Veronica Foale

Author: Veronica Foale

  • Lost Identity

    The air grows cold around her, as she sits outside waiting. Waiting for something else, for something more. Waiting for inspiration to strike, for the nerve to enter her house again and willingly sink herself into chaos.

    A small shiver passes through her as she watches the swallows swoop and dive, a mating ritual as old as time. She looks at the sky and wishes for warmth and long hot days.

    Outside, she is nothing but herself. No one hiding in her clothes, no demands, no requests. She can be herself, without the suffocating needs of others, without having to mould herself into whatever is needed at the time. A mother, a partner, a nurse, a mediator, a lover. Here, she is herself.

    The rain starts, small drops dotting her shirt. She raises her head to the sky and looks at them as they fall, wondering where she went wrong, wondering what happened that she lost herself so badly.

    I was more than this.

    With the birth of her first child, her identity decreased a little. Strangers addressed her as Mummy and she smiled and nodded. Inside her head she screamed I have a name! I am more than Mummy! I am myself. Why have you forgotten that?

    A cry that women have uttered since the dawn of time.

    And still, even as she loses her identity, it is never enough. The world tells her what she is doing wrong with a cacophony of sound: you should have stayed home; gone back to work; read them more books; vaccinated; not vaccinated; played them classical music; done more. You’re doing it all wrong.

    Being their mother is not enough, the world demands more.

    She sits outside, her face turned to the rain.

    Just a little longer. I want to be me, for just a few more moments.

    As she heads inside again, she breathes deeply and tucks these moments away. These stolen moments that tell her I am more than this moment. I can do this, no matter that it feels like I am drowning.

    Allowing her to hold onto her sanity through the worst of times, these are the times she craves.

    She steps back inside and welcomes the chaos as it envelopes her.

  • A point of motherhood

    There comes a point as a mother, when the days are too hard and too long and you wonder how you’re going to get through them. When you stand under the shower and dread having to get out and look at the mess that was caused while you washed your hair and scoured the dirt from your fingernails (you selfish bitch).

    When you know that someone needs to take over, because if you yell anymore, you’re going to lose your voice and while the lack of yelling seems maybe preferable, then they go and do something else and TIME OUT screams out of your mouth before you can stop it and you’re left swearing at an empty room, while you clean up things, a-fucking-gain.

    When you wake up to an entire tin (a new tin) of drinking chocolate tipped on the floor, and the washing has been tipped out of the baskets so that the baskets can be used for climbing on, and paint is open on your computer one hundred times and you think that maybe some emails have been deleted, but you can’t tell and you wonder – how did all this happen while I was only 10 metres away? how silently does she move, so as not to wake me?

    You seriously consider putting locks on the kitchen taps, but how the fuck do you lock a tap and TURN THE GODDAMNED WATER OFF and you’re swearing and she runs away, not crying, but trying to avoid the yelling. Only she pulls all the insides out of the textas and draws on the walls with them and how many hours until bedtime?

    When you’re 3 steps behind her all day, trying to maintain the chaos while your head wants to explode and you kind of wish you owned a jumping castle (with a lockable door) so you could throw her in there and leave her to bounce off the walls, somewhere that wasn’t quite so destructive.

    And she sings the same 10 words over and over for 30 minutes until your head wants to explode and you snap and she screams at you BUT I AM TRYING TO SING and goes back to what she was doing and you wonder how the fuck you’re meant to get through this, why me? why us?

    And you want to run away, outside, with your camera maybe, or a block of chocolate and some ear muffs, so that you can’t hear the strangled screaming from inside the house when the children notice that you’re gone and want to hang around your neck. But you can’t, because the mayhem and destruction aren’t worth it.

    ***

    There is something I’m meant to be doing today, something nice, something that will save my sanity, by allowing me to sit with other mothers and drop the ball just a little while she fails to complete anything set in front of her. I don’t want to. I don’t want to take her out of the house because all I’ve done is yell and all she’s done is tip out drinking chocolate and upend bookshelves and hit her brother and destroy everything and send me insane.

    But I will wrestle her into the shower and I will force her to get dressed and have her hair brushed and get in the car and I will ignore the screams until eventually, we will be somewhere else and yet again, I won’t be getting anything done that needs doing, but I won’t be killing my children and that’s always a bonus, right? And the other mothers will recognise that tiny piece of insanity in my eyes and smile at us, knowing that they’ve been here too.

  • The too muchness of it all

    My daughter has Aspergers. It doesn’t matter that we don’t have a slip of paper with the words on it yet, I know.

    An official recommendation is made for assessment by an autism team and while I’m coping, it’s all a bit much.

    She bounces off the walls, sensory seeking, frantically jumping and leaping and running and falling and laughing too loud and too hard for too long. She avoids my eyes and runs away and hugs me like the world is ending, clinging to my shoulders, trying to scale me like a jungle gym.

    I drag her outside to jump on the trampoline and run and swing.

    It helps.

    For a while.

    The sun shines brightly, but the wind is cutting and while she doesn’t feel it, I do and I shiver as I push the swing.

    We check for eggs, she races around, she falls over and laughs.

    I read about autism and aspergers and remember Amy’s first year, a first year I’ve blocked out for my own sanity. A year of screaming, of arched backs, of refusing to be consoled, to breastfeed, to play.

    ***

    My son screams the scream of a frustrated toddler. He has wants and needs and I’m not meeting them fast enough.

    8 hours of tantrums later, a small giggle escapes him as I take time to tickle him.

    Two white points pushing through his top gum, two angry swellings on the bottom. Teeth. More of them.

    His tantrums continue, interspersed with happy chats on my lap.

    My head aches.

    ***

    My partner hurts his back and tries to drive me to an appointment the day afterwards.

    Half way to the city, his back seizes and he pulls over, stuck, screaming, in pain.

    20 minutes later an ambulance takes him to hospital, leaving me and the children behind, on the side of the road. Stranded; I don’t drive.

    My father-in-law and brother-in-law rescue us. I’ve never been so relieved to get home.

    My partner makes it home later that night, a prescription of painkillers in his hand.

    A week later he still can’t walk much, or move, or help around the house.

    ***

    It’s too much when my daughter bounces and screeches and my son screams and my partner winces and it feels like all the balls are up in the air, waiting to fall in a heap.

    It’s too much.

    And while I know it will be okay and our families are helping lots, it doesn’t help when I’m on my tenth tantrum and my eighth meltdown and no one can help.

    I’m overwhelmed and planning on spending a week in bed when this particular hell ends.

    With chocolate.

    A lot of chocolate.

  • Dreaming

    Sun shines and we’re sitting outside, sipping a margarita each and laughing. The tequila goes to my head, I’ve not drunk anything for months. Beside me, my daughter plays on the grass, just toddling and happy. She’s younger here and so am I. We don’t know what is ahead of us and in this moment, we are happy. My grandmother looks at me and smiles.

    A snippet of memory, dredged up.

    It changes.

    A birthday party. Laughter, good food, good company.

    I turn and look at my grandmother, there again.

    But, you’re dead. You can’t be here.

    She smiles at me and disappears. Crying, I wake up.

    ***

    I’m standing under the shower. It’s late afternoon and the air is chilling down. My shoulder is throbbing and my ribs are dislocated. Water streams down my body while I hug myself, desperate to hold my joints together for a little longer. The pain makes me retch.

    I’d been reading a Dick Francis novel before deciding more painkillers and a shower were a good idea.

    It’s funny the things that I remember from my childhood.

    Dick Francis novels and late afternoon showers at my grandmothers were a normal Sunday routine. Despite my partner peeling potatoes in the kitchen and the sounds of my children playing, I am 13 again,  standing under the warm water at my grandmothers, taking advantage of her running water – something we don’t have at home.

    A sharp squeal brings me back to the present, a present of pain and nausea and screeching children.

    The water washes away tears.

    ***

    They told me this would get better. Easier.

    Like everything else it seems though, it doesn’t get easier, it just gets different. It only takes something very small to send me back to that world of pain, where my heart aches and I am broken.

    I breathe and I smile and I live.

    But it’s not easier, it’s just different.

  • One foot and then another

    There is sand in my toes and my hair is tangled around my face, hanging free, dripping salt water everywhere.

    Again.

    It feels like a kick in the guts, like someone walking over my grave, a shiver, a shudder. I am surrounded by ghosts of might-have-beens and if-things-had-been-different. They tug at my clothes and my hair, flitting out of sight when I look too closely.

    ***

    You were meant to be here, helping with this.

    You weren’t meant to die.

    Everything is falling apart and you weren’t meant to be dead for this.

    Do you hear me? You weren’t meant to die and leave us to deal with this alone.

    ***

    One foot in front

    and then the other.

    Repeat, ad infinitum.

    It won’t get easier, but it might get different.

    I’m overwhelmed and unprepared for this.

    Even though it’s been coming

    for months

    for years.

    ***

    Things fly up and smack me in the face. I didn’t think of that. Why didn’t I ever notice that before?

    The world falls down around my feet and I’m walking, crushing everything and I don’t want to be.

    ***

    It’s cold outside, a veritable wasteland of winter. The rains come and everything turns green overnight, a stark change from the deathly yellow we saw last week. I want to sit in the sun and breathe in the smell of summer. I want to watch my children splash in water, to drip peach juice down my chin, to baby a garden through the hot weather.

    I want warmth and growth and the smell of hot grass and sweat.

    I want to lay on the grass and sob, to have the sun dry my tears as they leak from my eyes.

    Instead, it’s cold and icy. The wind cuts through me like a knife, leaving me jagged.

    And we are stuck inside again.