Motherhood, Musings

Swing Low

SweetMadeleine.ca

I am in Edmonton for a few days while Olive visits her dad, and after a bit of a rough start this morning I filled this first child-free day with books and silence, and I plan to ride this wave of words into the wee hours.

There is a decided lack of this in motherhood – this silence stretching out indefinitely. Mental space. Once your child begins speaking – and perhaps even before – the balance tips and you spend an inordinate amount of time living out. Speaking, narrating, answering, instructing, describing….you are the lens through which your child makes sense of the world, and so, you are called on to interpret it for them every minute that they are conscious.

It is at once the best and the most stifling part of motherhood for me right now. The conversations I have with Olive are easily one of my favourite things. I feel so lucky that I get to ramble around the city while she chatters at me, and the way she sees the world, the questions she asks, the way she pieces things together – it is endlessly fascinating.

It’s also tinged with a sweet sense of loss. A small daily sacrifice that sometimes seems like it’s adding up to be bigger than I’d bargained for. In order to foster Olive’s discovery, this insatiable language of learning, I end up putting the most sacred parts of me back on the shelf. Up high and out of reach.

In this endless stream of back-and-forth speech there’s little room for introspection or reflection, my thoughts don’t get to sit and stir, gel and coalesce. I sometimes re-read the of archives of this blog and feel like my writing has never been the same since I had a baby. Parts of it have deepened, it’s true, but sometimes it seems like the posts have gotten sloppier, shorter, fewer.

There have been so many threads of thought that have simply slipped through my fingers because I didn’t have the silence to let them speak. Not the end of the world, certainly. But I feel their absence nonetheless.

There’s a monotony, too, isn’t there? I’m not sure we are supposed to acknowledge this, us mothers. Yet my sister-in-law and I did just that in a conversation last night. It is, we agreed, impossible to deny.

The days are much the same – in many ways they have to be – and sometimes they just run together in an endless stream without differentiation. The framework can’t change much. The waking up and potty breaks and breakfasts, the clean-ups and playground visits and taking them in and out of car seats and high chairs and strollers – endlessly buckling and unbuckling their pliable little bodies.

The activities each day revolve and shift and change, but the skeleton of the days stay inert. The meals, the diapers, the naps or the no naps, the stories and the kisses and the soothing and the tantrums and the hugs. The moments where you stand in the kitchen, head against the cool cupboards, wishing for quiet.

It’s a small trade, I think, and an indisputably worthy one. I wouldn’t change it for anything. And, I remind myself, at 7:30 each night I get the silence back again. I usually pad over to my couch and stretch the length of it, noticing my breath for the first time in hours, and the way the leaves rustle outside my living room window.

I feel endlessly lucky to have this life.

And in days like these, where Olive’s absence is palpable, I try to make the best of it. I try to focus on the benefits rather than the sense of sad, aimless, daughter-less space. I try to turn towards the silence and meet it again. Try to sink into it instead of filling it. So I read, and I write, and I let thoughts sit and stir, gel and coalesce.

It is sweet. And it, too, feels like a loss.

Until the balance tips again.

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7 Comments

  • Reply Sarcastically Katie June 2, 2015 at 10:26 PM

    I am so glad you are writing regularly here again. I have missed reading your thoughts.

    • Reply sweetmadeleine June 2, 2015 at 10:57 PM

      Awww, thank you, Katie! I’ve missed it, too. I’m trying to get better at carving out this space 🙂

  • Reply Mona Fournier June 2, 2015 at 11:38 PM

    Many mothers have a very hard time fighting the dull drums of child raising. I think your blog touched on this fine balance of loving motherhood and being totally bored with the monotony.

  • Reply Lisa June 3, 2015 at 12:18 AM

    There is so much that we mums sacrifice, albeit willingly but we shouldn’t have to sacrifice our honesty. Being a mother is rewarding beyond measure but it can also be the most overwhelmingly underwhelming ‘job’ sometimes. We are lucky, all of us but we are allowed to feel exhausted, talked-out and sometimes *gasp* bored every now and again.

    Your writing is the opposite of sloppy. You are keeping lots of us enthralled. Keep on keeping on, we’re cheering you from the rafters. x

  • Reply natasham June 3, 2015 at 1:32 AM

    Beautiful post and I resonated with all of it. It’s a wonderfully exhausting job motherhood, especially when they have so many questions but I wouldn’t have it any other way 🙂 xx

  • Reply Ali Mac June 3, 2015 at 7:57 AM

    Thanks for writing this, because I’ve been struggling with these very thoughts especially the last few days. My daughter is approaching 2, talking constantly which is great, but leaves me little space to focus on much else other than the daily…well, days. (See? I can’t even get words out now.) This also really hit home for me because I am a fellow writer, and I do can feel the threads of thought slipping away from me, far too quick for me to capture, process, and enjoy a cup of coffee with to massage the words out of and create a piece of art.

    “It’s also tinged with a sweet sense of loss. A small daily sacrifice that sometimes seems like it’s adding up to be bigger than I’d bargained for. In order to foster Olive’s discovery, this insatiable language of learning, I end up putting the most sacred parts of me back on the shelf. Up high and out of reach.”

    Thanks for putting beautiful words to my jumbled thoughts.

  • Reply myisleofserenity June 4, 2015 at 5:03 AM

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts so beautifully 🙂 As others have already said above, I too can relate!

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