Be careful what you quip for

It may surprise you endlessly to hear, but I find that if I open my mouth to speak at any time ever, it generally results in something sarcastic verbally tumbling out of it. There are many fables and sarcastic legends on which motherhood draws cosmic power, and together, they create a collective wad of go-to sayings that we universally acknowledge as our language.

‘So the cleaning fairy is going to take care of that, is she?’ 

‘If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times.’

‘No, go back and have a Mum Look.’

You chuckle, you nod your head in unison, and you go about your day pleased with the knowledge that someone else is as tired and close to losing their shit as you.

I was secure with having the warm blanket of sardonic banter as my default setting. Predictable, stable, reliant.  I was not, at any point during my induction to the parenting world, shown the fine print in which it states that sarcasm has an expiry date. 

But it does. 

At some point, it simply wears off and you find yourself in a land where statements formerly known as exaggerations and satire, are now just hard core facts.

Without warning, without hesitation, they roll out in an almost self-predicted destruction mission. What once was funny, is now just your sad existence. Facts. Real life. Actually happening now. 

‘Do I look like I can juggle thirty things at once?’ You spit in anger. They won’t giggle and apologise as you successfully make your exasperated point. The second the words leave your lips, a child will nod and hurl item number thirty at your head.

Start counting how many times a week you ask for those shoes not to be left by the front door. You’d clock a thousand by Tuesday. 

Don’t even bother telling them to go back for a Mum Look. You know, as well as I do, that you have roughly two minutes left before you’ll be standing at the bedroom door pointing out where the elusive invisible jacket is, because Mum Vision is real and they don’t possess it.

And, plot twist, there is a cleaning fairy returning to do those dishes.  You just haven’t grown the wings yet.

It was becoming increasingly concerning that my sarcasm was vengefully betraying me in an almost Game of Thrones sized manner.

Every day, the turnaround time become faster. I would mockingly retort how lovely the pink cupcake icing would look on the carpet, as a child wandered into the room, almost instantly dropping it. (I honestly stopped using ‘you’d lose your head if it weren’t attached’, in genuine fear for their safety.)

I don’t know where we went wrong, Sarcasm and I. We were so happy. We worked so well. How could Sarcasm do this to me? Just turn away from me like what we had was nothing? I gave Sarcasm the best years of my life. Bastard. 

I tried to do what all girls do when our heart is breaking. I obviously ate my body size in expensive ice-cream and attempted to find a rebound fling. 

The well of opportunity in pitiful drought, left me with only Reality to engage with. Reality was fine, I guess. Not as attractive and exciting as what I had with Sarcasm, but it was something to try.

I had flirted with it occasionally over the years and had given the false impression I was interested. Reality had done everything within its power to try and interact with me, so I told myself it deserved a chance at a rebound fling, at the very least. 

But alas, how I longed for my time with Sarcasm. I missed the comfort of it. I had known Sarcasm since I was a teenager. Reality had only entered the scene when I was in my early twenties and found out about things like mortgages and superannuation. 

I couldn’t lie to myself, my heart would only ever belong to Sarcasm.

It was when Soccer Hubby found himself on an operating room gurney with a near-severed thumb recently, that I tried to win Sarcasm back. 

‘How many kids do you have?’ a nurse asked, as I nervously tapped the linoleum of the recovery room floor.

‘Three,’ I blinked at her, on complete auto pilot. ‘Two daughters, and this clumsy idiot,’ I nodded towards Soccer Hubby, essentially drunk dialling Sarcasm to see if it still liked me. The nurse laughed, nodded in agreement, and scuttled away with her clip board.  

It was exhilarating. Sarcasm and I were practically back together, at long last. The OG crew. Soulmates reunited. 

The next morning, in my post husband-is-a-child Sarcasm tryst glow, I went about the daily routine. I prepared breakfast for my two kids and the now one-handed, arm cast clad Soccer Hubby. I cut up Soccer Hubby’s food for him. I helped all three of them dress. I lined all three of them up and brushed their hair into three neat little ponytails...Wait...

Oh god.

It was over. It really was over. Sarcasm had left me. Worse still, it left me with Reality. My first true love, was obsolete. 

‘Muuuuum,’ called my eldest from three rooms away. Maps and geography books sprawled across her floor as usual, she ran her pen along the streets of a London tube map ‘where exactly is the Tower of London?’

The youngest, pony tail still in my grip, rolled her eyes and responded in a course whisper ‘perhaps the answer is in the question, genius.’

My friends, enjoy your time with Sarcasm. Enjoy the thrill of satire and opulent distance it creates between yourself and the brisk chill of fact. Revel in the lovely grey area of fun and fiction that it comically blurs for you.

For one day, it will leave you for a much younger woman in a pony tail.

@sendhelpandcoffee