motherhood shadows

and crying again at school gates

I have become obsessed at going through all my photos and finding the shadows.

I don’t remember taking any of these images, but they mean so much to me…. because within motherhood there is so much light and so much darkness.

motherhood shadows

This morning I cried at another school gates. I’ve cried at so many, internally and externally, throughout my life.

This time I was watching my 11year old queue up for his first morning at a new school, for an induction. This will where he goes to secondary school, which felt so far off a few months ago, but now it feels so close in an almost hostile way, pulling my child away from me with it’s September current.

You wait so long for them to go to school, for then there is less pressure on you as a parent… you have some time in the day to do your own thing – you go to work, you go to the gym, you pay the bills and tidy the sitting room and wait for pick up time for the chaos to begin again the house to be full and noisy and fights about the remote control or beyblades or who gets to have a shower first or choose which song or have the one remaining Cornetto.

You wait for them, you collect them, you tend to them, you need them as much as they need you.

But with secondary school there is an expectation that the parenting backs off a bit.

They know what homework they have, they learn their own new language. You may step inside the school gates once or twice a year for parents evenings to be told things about your child that you would never know if you hadn’t got that one ten minute slot to talk to the teacher who spends more hours with your child per week than you do…who sees your child in an environment that you can’t envisage anymore because when you went to secondary school, it was so fucking traumatic you’ve blocked it all out.

me at 11, the same height I am now.

The teachers and their peer group, the school halls and lockers and the nuclear baked beans in the cafeteria – the yawny commute…. Most of their day is beyond you, out of reach – unintentionally kept secret from you: the parent.

I will matter less. He won’t need me to pack his school bag or hold his hand on the way – he’s on his own path, he has his own plans.

I want that for him, but my heart fucking aches already at the thought of it.

These past few weeks I’ve homeschooled him, and it’s been glorious. We’ve created our own special routine. he’s memorised Shakespeare and the Blackalicious alphabet and we’ve drawn and gone on runs in the woods. We’ve become friends.

I regret not doing it sooner. I’ve learnt new words with him, watch him play, read to him, done nothing with him. I’ve had unencumbered, uninterrupted time with just one child - something which is rare once you have multiple, sacred time I knew I’d be sacrificing as I had more children.

Yet I wanted more. I still want more.

This morning I stood with countless other parents – mainly mothers – as we encouraged our not so little ones to move forward and get into a line. In that line were children who will be in his life not just for secondary school, but very possibly in his memories forever.

I still think about girls I knew at school, but never saw again after GCSE’s. I still think about boys I knew at school, who I kissed or was rejected by or who actively disliked me. I still think about the cafeteria menu and the gum in the lockers and the heavy stepped walk from the station to the front gates. I can still smell the acrylic art room and the hall, feel the cold of the wooden floor on my ass where we sat for agonisingly dull assemblies.

I remember getting told off for hiding a Furby in my desk. I remember a girl in year 7 telling me she tried to kill herself in the locker room with a skipping room and feeling jealous that she was intelligent enough to know darkness before I did. I feel the pain and self-loathing of what was beneath my school uniform: my newly pubescent body, my budding breasts and pubic hair and the confusion of it all as I looked in the grimy, graffitied mirror in the toilets.

Year 7.

A mother standing next to me this morning told me she recognised me. She said “sorry, I’m starstuck”. I felt sick because I feel like such a failure. Did she know about Only fans or is she a Harry Potter fan. God forbid she’s read my novel or this substack. I replied “I’m just trying not to cry”. We had a brief chat about how all the children were so tall, as my youngest child – my baby – kept shouting about my boobs, putting his hand down my top.

“booby, booby, booby” he kept singing, like “Ruby, Ruby, Ruby” by the Kaiser Chiefs.

It was strange as he hasn’t tried to put his hands down my top for months, since I told him he wasn’t allowed to after my boob job. But perhaps he sensed that I was longing for my eldest son - and needed to feel needed, was so pathetically desperate to shout out I LOVE YOU to him as he was led off in his line – he knew it would be appropriate at the moment – completely appreciated at that moment – for him to pretend to be a baby again, who needed milk and constant skin-to-skin, anywhere and everywhere.

I watched my son in the line walk off until I couldn’t see him anymore, and then I hovered for a bit, waiting for him to run out maybe? waiting for him to say - it’s all a joke - i’m not growing up, don’t worry! but he didn’t, and I traipsed back to my car with my baby, with his hand in my top, pathetically.

Other parents hovered too. I was glad about this. They must be feeling it too. I’m not alone. I’m not weaker. I’m not more broken. All of us seemed unsure of what to do with ourselves.

I caught one parent taking a photo of her daughter through the gates which, for a second, made me jealous. My son would not have wanted a photo, would not have allowed a photo. He already has his own opinions about photos, his own image. I respect that, while wishing I had more photos, even though I know that I don’t really look back anymore at photos anyway because they make me too sad.

Still, I like having them there, knowing I have evidence of my life in all it’s phases in the cloud.

In the car, I sighed heavily.

My little one asked what was wrong. I said “I’m going to miss him while he’s at his new school” and he asked “will you miss me too?” and then began his weekly petition to not go to nursery. We reached a compromise and he was allowed to watch Bluey for the 10-minute drive, and he re-iterated that he would need a lollipop AND milky-way stars for when I pick him later.

There was the same drama as usual when I dropped him off, but I didn’t mind.

In fact I was grateful to him for making a fuss over me – I indulged the third and fourth hug before I left and the nursery workers did their best to conceal their pity and annoyance at me.

I’m not equipped for this, I thought, as I drove home to my empty house.

I’m not strong enough to not have another baby. I want to do it all over again, and again, and again, but I know I can’t.

I am scared of what I will be confronted with when I’m not pregnant, breastfeeding or tending to a toddler.

When I got home I read my book.

Right now, I’m reading Motherhood by Sheila Heti. this but struck me, hard:

“There is a feeling I have of life standing by, twiddling it’s thumbs, waiting for me to have a child. I have sensed it creeping over my skin – the sensation of life tapping it’s foot, waiting for me to give birth to a child who could only be given birth to through me. sometimes I feel there’s a specific human life I’m denying – actively and selfishly denying – if I don’t have a baby.

…

If I accept the idea that there is a creature waiting to be born through me, and it’s not some vague guilt about my abortion, then I become calm. Then it seems ike the main thing about motherhood is letting another creature come through you, whose life is entirely it’s own. A child is not a combination of you and your partner, but a reality all it’s own, separate and unique – a distinct point of consciousness in the world. I don’t think this was something I ever felt – that my body, my life, belonged to me.”

*

I’ve promised myself I will try 6 weeks on antidepressants.

I’ve been deliberating if I should go on medication for years, since my brother died in 2019, and then more seriously since my youngest was born and we encountered a series of unfortunate events as a couple, all of which I’ve over-documented on our podcast.

To be honest I was mainly worried about the side effects. It’s no secret that I’m vain. I like my hair and skin and my weight and didn’t want any of these things to change – and I assumed any medication would affect these things.

For so long I’ve been negative. I think I’ve been negative forever; I joke that I was a miserable child. I think I was, really. My baseline feeling when I wake up is “doomed”. I don’t remember waking up and feeling excited or content, apart from the 36 months in which I’ve been pregnant in my life.

Sometimes I wonder how many women there are like me out there, who feel this pull to pregnancy almost every second of the day. I am consumed by it and my career has been arguably been ruined by it.

Maybe by the time the medication kicks in, and when September comes round, I’ll be more able to keep my shit together at the school gates.

thanks for reading xox