I don’t
mean to sound like a jerk, but I kind of am a single mother. I mean a Solo
Mother. I have a person in the picture. He does show up every other weekend. He
does pay the mortgage and bills. But there are only, on average, when you count
the sick days, around 18 waking hours per week where I am not looking after my
kid. Solo.
There are a
lot of us out there, I know.
But I also
know that when I am around my friends — a couple with two kids, for
example — and I observe how they negotiate who does what, I am sad.
And when I
pick up the Guppins from part-time daycare and there’s some dad guy, a young,
strong, healthy male, picking up his kid, I kind of want to murder somebody.
Some days. Some days I am just a jerk who feels sorry for herself, even though
I know these days are fleeting. Are numbered. I know how joyful it is…being the
only mom picking her kid up at daycare on a bike with a European kidseat that
sits between you and the handlebars, a novelty in this small town. I enjoy riding
her home in this car town, singing, observing the old houses, and painting our
life together. But fuck it’s hard.
And because
of this hardness, I am making mistakes.
In a rare
moment of meditative bliss, while my kid was at daycare (an incredible
place…one of the bonuses here), I came to hear Jian Ghomeshi interviewing
Marina Abramovic. My ears perked. She is the hugely infamous performance artist
who did The Artist Is Present at the
MoMA.
In it, she
sits across from whomever will sit across from her, silently, for hours days
weeks months on end. Exhausting. What I wouldn’t do to be the one who gets to
sit and relate with humanity for a hundred years. To be engaged, present,
visceral.
And she is
performing The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic at the Luminato Festival in Toronto right now. Which I won’t get
to see. Because there is no room for that.
Should I be
trying harder to make room?
She is
speaking to Jian, now, on Q, about
suffering and artistic purpose. He asks, “Do we really have to suffer to make
art?”
She
responds swiftly with, “Give me the names. Of those happy people who make great
art. Well, I am waiting, Jian. The list, please.”
She goes on
to say that every human being is born suffering because we all know that some
day we are going to die. And it is only through the knowing of this that we
learn to use our time wisely.
She tells
how her mother never showed her any affection and she was raised like a
soldier.
So, I
think, you take a little wisdom…you leave a little whatever.
I did
something dreadful the other day.
I left my
kid buckled into her fancy European carrier seat that I am so proud of, and got
on craigslist for $30, leaning on the kickstand, her helmet in the front
carrier basket, while I literally said out loud, “Okay, no falling over,” and
separated myself from the bike completely, it standing there, with a three-year-old,
unprotected, buckled in. I opened my car door to get sunglasses instead of
unbuckling her and putting her on the ground safely. I turned my back.
I risked
it.
The bike
crashed to the ground. Her head hit the pavement. She howled. She screamed. She
was dying. I scrambled. I got her out. I think I screamed. Her eyes were…her
head was lolling…oh god oh god…the hospital…no…I run with her in my arms to the
neighbour, a retired nurse… Which door? bang bang bang… No car in the gravel
drive…no…the hospital…now.
She is in
such pain. She doesn’t vomit. She doesn’t pass out…not right away. She refuses
the Tylenol the triage nurse instructs she takes. Not even for two stickers.
The nurse says, “Her head is not mushy. That is a very good sign. She cried;
she didn’t vomit — these are good signs.”
I say,
“It’s my fault.” I don’t remember if I say that. I don’t. But I say it to Sir
Dick when he arrives at the emergency waiting room.
She rests
in my arms. I tell her stories: Goldie
Locks and the Three Bears. Little Red Riding Hood. Cinderella. Her favourites.
Hours later
the doctor tells me that Guppins hit her head on a very hard spot on her skull.
She says they no longer x-ray for skull fractures. She says since she didn’t
vomit, and she didn’t pass out, and she’s behaving like herself (at 11 p.m.
with a Reese’s peanut butter cup in her belly), so there is no need for a
catscan or an MRI.
She says to
just wake her up once in the night. Every hour is old school.
She says,
kindly, when I tell her what I’d done, “So you won’t win the mother of the year
award.”
I decided
to take a risk.
It is now
almost 24 hours later. It feels much, much longer. She is safely sleeping in
bed. She has a huge welt on the side of her head.
What I am
suffering is nothing compared to what my daughter felt when she fell. When her
head cracked on the sidewalk. The ache she feels. The betrayal. The
helplessness. The throbbing pain. And there she will cling to me, in her pain
and suffering, she will cling as though I am the one to be trusted to save her.
It is a
dark place I am in.
I don’t
know what to do. I don’t know how to tell the story. I don’t understand how I
could have possibly done what I did.
Sir Dick is
understanding. Perhaps. He might be lying. He says the most dangerous parts of
cycling with a kid are the moments of getting on and off the bike. He says this
with kindness.
I go around
accusing him, silently and otherwise, of doing the wrong thing. Feeding her the
wrong thing. Keeping her up.
But look at
me.
Look at me
now.
Mother of
the Year.
“Mommy, we
go on the bike again tomorrow. Only this time you don’t let me fall. You keep
me safe.”
Yes, my
darling. Oh yes I will.
Drama Mama
[image source: luminato festival 2013]