Females are strong as hell. –Walter Bankston

This morning a text dropped on my face in the middle of the pre-school chaos, asking me if I could read with The Kid’s class today because the mum I alternate weeks with had an appointment she forgot about. CUE THE UPHEAVAL.

But not before I quickly texted back “Sure” with a thumbs-up emoji because I AM IN A NEW PLACE AND MY NEED TO BE LIKED HERE (ANYWHERE) KNOWS NO BOUNDS. Especially when my kids are involved. So I assented to the alteration of our morning landscape–not exactly akin to the beaches of Normandy, but adding anxiety nonetheless–and proceeded to let the new tension tighten my shoulders, cramp my back, raise my voice, and leave me realising once again how laid-back Aussies are and how NOT laid-back I am. How f-ing mental I am, to put it their way. In a quiet moment in front of the mirror, I breathed. I thought about my kids, quietly watching their screens in my room. And I did this: I resolved not to do better but to let go.

We moms carry too much.

We carry tension, and anxiety, and guilt, hung like millstones around our necks while water threatens drowning all around us but land persists, and we do too. We carry scars (my children seem to be magnetised to the one on my abdomen out of which they were born, landing on it with such regularity that I wonder if it’s their mother ship calling them home). We carry bags, ridiculous folds of leather and fabric containing the secrets of universes both Lego and literal, with some sand and dried peanut butter mixed in for WTF-fun. (At least I hope it’s peanut butter.) We carry hearts, and it’s a good thing when I chose that poem for my wedding I didn’t know how painfully true it would apply to my parenting or I would have run the other direction (don’t feel bad for The Husband; he would have too). We carry hands within ours, and soiled underwear, and smears of poo we don’t realise are there until it’s too late and social alienation is, once again, inevitable.

Did I mention we carry guilt? I still don’t know the names of Little Brother’s daycare teachers. I keep meaning to look that up.

And on Mother’s Day, we carry around handmade gifts and hopeful expectations that we’ll be recognised, that we’ll be seen, that maybe we’re not doing the whole damn thing wrong.

And maybe a bit of hope for some time away. During which we’re not touched. By anyone.

Which is why (along with a concerted effort to pre-empt a breakdown similar to last year’s) I told TH in no uncertain terms that this year, what I’d really like for Mother’s Day is a hotel room by myself in the city. And I got it, y’all. Thankfully, I have a partner who thinks handling live turds in the hand is as gross and #notmagical as I do, so he gets it. Also, he has a vested interest in my not going insane and blowing this popsicle stand. So on Saturday night I found myself in a warm and glowing room at the Sheraton where a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of champagne awaited me. (Note to Jesus: if heaven is supposed to be better than this, then you have your work cut out for you.)

(And note to you, readers: I am not bragging. Please understand the point here: I NEEDED A BREAK OR I WAS GOING TO GO CRAZY. We just completed a whirlwind trip across the world and back, right after a whirlwind move across the world, and I was reclaiming some space. Some sanity. It was a luxury and trust me, this is not lost on me. Which is why I’m considering starting a charity that provides mums with hotel rooms when their anxiety meds run out. I’ll keep you posted.)

I almost cried when I entered the bathroom and saw all that space that was for me, just MEEEEE!!! Compare it to our bathroom at home, whose own space is constantly exploited by two small bodies that hover around it constantly as I try to squeeze out a wee to the sound of screams. Heaven.

I wrote for two hours with champagne by my side, and then I met a friend downstairs for dinner. And this introvert who values her time alone found a gift in the next three hours, during which I spilled red wine all over myself (#nailingit) and deepened a growing relationship with some like-minded talk and laughter. Then I went back upstairs, drank another glass of champagne, and watched Ghostbusters (#nailedit). (Did I mention I shared a bottle of champagne with another mum the night before and she’s amazing? CHAMPAGNE FOR THE WIN!)

The next morning I managed the logistics of shoving all my stuff into my bags and carrying a bouquet of blooms to boot. The bags hung heavily off my shoulders and the flowers weighed in my arms like a baby as I walked through downtown Sydney. I was sweating when I arrived across from the church, in the park where I was meeting my family. And it wasn’t lost on me, the wonderful yet groaning weight of all the stuff, all the love, that I had to carry.

We carry so much. We carry dreams for our children, and disappointment over dreams dashed. We carry diagnoses, and fear over our own health and theirs. We carry empty spaces inside us waiting to be filled with the hope of new life, and we carry the little deaths that come each month when that doesn’t happen. We carry the phantom kicks that remind us of what pregnancy felt like and the ensuing wonder over whether we’re really done with that chapter (don’t worry, TH, we are). We carry confusion and ambivalence and regret and hope, and we carry it all every. single. day. We carry it to sleep, often waking up with it and the little ones who give birth to it lying right beside us. We carry, and we persist, because this is what we do. It’s how we go on living. It sucks, and it’s amazing, and the only thing lying between those extremes is…oh, just the mundanity of every day of life.

Oh, and we carry tunes. Recently LB asked me to sing a song about dinosaurs, and of course the only one I could think of was the classic below. I sang it for him, and then TK joined us in the car later that day, so I sang it for them, and now it’s the only GD thing they ever want to hear. This morning, in the middle of the upheaval and my pleas to get into the car, I urged TK to open the door. A second later, I heard him singing.

“Open the door, get on the floor, everybody do the dinosaur.”

I looked at him. “Are you singing the dinosaur song?” And he grinned back at me, and the morning and all its sins were redeemed and atoned for, and a dinosaur song became holy. And tonight, I’ll carry that to bed with me along with all the other baggage, as TK and LB do that thing where they whisper without knowing it in their drifting off to sleep: Mommy.