (on the ground in the cafe; I’ve still let her play with it other times because sometimes I’ve been desperate for some peace and I’m a goddamn sucker).  I’d gotten so used to letting go of things that were important to me, in my role as a mother to an infant that I’d started making unnecessary sacrifices. I made sacrifices out of habbit.  

I’m a little better at recognising these moments now but I’m also a little less judgemental of the martyr-mothers I’d so despised in my pre-child days - there, but for the grace of god go I.