And now my life has changed in oh so many ways
My independence seems to vanish in the haze
But every now and then I feel so insecure
I know that I just need you like I’ve never done before
I go by Steph now.
People have always called me that–family and good friends mostly, and preferably upon invitation. But now it’s what I answer to generally; it’s how I sign emails and receive them and what I’ve heard a couple of times yelled out of a car (which is The.Best.). When I hear the extra four letters of my first name, I give a start, like I’m getting into trouble.
Australians are fantastic at shortening things, like words, and names, and loss of lives due to guns.
But something has lengthened here, and it’s my time on my own, now that both boys are in school. And for every, “How will you fill the time, Steph?” question that I get, I want to point to the mounting pile of laundry, the opportunities to volunteer at the school, the unopened books that have waited years to be read, the books that have waited years to be written, the projects and the beaches and life and I want to respond, “What time?”
As a woman, and especially a mother, I find it easiest to be powered by guilt, particularly when endorphins and caffeine are scarce. And the first few days of the boys’ school year, I considered giving in to that guilt–through eight years of mothering, it has been so faithful! Then The Husband took my car–the one I dinged up in the car park–to the repair shop, and something shifted.
Primarily, it was the roof to his used convertible, purchased a few months after we moved here. As emblems of mid-life crises go, it’s a pretty harmless one, but one used almost entirely by him–I’ve never much liked messing up my hair or being so vulnerable to the elements and…other people. But during my week of obtaining convertible custody, I embraced its features, and I dropped that top down. And it was glorious.
The boys loved it. (Well, The Kid did. Little Brother had to be talked/bribed into it.) We tooled around town–or to the playground and back, at least–with the wind caressing our faces, taking selfies and generally looking like assholes and loving it. I dropped that bitch back on a ride to the cinema. By myself. On a weekday. I smelled the salt water as I cruised beside the beach. And I told guilt to kindly f— off.
Because here’s the thing: for eight years (longer, actually, if you count pregnancy–and honey I DO), I have voluntarily rented out space in my body, in my mind, in my heart, for two beings who consume me. Their existence has altered said body, its neurochemical balance, its hormonal stability, its metabolism, its follicular quality. I have given myself in service of their growth and well-being. I’ve been poked and prodded, had my organs and nethers splayed across two operating tables, had weekly progesterone shots in my ass for one for nine months after preterm labour and premature birth with the other. I’ve had mastitis and a yeast infection in my tits. I have a scar across my abdomen. I can’t sleep through the night without peeing multiple times. Actually, I can’t sleep through the night, period. The list of what women endure for their children is not just long; it’s endless.
Do I regret any of it? Absolutely not. I treasure them so much it hurts. I would give my life in a second for either of them. They are my life.
But that sure as hell doesn’t mean I have to pretend like none of that stuff ever happened.
So yeah, I’m on a bit of a break, I guess, if that’s what you want to call this period, this new era in which I’m riding with the top down and getting back in touch with who the Me is apart from them; in which I’m making space to breathe and think about not just what is next, but what is now; in which I’m sitting beside LB on the bench at school as he crushes reading, and meeting with TK’s therapist and teacher about his soaring independence and the waning need for a school shadow. I am quite literally enjoying the fruits of my labour and the gifts of grace on our behalf.
I wish it for every woman who has come out on the other side of those tender (for them, and us) first years with her kids and wondered, Who am I again? I wish for time for us all to remember how to play, how to imagine, how to invent, how to be. And, after all that, how to see them running out of their classrooms and into arms that have even more space now.