We've overslept.
All three of us, somehow, have miraculously ignored our various body clocks as well as the gradual increase in daylight filtering through the cracks in our curtains.
I often wonder how many horrible days have begun with a missed alarm clock, a malfunctioning mobile, an unheeded call to arise from bed.
Today, I was sure would be one of those days for us.
Out of bed with only an hour before I should have been physically walking out of the house on the way to take DS to preschool. Only an hour in which to wash/clothe/feed/brush/preen and otherwise appropriate ourselves to social norms.This was not to be sufficient.
DH had to use the bedroom, door closed, off limits, for a Skype session with a client, while I hurriedly played the latest game in which I pretend to be nonchalant about this food I have made for my toddler, so that he doesn't twig on to the fact that I am actually very anxious for him to take an interest in his food. My whole world's happiness is tied up with how much gluten free pancake he consumes within our limited time allowance. He's the 'seagull' and I am the 'seaside tourist' enjoying my food while he attempts to 'swoop in' and 'steal it.' But, this is a lot of subtext for 8AM. I am not very method with my acting, and he doesn't appreciate that I don't take the game seriously.
While I make many great speeches on my new 'plan' to 'foil' the 'seagull' I am internally calculating just exactly how long I have until it is absolutely necessary to start getting the school outfit on, and then, while the 'seagull' 'steals' yet another gulp of 'my' breakfast, I am really wondering if I will have time for even a 60 second shower. I didn't take the bath last night when I could have. It's a rookie move, you hate to see it.
He can see I'm distracted, so he demands that I craft yet another 'plan' for the 'seagull' and his thievery.
I see an out and I bloody take it - 'Okay,' I begin cheerily, steeling myself for what happens once the other shoe, or rather the second half of my coming declaration will bring, 'one more plan then we have to dress seagull in his jumper!'
I wait with baited breath. I check the markers of each part of his little face as he processes what I've just said is to the next phase of our morning plan. A phase for which he was most assuredly not consulted.
'Okay!' comes his reply. He must have been satisfied with my performance, as he accepts reality without any kind of protest.
I'm not sure how, but I am now aware that it is half past 8. I have managed to get all the breakfast in him, the school clothes on him, and the coffee and small breakfast in me. I feel like a champion, I really do. At least, for exactly as long as it takes for me to realise that while DS is out in the lounge, happily watching Peppa, fed, dressed and with a school bag at the ready - his shoes, my clothes, my shoes, our coats, are sealed in what may as well be outer space - The Bedroom Where Daddy is Working.
New calculations are flying through my brain.
Can we walk to preschool, if we leave the house by 9:10, and hurry really fast, and manage to get there in time?
Would it be quicker to bring the buggy, so I don't have the factor in the little leg variable? Then of course, I need to consider how much of the time we save by buggy will be burned on the first gentle attempt and subsequent knock down drag out fight to get DS strapped into the buggy.
And well, it needs to be said Mummy, that none of this is going to matter if you can't fashion some kind of primitive yet fashionable footwear and clothing combination that comprises slightly more than the thin Lonsdale yoga pants and off the shoulder sweatshirt you're currently sporting.
If there were ever a time I wished I was a whiz at word problems, it was now.
Finally, I am resigned to the fact that I simply can't move until DH is done in the bedroom. And since his computer failed him for the first thirty minutes, he definitely won't be done until ten minutes after the absolute last possible time I could see leaving the house AND making it on time, even with forgoing the social niceties of personal hygiene.
I make DH lunch. I make him some pancakes that he can easily shove down his gullet, as he too, is now very late for work.
I think, yes, I am now zen.
But then something happens. The momentum which I had put away with my happy resignation was picked up again as the bedroom door was flown open. Somehow in the space of 30 seconds, I found myself dressed and with a coat and shoes and a new mission: GET TO PRESCHOOL ON TIME.
DS was naturally ignorant of the sequence of any of these events. He didn't know anything had gone wrong. He wasn't aware that his mother and father were presently running around like decapitated chickens, ruing the day they weren't made omniscient so they could ensure this sort of thing could never ever ever happen to them ever again SERIOUSLY.
All he knew, all he should have to know, is that he had a nice lie in, we had a nice game of breakfast, and he was kicking back, waiting for the next adventure to start.
We were so far away from each other, the three of us, in our respective headspaces, I should have known it was going to escalate.
I am dying to leave the house, dying to avoid declaring myself a time failure, I could make it, we could be there on time still, if only we could leave right now. He was so compliant with the food, the school jumper, the teeth brushing, he fooled me into thinking I need only sweetly gesture to him with his jacket before he came bounding up to me and enfolding himself inside it and then we would be skipping down the road to a better, more perfect day.
This did not happen.
But you knew that already, didn't you?
DS laid down on the hall floor, picked at some dried mud that had fallen off my impatient boots and bemoaned -
"I'm tired."
"But we have to go now. We're going to be late. Come on sweetie."
"I'm tired and I don't want to get up. What's this?"
"That's just mud from my shoes, don't touch it. Don't touch it. Don't touch it. Come on, we have to GO."
The last word was a bit forceful, but I had, as yet, to lose it.
"No. I don't want to."
And that was it. I shouted at him, I said okay, bye I am going then, I went halfway down the stairs and he started to sniffle.
"No. Mummy. Don't be angry Mummy."
And suddenly, I was back.
Feeling horrible and guilty and ashamed of shouting at my three year old son because of things that were entirely nothing to do with him. I gave myself approximately 5 seconds to blink, shed exactly one tear, and then I apologised.
I told him I was sorry, that it wasn't his fault, that I wasn't angry, I was frustrated that we might be late for school. I asked if he forgave me. He smiled simply, threw his arms around me, held my face close to his face and said. "Yes."
Then it was over for him, he wasn't holding any grudges. All that he knew was right again, and he was ready to leave now, and so we did, and we got there on time.
I was left thinking about it as I walked away from dropping him off. There were times I would have terrorised myself for weeks at how failed a mother I was. Or worse yet, I would refuse to acknowledge that shouting at him was wrong, that "kids need to learn" and that "I was in charge."
Here is the thing though. He wasn't questioning my authority. I remain 'in charge' whether I shout at him to hurry up or not. More to the point, he wasn't telling me I was a rubbish mother who was ruining his life. He was asking me not to be angry, because he didn't want me to be, because he loves me.
I was questioning my authority. I was telling myself I was not in charge. I was shouting at myself, as loudly as I was shouting at him, that I was a rubbish mother. I was 'doing it wrong'. And as so often is the case with uncomfortable truths, rather than looking inwards, we explode outwards.
In every moment of frustration, of anger, of self accusation that I face as a mother - I am presented with a choice; to turn inwards, to breathe, to address it with myself, the adult and to keep it from himself, the child or, to explode, to demand unquestioning obedience without explanation, to be irrationally annoyed that a human who has been on Earth for 3 years doesn't know how to behave as I have learned in my 26.
I chose wrong this morning. I allowed a moment to berate myself for failing to be Perfect Mum, yet again. I moved on. He moved on, almost instantaneously.
And I know there are plenty of people who make different decisions, who have different styles, different belief systems about how they parent. That's cool, that's fine, it is okay. I am only one woman and my son is the only one of his kind that will ever be, and you're never going to be his parent, vice versa, etc, the end. But I know that it matters that I apologised to him, and I will tell you why.
I will share with you what I have left of what once was something that happened to me when I was little, a hazy fragment of half-memory, which has somehow clung onto life within the recesses of my brain and serves me with the knowledge that I serve others with. I have no idea how old I was when this happened, I don't remember what day it was, season, year, no details remain, except the way the sun came through the glazing on our front door, and the way the terrycloth of my mother's robe seemed just as tattered and tired and soft as she always did. She'd loved too much, she'd seen too much, and she ached to love and see so much more. I understood this from infancy, even if there wasn't any reasonable way I ought to.
On this day I was playing with my younger brother. We were being loud. My mother was downstairs. My brain tells me she had a migraine. We were meant to be quiet. We weren't. She had really had enough. She came upstairs. It wasn't me who had made the particular noise which signalled Enough, it was my little brother. The blame was assigned to me, she shouted at me. I don't remember if I received a spanking. I remember the absolute terrible feeling of childhood injustice though. The heartbreak you feel when you feel rejected by your parent. Back when you're naive enough to believe that the world must be fair, to be on the receiving end of direct proof to the contrary is a cold and sobering experience, indeed. The image flickers a bit. Then I am in my room. My mother enters a time later. She tells me that she is sorry, because she knows it wasn't me who made the noise. She is sorry.
Whatever silly animosity I had felt, whatever sick sense of malice was beginning to develop, that apology snuffed it right out. I loved her and she loved me, and she was just a human, same as I was. Her terrycloth robe and the way it smelled of love and hope when she wrapped her arms around me, and put her face to my face, that was all there was in the world, and all of it was right again.
This is how I know these moments are defining. They have defined me, and I will use them to guide me away from the self destructive guilt that comes so easily with raising your own little person.
I will use them to guide me home.
