Good Enough Page 20

  ‘Hold up!’ I want to scream. ‘That’s how you treat me after I slave away each day cooking and cleaning for you? Tasks which, I might add, do not come naturally to me! Who takes you to ballet and swimming lessons and whiles away whole afternoons making necklaces out of bloody macaroni? Mummy. Who destroyed their body to give you the life you currently so enjoy? Mummy, motherfucker. I DO EVERYTHING FOR YOU!’ Instead, I stand there, staring at the offending picture, tears blurring my vision, wishing to God I’d just braved the Westfield and bought the man a Kindle. ‘It’s really lovely, darling,’ I say softly as I give her a quick hug. ‘Your daddy is going to love, love, LOVE it!’ And then I quickly leave the room to bawl like a bitch in the shower where she cannot hear me.

  ‘I’m telling you, that kid hates me,’ I slur at Lee over the better part of a bottle of wine that evening. ‘Don’t be silly – she loves you!’ Lee says as he holds me tightly. ‘Cella knows time away from the house is important to Mummy and she was just drawing what seems to her is an accurate representation of our family.’ ‘WAHHHHH!’ I bawl even louder and I can see Lee cringing as he leans back on the sofa. I know he didn’t mean it to sound as bad as it did. It’s just that while other kids are drawing Mum, Dad, two kids and a family dog under a tree somewhere, my daughter clearly thinks Mummy would rather be anywhere else other than by her daughter’s side. ‘No, no, no, this is a good thing,’ insists Lee once again as he tries to plug the waterworks. ‘By having your own life outside motherhood, you’re actually giving her an important role model, and the thing with Cella is, she’ll never know any different.’ I wipe away my tears and think about this for a moment. I’ll never admit it to his face, of course, but he’s right. No matter what life has thrown in my way – husband, children – I’ve always needed a certain amount of independence to be happy.

  When I first met Lee in my mid-20s, I had been living by myself in a studio apartment for a good number of years. It wasn’t long enough that I was in danger of morphing into the crazy lady with 203 cats or anything, but certainly long enough to become accustomed to being entirely self-sufficient and independent. I enjoyed my solitude so much that partnership and compromise took me some time to get used to. In the weeks leading up to our wedding, Lee virtually skipped his way to the altar without breaking a sweat. And me? I freaked out and practically had to be dragged kicking and screaming by my bridesmaids. ‘You do know the divorce rate is almost one in two, don’t you? They don’t seem like very good odds,’ I chattered nervously to anyone who dared approach me. ‘What if we get married and everything changes and I can’t breathe around him anymore?’ No one had any answers – except for Lee. In the end we decided on a rather romantic proviso that should the day ever come when we feel like we’re coming home because we’re expected to rather than wanting to, we will simply pack our bags, shake hands and call it quits. That was good enough for me and a fortnight later, we said ‘I do’. But even though I became a ‘wife’, I still raged against losing my identity, so much so I declined to change my surname and to this day, will not open a joint bank account. ‘I am my own person, goddamn it, not just someone’s wife,’ I’ve ranted on many an occasion to an ever-patient Lee. I guess I’m what women’s magazines would label ‘a married single’, as in I like to be married yet still retain an independent personal life, and Lee in turn is what the Bible would call a ‘saint’.

  Now I’m not saying every ‘married single’ who goes on to have children is going to end up in a bad place, but when you panic so much about losing your freedom to a life partner, the fear of having children is much worse. You’re not crazy; you know your life as you’ve always known it is about to become unrecognisable. And you know in order to be a good mum, you have to put your children first. But when you’re so used to living your life a certain way for so long, how do you reconcile the two parts of you? I decided early on that to be a good mum – and a happy mum, certainly – I would have to insist on regular time out from the family. Once I made this decision, pregnancy and motherhood seemed less frightening and before I knew it, Cella was nestled in my belly, announcing with violent kicks that she wanted to get out.

  Today Cella is four years old, a little girl, and from the minute she entered this world, I have made herculean efforts to get that ‘me time’ away from my husband and daughter. Sometimes I head off solo for a weekend away to a luxury resort where I drink champagne and read books in the bath, and do quite a bit of naval-gazing. Other times, it might just be an afternoon shopping trip, or a dinner out with girlfriends. It doesn’t even have to be an ‘event’ as such – I’m usually happy to sit in a cafe alone for 30 minutes, or have an uninterrupted bath once a week. Admittedly I’m lucky I have a job that allows me to travel at no cost, and a supportive husband who’s hands-on with our daughter. But even my girlfriend who is a single mum goes out of her way to make time for herself – ‘It helps me get my head screwed back on properly,’ she says. Once a fortnight, she schedules in a date night with herself and books one of her large posse of close friends to assist with babysitting duties well in advance. And although it’s a small thing, on the days she gets out of work early, she refuses to pick her daughter up from childcare until just before closing time, choosing to sit at a cafe, turn off her phone and read some magazines. ‘For that one hour, I just want the world to forget I exist,’ she tells me. ‘I don’t want to be someone’s nurse, I don’t want to be someone’s mum, I just want to be completely overlooked in a sea of other faces.’ ‘For Christ’s sake!’ exclaims another girlfriend when she hits the wall one day after spending the afternoon chasing after her three terrors. ‘I used to daydream about travelling to far-flung places and doing Ryan Gosling every which way, and now I think even if I had those two things given to me on a silver platter, I’d happily trade them for a few hours of peace.’ Her biggest wish? To rediscover some of the interests she had before her personal life imploded and was replaced by a tornado of Thomas the Tank Engine DVDs and cheese and tomato sandwiches (with the crusts cut off).

  Perhaps it’s due to the competitive nature of motherhood, but somewhere along the way women have forgotten that it’s okay to take care of themselves. US First Lady Michelle Obama recently copped a lot of flak in the media for saying the most important thing a mother could do for her daughters is to look after herself. Love and dedication were important, she said, but nowhere near as vital as a healthy sense of self-respect. ‘Look after yourself to ensure your kids learn to care for themselves as much as they do for others – it’s not selfish, it’s practical,’ she says, and she has a point. Seeing their mum engage positively with her own friends, and the world, is vital for girls’ emotional development according to researchers. Their big tip? Your children can’t be what they cannot see, so you have to be a positive role model for that. Amen.

  I know it sounds like it goes against biology – give birth to your young then rip them away from you early so you can go out and be free while they struggle to not get eaten, but it’s not like that at all. All too often I have seen what happens when a woman gives her entire life over to her children and is left with nothing for herself. Growing up, one of my best friends, Gina, was always the life of the party. She was the one I would have to help home after a night out and get her changed into her PJs – oh, and occasionally have to crash-tackle on her front lawn to stop her from going out again. That was Gina. We got married around the same time and then she had two babies in quick succession, draining her physically and emotionally and sucking the life out of her eyes. Today, she won’t go out anywhere without her children (they’re three and a half and four and a half respectively) and finds it impossible to say no to them. Sometimes we get together and attempt to have a conversation or two, but it’s bedlam and we eventually give up, picking at the food on our plates while the kids go mental around us. Sometimes over the din she shouts, ‘I’ll see you in five years!’ and we laugh, but it’s really no laughing matter. In rare, quieter moments not long after I’ve drugged t
he critters with a Xanax-laced strawberry milkshake (no, not really), she admits she’s drowning. ‘I feel like I’ve lost myself completely,’ she says sadly, tears running down her cheeks. ‘I don’t even know who I am anymore, or even remember who I used to be.’ It’s gut-wrenching. I tell her I still remember and that’s why I’m there and give her a hug. Then she draws away and sobs into a tissue. ‘But the worst part of it is, I’m terrified I’ll never come back, that this parenting thing will eventually be behind me but I’ll come out of it with nothing of value left to offer anyone.’ Whenever I think about this conversation it sends a chill up my spine, and serves as a healthy reminder to keep going out and doing things for myself.

  It goes without saying there are serious repercussions if we don’t take regular time out to do the things we enjoy, but few of us make the effort to do it. According to a recent survey, Australian mums only get around 40 minutes of ‘me time’ a day. That doesn’t sound too bad, you might think, but these 40 minutes are actually often broken up into five-minute increments, so I’m assuming mums are getting their alone time while they’re changing a tampon or having a shower. Or maybe it’s while they’re hanging out the washing, or walking through the supermarket doing the weekly groceries – exciting! What we should be doing is taking that 40 minutes (and then some) and INSIST on doing something joyful with it, don’t you think? Read a book, go to the movies, see a friend (sans kids), sit in the bath and think long and hard about what you’ll do when you first have sex with Ryan Gosling (because you know it’s got to happen eventually, right?), go for a drive and sing cock rock at the top of your voice – whatever floats your boat. Go without and you risk feeling stressed, burned out and depressed, all of which stand to make you ill and consequently unable to take care of your family.

  That’s not to say you won’t experience judgment from others those times you decide to clock off on being a mum – you will. Hell, I experience it daily (and something tells me I’ll experience it even more now that I’ve openly declared my stance in this book). In fact, on a recent work trip to Kangaroo Island for a few days, I have to stay in and review some honeymoon accommodation and write a travel piece about it – no kids allowed, hallelujah! As I wave Lee and Cella goodbye outside our home, the taxi driver looks me up and down. ‘Where are you off to?’ he asks loudly over the blare of talkback radio. ‘Kangaroo Island,’ I tell him. ‘What – by yourself?’ he asks, clearly surprised that a woman would DARE travel anywhere without a male chaperone. I nod and look out the window at my gorgeous family. ‘But who’s looking after your daughter?’ he raises his voice as he gestures at my abandoned child. ‘Oh, some local paedophile I found in the neighbourhood,’ I deadpan. He doesn’t get my tone and continues looking at me with his eyebrows raised as though he wouldn’t put it past me to do so. I quickly follow it up with, ‘Her father is quite capable of looking after her,’ but then I get angry at myself for even bothering to justify myself to him. Would anyone ever ask a father going on a work trip, ‘Who’s looking after your kid?’ I don’t think so, and is it just me or is there this insinuation that when you’re apart from your child, you must have left them in dirty nappies and nothing but an old loaf of bread to eat as they fend for themselves while you go off to find their ‘new daddy’? There is often a perfectly capable dad running the show at home, but this is rarely recognised – you know, aside from the capable dad who will want a parade upon your return because he’s done such an exemplary job of running the household.

  What I don’t want to tell the taxi driver (but am more than happy to tell you because I feel like after all we’ve been through, we could become good friends), is this: Yes, I may go away regularly; yes, I might take work trips, or have the odd evening out. But despite my resolve to go, my gung-ho opinions about making it work and how important it is, I always, always end up missing my daughter so much that I often cut short my trips to get back home to her. And no matter where I am in the world, the minute I enter my hotel room, the first thing I unpack is her yellow little rubber ducky which I place by the edge of the bathtub, to remind me of home and the little cherub who is the most important thing in my life. That’s motherhood for you.

  How important is taking time out for yourself?

  A conversation with Marie Rowland, psychologist and director of Talking Matters (talking-matters.com)

  We all know ‘me time’ is essential for mums, but gee it helps when an experienced psychologist backs you up on that (and gives you something concrete you can show your partner before you duck out for a well-deserved girls’ night out). ‘Taking time out for yourself is not only vital for you, but essential for the wellbeing of the whole family because a happy mummy often means a happy home,’ says Rowland. ‘As women, we continually put ourselves on the bottom of the list, but we need to ensure the relationship we have with ourselves is as robust as the ones we have with all the others who drain us of our time and emotional resources.’ Men, you will have noticed, don’t often suffer from this problem, and we’d do well to take a leaf from their book. ‘Men have an innate sense that they need their own time-out for sports or a drink with friends – retaining a sense of self is important to them.’ Great! We’re showering and getting changed as we speak, so how do we go about alerting the kids to the new house rules? Apparently, it’s as simple as reminding children of their place in the world. ‘When it comes to family hierarchy, kids often feel like they are on top of the pyramid, partly because parents make them feel like this,’ says Rowland. ‘It’s the job of the parents to create firm boundaries so that time and space in a home is allocated – kids need to respect that there is more to their mum’s life than them.’ Rowland’s best tip for this? For parents to call each other by their respective names or a term of endearment (not mummy and daddy), that they only use for each other – this coding system informs the children that they occupy more than one role. ‘More than anything, women need to remember they are not just mum, partner, colleague or friend – they are people in their own right and they need to keep their pre-family identities intact.’

  Marie’s tips on how to get more ‘me time’ in your life

  1. All mums should give themselves permission to do nothing – yes, nothing. This is something with no reward or outcome attached to it. Sometimes even exercise (which we do for our health) can feel like an obligation – one of the things on the endless to-do list.

  2. Enjoy your ‘me’ time and get rid of the guilt – have a coffee by yourself; sit out in the sun or do a crossword or a Sudoku puzzle – studies show that doing things for their own sake such as daydreaming or playing a game have enormous health benefits to do with wellbeing and feeling calm.

  3. Prioritise your time in the same way you would a client or job task – so put yourself into your diary. Make an appointment with yourself that you cannot break. Whether it is a dance or yoga class, a pedicure or the monthly dinner catch-up with the girls – pop them in your diary along with immunisation appointments, parent–teacher meetings and client sessions. As women we tend not to prioritise ourselves, but this weekly exercise is a hands-on way of valuing ourselves and our time. Consequently, we become more valued by those around us and we reduce tension and any residual resentment.

  4. Keep a family diary – in this way each member of the family including mum gets free time and everyone knows this is non-negotiable.

  5. Even if it is for just five minutes, build time into each day to stop in your tracks and consciously breathe, stretch out and reboot physically. This makes you body-aware and able to assess if you are storing tension. It also allows you to slow down and find an equilibrium before you jump on that treadmill again.

  I buy loads of useless crap to compensate for my many failures

  I blame everything bad that’s happened in my life on Teddy Ruxpin, the talking bear. Oh sure, some might remember him as an innocent 80s icon, right up there with the Rubik’s Cube and Choose Life T-shirts. Me? I remember that furry little bear as the bastard who stol
e my childhood. It’s a big call, I know, but to fully explain myself, I need to take you back to suburban Sydney, 1986, where every kid, in my school appeared to have a brand-new Teddy Ruxpin. Every kid, it would seem, but me. And oh, how I wanted one. It sounds creepy, but I dreamed of his furry little mouth reading me bedtime stories from the audio tape nestled in his belly and I begged my parents for one at every opportunity – to no avail.

  Now, the bears weren’t cheap, something like a hundred-odd dollars, which was a lot of money back then. But this was not the problem; my father disliked the bear for the simple fact he believed its futuristic audio capacity took all the supposed fun out of being a child. ‘You have a great imagination and can create much better dialogue with your regular dolls,’ he would say. Regardless, every birthday and every Christmas, I still held out hope; but I never got the bear and here’s the clincher – I never got over it, either. Now I am a 30-something wife, mother, journalist and author – by all accounts a fairly upstanding citizen of the world, but to this day, Teddy Ruxpin still plays a significant part in my life and it isn’t pleasant. All it takes is for someone to mention the toy in passing and I get all glassy-eyed and start recounting my memories like a war veteran as people tiptoe away from me at family get-togethers. I regularly work my man Ted into conversation, as in: ‘Oh hey, did you see that movie TED? Didn’t he remind you of the Teddy Ruxpin you never bought me, MUM?’ Or better yet, ‘Could you please pass the salt . . . and would it have killed you to buy me a fucking Teddy Ruxpin bear, YOU HEARTLESS MACHINE? THAT’S IT! I’M OFF TO DO SOME HEROIN!’ Kick chair over, throw crystal vase across the room. Oh no, wait, that only ever happens in my head. Anyway, when I had Cella, I decided I would never let my child want for anything like I lusted after that bloody bear. A mistake? Absolutely, but I just didn’t know it yet.