I frantically speed away from the curb outside my house, leaving my husband with his work bag in one arm and our five month old in the other before he’s even had a chance to catch his breath from working all day. I’m just looking for a little peace, but it’s hard to find with a baby. I turn the radio off and as I get stuck in road work, I realize that for once I don’t mind the delay.
I’m sure I don’t need to say how much I love my son and husband. My baby is the most adorable little man who is generally very happy, but he has just discovered how to make a high pitched noise much like the whine from an old monochrome computer screen, only louder and far more irritating. My husband is a dedicated father and an amazing husband. I cannot imagine my life without him.
There is therefore a good deal of guilt as I make my getaway and head to school over an hour before I need to: “I shouldn’t be running away like this”; “my poor husband has been at work all day and hasn’t even taken his shoes off yet”; and of course “if I loved my son more I would want to be with him all the time, wouldn’t I?”.
I have no idea what to do since school doesn’t start for ages, so I pull into the mall parking lot and head for the coffee shop. As I sit there, slowly drinking a tea and savouring a chocolate treat without my son’s tiny hands to grab everything to put in his mouth, I started thinking about a moment in my childhood.
My mum was a single parent with two girls. She tells me we were good kids. We did what we were told and played quietly; yes there was fun and squealing and running, but only when it was appropriate. It has always bugged me that my mum would pack us up into the car, drive to my Auntie Tina’s house and tell us to “go play”, shooing all five of us children into another room. I liked peace and quiet as a child and hated this since the other four children were so loud. I longed to sit at the kitchen table with my mum and aunt as they drank tea and ate biscuits. Anytime I tried to sit there quietly with them, my mum would shoo me away again.
Back in the coffee shop I glance over at the table next to me and see three women with a baby. As the two friends coo over the baby and wiggle her legs I think about how sweet it is there is a baby there and suddenly realize I’m having one of those moments where I don’t think of myself as a mother, I think of myself as me. I glance down at my mostly eaten chocolate treat and I realize that perhaps, regardless of how quiet I was or could be as a child, my mum just needed a few moments of child free time, time when she was herself, not a mum.
I head back to my car finally understanding where my mum was coming from on all of those afternoons so long ago. I wish I could go back in time and give her the adult time she wanted, the time she deserved. I make a promise to get out by myself more so that I can be me, not me as a mother or wife, but just me; after all, my son won’t understand my need for child free time at the kitchen table with a good friend, some biscuits, and a pot of tea anytime soon.
