Learning: Back to school

My first real day home alone I spent a good 20 minutes just sitting on the couch staring into space.  It has been years since I have spent any time on my own since having the girls and I have completely forgotten what I love to do, how to be, when no one else is looking.  That is not to say that when i am with them there is a show, but I am aware of their gaze, of their need to see me and be seen by me.  The same goes for afternoons home with my husband.  I am aware of everyone's need to be adored, cared for, and giving it, adoration, is by now, second nature.  Perhaps I should not say "by now."  Whomever finds themselves in my circle will be loved and adored and cared for.  It is what I do.  It is as sincere as it is a defensive mechanism, so much a part of my survival that it is me, even if I wished it were not so. 


I got on the elliptical trainer for 45 minutes while I read an article in Vanity Fair.  I hadn't intended to work out for so long, but the article i was reading was rather long and interesting and there was no one to interrupt me to ask for something, plead for something, need for something.  I showered, did my French studies, ate an apple without sharing it or cutting off the skin.  I did miss Virginie.  She is a wonderful companion, chatty, intelligent, interesting, oh so funny.  Her liquid brown eyes veiled by a brush of gorgeous eyelashes that flutter when she blinks just draw me in.  We'd had fun since she'd started moving about and playing with me but lately I could see that she needed more stimulation, activities, conversations, and games that I could not offer.  She needed to be with her contemporaries and away from her fuddy old mom.  And her fuddy old mom needed to find a place for herself in the world again.


I am having a bit of an identity crisis.  Having seen artists much maligned during my young life, I have had a hard time admitting that my life's work, my true passions have been in the arts.  There was little respect for the arts and creative people unless they were in the big time, and then, Yay artists!  The dancers, painters, actors, voice actors with whom I have shared space know how I have thought, felt, and lived.  I was lead to believe that being an artist, choosing it or having the spirit choose you, was frivolous and careless and certainly impractical.  There is a selfishness to artmaking, however, that is hard to reconcile with being a full time mother.  For me, it has truly been one or the other and for the past few years, motherhood and mommying has taken over. 

In the quiet of the house, I am considering myself again, trying to give voice to the me that is not Mommy and Wife.  I am a little afraid, quite anxious.  Once my mind is allowed the freedom, I wonder how I will be able to juggle the two roles.  Sure that the unleashed beast will have to be tamed.  This morning, on the third day of school this week, Virginie screamed for me as I was leaving, something she had not yet done, and it threw me.  I immediately felt that I was pushing her too soon, too quickly, too much.  She'd said she loved school, the kids, the toys, the aunties.  But she did act out in swimming lessons yesterday as though she needed to control her situation, maybe punish me for leaving her at school days before.  Maybe she just needed a little more time with me this morning.  Maybe I don't have to be so hard on myself.

Today I will embrace the solitude of the morning.  Not just the quiet, but the possibilities.  I have always heard from women, mothers, grandmothers, aunties that I cannot lose myself in family life or years from now I will resent what I'd missed of myself.  I am working on it, struggling through.  It's like learning how to do simple tasks again with the aim of gaining independence and becoming not only a role model for the kids, but someone I could love too.

(c)  Copyright 2011.  City Mom in the Jungle.