How My Children Keep Me Sane
I used to say, whenever someone expressed admiration for my ability to function coherently at work despite being a mum to small children, that coming to work kept me sane. And this was, and still is, certainly true. Work means order, quiet, predictability, intellectual stimulation, adult conversation and having lunch without needing to clean the floor afterwards. It most certainly helps my sanity.
Yet in these last few months of increasing pressure, with a PhD deadline looming, multiple new responsibilities, and the impending stress of an interstate move, heralded by frantic searches of real estate websites for the perfect home, something quite odd has been happening. It is my children that are keeping me sane.
It is my children who bring the immense relief from overthinking, from mental strain, from all this striving. It’s like taking a complete break from worrying, ruminating and hand-wringing of my life of late. My children bring me straight back to the most important place- the present moment – remind me what is most important – fun, love, silly jokes (and food) – and most of all, love me even if I havent written the perfect chapter or figured out what we are going to do next year. Regardless of how my day went and what challenges I have failed to master, they bound towards me at the end of the day with faith in my abilities as a mother. Just being there validates my worth to them – you’re here, mum! That’s fantastic! We love you. One warm hug, one set of tiny arms wrapped around my neck, and the workday melts away.
My children make me laugh, which is a powerful stress reliever. They make me realise that even the smallest things can matter, and this is beautiful. Stopping to pick a flower. Enjoying a sunset. Looking forward to icecream after dinner. Delighting in the bubbles in the bath. All of these things are exciting, magical experiences that are exquisite in their simplicity and accessibility. Happiness is right there within our reach. The look on my son’s face when he has a bowl of grapes all to himself is a reminder that there is so much to love and be thankful for. The moment when I am walking my children to daycare, completely absorbed in my worries about the day, and my son points to the sky and cries out “Look mummy! A helicopter!” And I suddenly come back to the present moment. The times when my daughter announces, from her bed, that she is coming to give me something that I really really need, and climbs out to plant a kiss on my cheek. “There,” she says. “There is all my love. Now everything is ok.” And tears well up in my eyes when I realise that, of all the people in the world, my children might be the wisest of them all.
My children have no fears or worries (yet). Problems can be solved incredibly easily in their innocent minds. There are no barriers in their minds – everything is possible. It’s breathtaking. I feel like such a downer whenever I say “That wouldn’t work” or “It just doesn’t happen that way“. Where did I learn these phrases? How did I become so rigid, seeing all the negatives, the things that get in our way, how something couldn’t possibly work out? Surely once I was that pure innocent and stunningly creative little soul. Somewhere along the years, I learned that “it’s not that easy”. I’ve stopped exploring options beyond my narrow scope of “what might work”. I became an adult. And it makes me weep to think of all the possibilities I gave up.
Yet I know what lies ahead for these children. I know the pain of rejection, of disappointment, of things not quite turning out the way you thought they would. Failure. Humiliation. Puberty. I know too that they will survive these, and will have vastly more wonderful, inspiring and triumphant experiences, but that as human beings they will eventually remember the things that go wrong before the things that go right. My job is to gently and persistently steer them towards the positive, towards resilience, towards making sense of adversity, and overcoming challenges.
But these months of rushing around, hustling and worrying, have undeniably been tempered and made sweet by these two beautiful human beings. As will the next few months. Somehow, very unexpectedly, I have come to realise that I cannot do it without my children – without their cheerful faces, their ready kisses and hugs, and even without their toilet humour (the “poo poo” jokes are currently all the rage). Because if one cannot laugh at a fart joke, one has lost all the spirit in life.
An example of a joke my daughter told me this morning:
Zero plus zero equals zero! (Cue manic laughter)
