Nasty nostalgia and the new life crisis

It can strike at any time.  When you’re driving in your car.  Or, for me, more often around 8.30 at night when I’m elbow deep in washing up water, while the microwave dings to announce that my frozen peas are ready and the washing machine fill cycle gurgles away in the background.  Nostalgia.  A wistful desire to return to a former time or place.  In my case, to the time before my gorgeous baby boy came along and altered not only my physical state, but my emotional, financial and social states as well. 

I’ve heard plenty of parents say that becoming a mother or father has changed them for the better.  It has helped them to realise that they are not the most important person in the world, or at least not anymore.  It makes them less selfish, more patient, more generous; which are all lovely attributes in a human being.  And all this from simply spending less time thinking about their own wellbeing, and more time looking after their child’s.  

Well, you might as well stone me right now, because I’m here to say that motherhood seems to have had the reverse effect on me!  I’m calling it my ‘new life crisis’.  We’ve had the mid life crisis and even the quarter life crisis, only this one isn’t brought on by reaching a certain age, but rather by grafting another life onto your own. 

Now that I have another human being to look after every hour of every day in every way, I have wrestled with my own life-changing thoughts.  Only problem is, instead of realising how selfish I was, I have been stung by nostalgia about how good my life used to be.  

Before you call the men in coats to lock me away, let me explain.  Having a child has made me realise that I have had the last 10 years of my life to myself.  I could do as I pleased, go where I pleased, when I pleased.  And now I belong to someone else.  Ok, not exactly an Einstein discovery, but a revelation nonetheless.  Having a baby has certainly made me re-evaluate my priorities, but instead of erasing my self-centredness, it has made me crave more of my own aspirations and desires than ever before.  

In this textbook case of new life crisis, I then get overcome by a feeling that I have wasted that time I had before.  Not realising the brevity of that stage of my life, did I fritter away weeks and years not really doing anything?  Not pursuing dreams that now seem so clear in my mind but so out of reach?  I could have been living it up like there was no tomorrow, taking extreme adventure holidays, working single-mindedly towards goals of career nirvana and world peace.

But here’s where nostalgia plays nasty tricks.  It distorts the past and fogs up reality to line up with your current mood.  And while doing the washing up late at night the mood usually isn’t too bright.  The reality is, in my twenties I DID do as I pleased.  I DID go on amazing adventures with amazing people.  I DID work hard to pursue dreams that I had at the time, even though they might not have led me to where I thought I’d be today.

As it turns out, the cure for new-life crisis is actually the same as the cause.  A new life has been started.  Both for my son and for me.  The self-prescribed treatment involves tackling this new direction as best I can with the tools I have at the moment, knowing all along that I might look back in another 10 years and wonder what on earth I was doing!  Life isn’t like Seinfeld, and there aren’t going to be any re-runs, so I’d better pay attention the first time around and leave the nostalgia in the past where it belongs.

Blessings can come in the strangest packages

This week some strange things happened in our house. Not in a ghost-in-the-attic, Round The Twist kind of way. Each event was not even particularly remarkable on its own, but coming as they did, one after another, they eventually made me sit up and take notice.

It began when my office phoned to let me know about some extra work I might be interested in. After hours, they said. Possibly able to be done from my home computer, they said. As much or as little as I could fit in around my day-to-day mothering duties. I was thrilled and accepted right away. Not exactly mind-blowing, but still enough to make me a wee bit excited for the extra money I would be contributing to our single income family.

On Monday evening an informal jam session had been arranged with one of the singers from our church band. Just a casual practice at our place to go over a song that needed work. Our guest arrived and let herself in, walking into the kitchen carrying a container full of freshly made minestrone, still warm off the stove. She hadn’t been invited for dinner. She had already eaten and so had we. It was simply an offer of food from one family to another because they had plenty to spare. The soup smelt amazing, and Tim and I were grateful for the gesture (who wouldn’t be!), and promptly froze it for another day.

Then one day in the afternoon mail, a cheque arrived for some freelance marketing work I had done back in February. It wasn’t a huge sum of money, nor was it out of the ordinary, since, like most people, I expect to be paid for work I have done. But I welcomed it with open arms and rejoiced again some more.

The next day, I was walking at the beach when my phone rang. It was another freelance marketing job for the same employer. It was an urgent project which required a 24 hour turnaround. Thankfully I had no appointments the following day so I was able to commit my time to it with no interruptions, except an 8½ month old baby, don’t get me started…

By now I was beginning to take notice of the favour which seemed to be following me around. It wasn’t usually like this.

A few days later, Tim phoned me from the doctor’s surgery, having gone to have some stitches removed from a wart which had been cut out. We expected to have quite a bill to pay, since the initial surgery and the biopsy of the wart hadn’t yet been accounted for. Tim was over the moon. It had all been bulk billed! Who knows if that’s usual practice, but we smiled down the phone lines at each other anyway.

Later that night the penny dropped that these blessings weren’t simply random events, but had actually come at a particular time when we really needed them. Last week I had been doing our banking online, looking at the funds not-available in our account. I had two phone bills which were due that day, but not enough money to pay them. Had we suddenly, or rather over several months, become what tabloid news refers to as ‘battlers’? Urgh! Right there, at my computer, all I could do was pray to God for help. We clearly needed some.

Now I don’t know whether to be more pleased by the string of events, or by the fact that God heard my prayers and intervened through situations I had not even considered worthy of a second thought.

A baby changes everything, including your clothes

What do salad dressing and baby spew have in common? They are both liquids. They are both related to the act of eating. They both also have a scientifically unproven talent for projecting themselves onto white silk shorts.

In my previous life as one half of a double-income-no-kids partnership, I freely purchased items of clothing as they appealed to me. The restrictions I placed on such items were few and flexible. Fit, budget and style factor were at the top of my list.

As if having a child hasn’t changed my life in enough ways already, I now realise that my clothes buying habits will also have to be altered. Last month’s shopping trip in Melbourne was the first one since the birth of my son, so naturally I was keen to try on anything that accentuated my waistline. Elastic-topped maternity jeans be gone! Since I had been living in stretchy yoga pants and any t-shirt old enough to be able to stretch over my baby belly, some high waisted white silk shorts presented themselves as the perfect candidate.

Looking back now, it must have been because my husband was looking after our son on said shopping trip, that I forgot that I am currently spending most of my days feeding, changing and bathing a spewy, dribbly, pooey infant. So I bought the shorts.

The first time I wore these magnificent, sumptuous shorts I was also hosting a BBQ at my house. I made all kinds of wonderful salads. And dressed them. With olive oil and soy sauce. And my shorts got in the way.

It could happen to anyone, I hear you laugh, if they are stupid enough to wear WHITE SILK shorts at a BBQ. But hey, the occasions to wear such precious items are significantly fewer these days. So, yes, I was wearing the white silk shorts.

Next stop: dry cleaners. A week or so later, having paid for my shorts to be fresh and white again, I lovingly brought them home and set them in the wardrobe, still in their plastic bag. The very next day I received a surprise phone call from my best friend, saying she’s flying up from Sydney for the day and wants to meet me for lunch.

It was perfect shorts-wearing weather, around 28° and sunny, and I donned my special shorts for only the second time as my son lay playing happily on his mat. Looking smashing, keys in hand, I scooped him up off the floor and onto my hip. As I headed for the door, his mouth opened and a cascade of vomit spilled over his lip and all over the two of us. Unobstructed by his denim overalls or my top, like a tiny white water rapid the vomit tumbled down all the way to my shorts.

I was so naive. Blinded and selfish even. Now I have one who cares nought for fine clothes and special occasions, but makes me smile more than those things ever could. Glamour is nothing. Practicality is everything.

If only the care label had read, “Do not wear in the company of small children”.

Crossing Over

I’ve crossed over. Not in the creepy John Edwards TV show psychic sense, but in the child-becoming-adult sense. I know, I know. Didn’t I pass puberty about 15 years ago? But it seems there was one last bastion of childhood still remaining. Now I am even an adult when it comes to Christmas.

My first Christmas with my son officially marks the end of me as one of the children on Christmas Day, having gifts and food lovingly showered upon me by my parents and grandparents, with not much needed from me in return. I always gave presents too, of course, but I belonged to the youngest generation, the one at the end of the line. Now I am a parent, and my son has taken my place, in fact the place of all my siblings, in receiving the fun, joy and deliciousness that we have prepared for him.

This year we hosted Christmas at our house, which further cemented the transition of my husband and I from beneficiary to benefactor. We had a huge shopping list, we decorated the table, we organised the drinks esky, we even cooked the meat. The MEAT! Talk about responsibility. It was wonderful! Perfectly crackled pork with juicy flesh and sweet apricot stuffing… Oh, yes, and the feeling of our new found responsibility was awesome too.

We give and receive presents every year like normal people; choosing, wrapping, stacking them under the tree. But this year was different. The only presents that mattered were the ones marked “to Seth”, which outnumbered all other relatives at a ratio of about 5 to 1. It didn’t matter what the present was, we all leaned forward eagerly awaiting the look of wonder and fascination to cross his face when he ripped into the paper to find what lay inside. Then he would hit it (his current exploration technique), and we would all laugh and feel happy and declare it to be the best Christmas ever!

As a kid you are completely oblivious to the machinations behind putting on a such big celebration. The planning, budgeting, shopping and cooking. But I’ve just realised that that’s what makes it special. How many times have we said that giving is better than receiving? Well, I think giving the event, the production of Christmas, is even more rewarding than giving actual gifts. A gift will be opened and admired, and you will be thanked. You will probably even receive one in return.

On the other hand, the experience of a beautiful day will be shared and remembered, and there is no need to repay you in kind because it’s impossible to do. Just a face full of smiles, and you will happily do it again and again because you can. And because adults get to do whatever they want.

When your newborn isn't new anymore

I feel fine. My skin has stopped glowing and my boobs have almost shrunk back down to their usual size. I don’t have bags under my eyes and my nails are starting to fall apart for no reason again. My pregnancy hormones seem to have now fully retreated whence they came.

The truth is, I’ve been feeling this way for about a month now, but sort of wishing I wasn’t. I now this sounds like I’m trying to have my cake and eat it too, but it’s a sobering thought to realise that my life has stopped being consumed by my new baby, and, like a gyroscope that always rights itself, I have now absorbed my son into my life so much so that I can’t remember what it was like before he was here.

While this is clearly a wonderful feeling, and I am relieved to have got to this stage, I’m also a bit sad that the daze of pregnancy and new-bornness is over. It affords you special status, where you can be excused for forgetting to do things or bursting into tears at any moment, because everyone knows you aren’t supposed to be able to cope. But now I’m past all that, and I’m back to just being myself. And I have to readjust to being myself again, because for 9 months I was two people, then when my son was born I became even less than one person, and now it’s just me again. With him. Still following?

I feel I am sliding quickly down the slope from the anticipated, media-hyped status as ‘new mum’ to the much more serious and rewarding, but less glamourous title of ‘parent’. Having been treading water happily in the roles of independent young woman, and then (still independent) wife for quite some time, this new transition seems to have happened way too fast. Because my son’s life is so short so far compared to mine, the ratio of change to days spent on earth is so much bigger. Instead of waking up and realising I’ve been in the same job for three years and only my hair colour has changed, I now wake up realising that Junior has gained three new skills that he didn’t have last week!

The key, of course, is to appreciate each stage as it happens. But clichés are easier said than done. Changes happen so quickly you can hardly keep up. At mothers’ groups around the world we lovingly compare each others rolling, crawling, walking and talking babies, wishing our own would start doing this or that, while at the same time nostalgically hanging on to those first few weeks when they were so fresh and dependent. The cure for this madness? Take one great night's sleep and count your blessings in the morning.

A mother of a decision

I don’t often receive nasty comments about the direction of my life. Not being in jail or on drugs or having a suitcase full of hateful ex-boyfriends, I’d have to say my life is pretty good. Sure, I’m not going to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry tomorrow and I haven’t written a bestseller (yet), but I think I’m doing OK at this thing called life. Not so! I found out this week, when two women from my past just couldn’t help but share their disdain at my latest endeavour, if you can call it that: the birth of my first child.

“What a waste [me] having a baby.” Pow! If that doesn’t knock you sideways you must be built like an Olympic weightlifter. I didn’t know that putting my reproductive organs to good use would actually cause the rest of my mind, body and soul to wither away into nothingness. Not to mention render invisible any great feats achieved during my first 29 years of life. I guess if I had read more of those pregnancy guides before I even got knocked up I would have found this out and maybe reconsidered my options.

But, not to worry, I had a few days to push this drivel to the back of my mind before the next gold nugget of unsolicited insults came my way. “You were such a smart girl.” Double pow! Did you know that giving birth diminishes long term brain function? Yeah, me neither. The nurse in the antenatal class must have forgotten to mention it.

Yes folks, like all humans, I’m not getting any younger. And yes, like many women, I was thrilled at the idea of starting a family of my own. So thrilled that I didn’t think about it for more than one second, didn’t consult my husband, didn’t mull over my possible career trajectory should I choose to remain sans bébé. I mean, who has time to think about all that stuff!

I know I’m not the first woman to come face to face with the dilemma of having a career and a family, but there’s nothing like being slapped in the face with it to make you suddenly take notice of what the female sex has been grappling with for over half a century now. I guess I am shocked that there are still those who somehow believe that you are a failure as an intelligent woman if you choose family over a career at some point in life.

In the dictionary, a career is defined as “an occupation or profession, especially one requiring special training”. Let’s stop right there. Not too many men I know have two of these going at the same time! So why should women be forced to feel inadequate just because they focus their attention on the occupation of motherhood whilst leaving paid work by the wayside? Of course, everyone knows that once you select your occupation, you can never change it. You’re stuck for life. Nobody ever decides to change direction or pursue a different career path... Hang on, sorry, my grandmother started typing there for a minute.