The Week That Was

This week was a familiar one. Like an old sweater that you retreat underneath in well acquainted ease, it was a week like so many other over-worn ones.

This week was a Motherhood Fail Write Off.

What I had tried to contain to an event… to an evening… to a day… to a 48 hour period, had spread its curse across me and left me slumped upon the floor in defeat, wondering where exactly it all went so wrong. The answer, of course, being the second I had opened my eyes.

Our story opens on a sun strewn Saturday morning;    

My youngest, who had been ill, had made a miraculous turn around by the early hours and was insistent that she join the family on our weekly pilgrimage to the soccer pitch. Personally, I felt that she (and her exhausted mother) should perhaps rest more, but I was too tired to argue with the family and a six year old wielding toast.

I had been up all night holding said six year old’s little face over a vomit bag and had barely dragged myself to the car with my cold coffee in hand on time. (It wasn’t until midday that I also realised only one eye had mascara clad lashes and I had been clicking about looking like the poster for Clockwork Orange.)

The miraculousness blessing of her recovery expired the moment our car hooked into the parking spot at soccer. Shit hadn’t just hit the fan, vomit had hit the headrest.

One was now proper sick. One was proper late for pre-game warm up drills. Both sat gingerly in the back seat looking at me for further instruction as to where to go from here.

It is at this point that parenthood throws us onto the Australia’s Got Talent stage and expectantly prods us with ‘Okay, show us what you’ve got here’.

Throwing the one wearing the soccer kit at her father, and speeding away from the scene with the one vomiting, I would soon be faced with the following facts;

a)      I had dragged a sick child to a public soccer pitch

b)      I had missed my eldest child’s first goal hat trick and what I am being told, was the best game she’d ever played.

c)       Burning the car would probably still not rid the stench of vomit from its seats.

I had failed to provide adequate maternal support to one and adequate maternal care to the other.

Regardless of how I turned the hindsight, my inability to physically snap myself in two like a flimsy BFF charm, and be permanently represented in two places at once, made me feel incompetent as a mother.

There is a nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach that reminds me daily of that continued ineptness. It surges through me each time I miss a school event because of work. When I shift one child’s hobby to the side because the other’s is scheduled in first. When I look at the clock and realise the afternoon time I promised them is cancelled because, regardless of my attempts to use The Force, dinner isn’t going to cook itself.

Slightly more annoying, it’s a feeling that doesn’t make itself exclusive. Like a contestant on The Bachelor, it likes to sample a bit of everything.

When I break dinner dates with friends because I have to help a nine year old write a school report on bugs. When I have to beg my parents, again, to pick the children up from school because I’m running late. When I want to offer my employers more time from a schedule that has none to spare.

I spend the majority of my lifespan wanting to offer everyone 110% of my ability, while in my coffee-fueled reality, I’m barely surviving on 12% myself.

Yes, it’s a feeling that I know well.

It clung to me like a mist and filled every breath I took as I kissed both my little brunettes farewell later that week, and set off on what was to be a quick out of town work venture. Given the proximity, it had seemed like an excellent idea to stay overnight at my older brother’s house. I could catch up with family and cross off some work all in one hit, the only price being leaving my children behind.

On one hand, the joy of staying overnight in a peaceful slumber that would remain uninterrupted was enough to bring tears to my eyes. On the other hand, the bitch of emotional responsibility was churning my stomach. I could feel the maternal guilt rising in the back of my throat.

Wait. Was that maternal guilt? It certainly filled the criteria. I felt anxious, my thoughts were scattered. I was nauseous and…. No. Sorry, I was wrong. It was just actual vomit.

I had inherited my daughters vomit bug.

Ordering my brother and sister-in-law to banish me to a quarantine where the atmosphere was predominately Glen 20, I was still ignorantly convinced that I could make it to work come morning, and drive the hours home to my role as Mummy by that evening. All I had to do was ride it out the night, nap it off quickly and patch it with some Panadol and an expresso. I’d be grand.

Perhaps, in a different adventure series, that would have been so. But, at this particular junction in time, I was days without sleep or self-care and existing solely on a diet of drive through coffee. For all this effort, I was gifted the bonus round of severe dehydration.

Siri, Alexa and Google combined couldn’t even help me now.

My intended uninterrupted slumber was swiftly replaced with a hospital stay and several attempts to stab un-caffeinated fluid directly into my veins.

Unfit to drive (or function in general) I was stranded away from my children. They were receiving zero of me. My employer wasn’t totally sold on the idea of having me vomit on them during my shift and also opted for the zero. My parents, charged with the care of my children in my absence, were now on their own with the joy of sick grandkids and, you guessed it, zero Dee attendance.

To be fair though, my brother and sister-in-law, divine protectors and care givers, were getting way more of me than they had ordered.   

I was rendered incapable of parenting. Or any act of general human-ing.

I wasn’t in two or three places at once. I was barely in one.

The week was a familiar one. The week was a fail. A write off.

But you know what? Sometimes, more often than not, that’s just what parenthood fucking is.

The downside of parenting is our realisation that we are inevitably not going to be there every time. The curse of parenting is our burning emotional desire to want to be.

The virtue of our parenting demise, is the level of expectations we put on ourselves to still try.