Children

Here’s my tether

by Veronica Foale on March 13, 2011

in Children,Life

“Can you get off me please? No, I can’t open that, no really, I can’t. Get off. Do you have to sit on me? Apparently so. Yes, I love you too, now can I have my hands back to type with? Yes, I can see that you want that, no, leave that cord alone, can’t you just stop wiggling, no, yes, okay, I’ll squeeze you, squeeeeeeeeze, there, are you feeling better? No? Yes? GOD.”

“I am trying to type this. I need to get this done, stop clinging to my leg, did you just lick me? 30 seconds, fortheloveofgod 30 seconds. I am busy, I need to write this email, yes, I can put music on for you, what do you mean you’re hungry? I just fed you. No, I will not make you a salad, you didn’t eat the last one. No screaming, GOD, no screaming, please, just let me write this email, I’ve been trying to write it for an hour. How am I meant to get anything done. No, stop pulling on my hands, stop it. Seriously, stop it. What do you want to eat? No, you can’t have a biscuit, or chocolate, and the only apple left is for school. No, I mean it, you can’t have the apple. Do you want a pear? No, we’ve run out of carrots and no, I can’t pick one from the garden, we’ve picked all the big ones.”

“Get off the bench, no really, get down. GET DOWN. Stop climbing. Okay? No, you can’t have the sugar, put the cocoa back, careful, that cup is going to fa… fuck. Yes, I know it smashed, I can see it. You, stop screaming. It’s FINE, it was an accident. I’ll clean it up. You really want a cup of cocoa? Okay, I can do that. Not that cup, okay, what about this one? No? This one? No? Do you want cocoa or not? In a cup with a lid? The puppy chewed all the lids. Oh god, stop screaming. The pink cup? Yes? Finally. You want a bottle? Okay, go and find it. No, it’s not on Daddy’s computer desk and DON’T TOUCH THAT BUTTO- fuck it.”

“Just drink it. No, don’t play in it, do you want me to take it away? No, I said, get your feet out of it! Just drink it. No, I don’t care that it’s had your feet in it, you could have thought of that. Your feet are clean anyway, well, they were, until 30 seconds ago. I still haven’t written this email and yes, you can sit on me, but oh, do you have to sit next to me? Yes, apparently so. Can you stop wiggling you’re going to dislocate my ribs – fuck it.”

“Yes, MyNanny died. Yes, we’re all sad and why did she die? Because she had cancer and she was very sick. Yes, I miss her too. Can we talk about something else now please?”

“Stop climbing in the cupboards, where did my computer chair go, god, why is it outside? And stop chewing things, you’ve eaten more of my chair than your breakfast. Do you want a sandwich? Yes? No? Stop dragging me everywhere, it hurts, no, here, hold my hand, but you’ve got to stop pulling. Do you want to play outside? On the trampoline? The swing? Something? ANYTHING? Go and get your ball, we’ll go outside. No, you don’t want to? No, we’re not watching a DVD, you need some fresh air.”

“Put your pants on, no, really, it’s cold, put some clothes on, here, I’ve gotten them out for you, you feel cold, yes, I know you’re cold, stop screaming, if you put clothes on, you’d warm up. Come back here, stop running away, you need a shirt on, jesus but does this ever stop?”

“Eat your lunch, no, please, eat. No, you can’t have milk, no, no bottles, have you actually eaten anything except my computer chair today?”

“I still haven’t written this email and I’ve got 100 things to do and I still need to cook dinner and yes, you can help me cut up the carrots … and crap, we’re out of carrots. Anyone want potatoes? And I forgot to get meat out of the freezer, but that’s okay, we’ll work something out, do we want fried rice? I’ve got a lot of rice and frozen peas and plenty of eggs. Yes, you can help me mix the eggs, but please don’t put your fingers in it… never mind, they’re healthy chooks anyway, I’m sure they won’t give you salmonella.”

“Don’t touch that button! FUCK. There went a day’s work. Please let it have autosaved, because god knows I haven’t been near it to press save lately and of course it hasn’t autosaved. A whole day’s work, gone. Yes, I love you too and you want to come up again? Sweetheart, I can’t carry you around, you’re too heavy for me. Go on, get down, stop clinging, I am putting you down, if you want a snuggle then we’ll sit down, but oh god, stop screaming.”

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Hard is relative

by Veronica Foale on November 23, 2010

in Children,Family,Me

‘That must be so hard’ they say, when I talk about daily life for us. The meltdowns, the screaming, the sensory overloads.

It must be hard.

And I think about it and well, maybe it is a little. But hard is relative and what’s hard for you, isn’t hard for me. This is daily life and I’m drawing on a wealth of experience and it’s not so bad.

Hard for me, is death and grief.

Not life.

My body falls apart and we add yet another diagnosis to my long string of them. A diagnosis that is ‘broken’ when all is said and done.

Maybe this is a little bit hard.

Maybe not. Maybe I’m just overwhelmed right now.

I created life. I gestated it and felt my body swell under my hands. When the time came, I panted and strained and gave birth to life, to a small human being who may just grow up to rule the world. We don’t know yet, life is full of infinite possibility.

I am God for these lives I created and expelled out into the world, the lives that makes mine so infinitely complicated. If I gave birth to them, I know that I am strong enough to mother them and bring them to adulthood.

This is not hard. This is a privilege.

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Disjointed, just a little.

by Veronica Foale on November 4, 2010

in Children,Family,Life

Blink. Blink. Blink.

I’ve been watching this cursor for two days now and wondering, have I lost my ability to string pretty sentences together?

I hope not.

—

Words scream around inside my head and the longer I leave them in there, the bigger they grow and the harder they are to get out.

So let’s see how we go.

—

My son has preliminary assessments to decide whether he is possibly autistic. The gatekeepers – perfectly lovely women in their own right – appear to be there solely to decide whether I am being a hypochondriac on behalf of my son. They seem a little shocked when I am able to use their jargon and we discuss his inability to transition and his burgeoning echolalia.

His red flags are raised and waved high and we walk out knowing that he will be assessed for autism, that he is (very definitely, likely, probably) possibly on the spectrum.

After we leave, I wonder at their reaction to the language I used.

Doesn’t every parent learn how to speak medicalese when advocating for their children?

Apparently not.

—

I have immaculate conceptions, two of them and now they walk around, demanding things and shrieking at me. A doctor tells me I am very lucky to have conceived on my own without help, that my uterus is very likely broken, a desolate wasteland of stuff that isn’t babymaking friendly.

We organise to run tests and I leave, feeling like maybe I wasn’t insane after all.

At the same time, my body contracts and I realise just how badly I want a third baby and just how unlikely that is going to be without assistance.

But we’ll tread that path when it slams us in the face.

—

My plants grow and thrive and I spend a lot of time hiding in my garden – yes, the children may be outside with me, but fences separate us and my son does his whining and clinging somewhere that isn’t my leg. This leaves me space to breath as I coax a bean plant straight here and twine a pea shoot around a string. Tomatoes in seedling boxes need poking every few hours, how on earth can they be expected to grow without me checking on them?

I breath in the smells of warm dirt inside temporary hot houses and wish that summer were here. I am so sick of being cold.

I suspect my plants feel the same way.

—

My writing feels disjointed, which seems to suit my life right now. A mess of everything, being clashed together into a jumble and I’m left trying to make sense of some of it. Grief runs underneath everything, a dark tow threatening to pull me down into the dark.

Instead I make beds and wish for warmth and long hot days outside getting my hands dirty.

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Lost Identity

by Veronica Foale on October 4, 2010

in Children,Fiction,Writing

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.

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A point of motherhood

by Veronica Foale on September 22, 2010

in Children,Family,Life

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.

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