The Momoir Project

It is 4 o’clock in the afternoon and the house is eerily still and quiet. There is nothing but the sound of my fingers on the keyboard tap-tapping and the cold wind blowing fiercely outside the window pane. It is moments like this that I relish, when Jack is asleep in his crib, all is silent and I am alone in my thoughts, free to do and be as I wish.

It is not that I don’t love when he is awake, when we are seated together on the floor contemplating the curves of a toy or the sound two cups make when they are bashed into each other. I love those moments as well. I love to watch as he cruises around the room, one hand on the couch, the other wriggling behind him in a test of balance and fate, as he drums the life out of a toy or as he giggles wildly at the movement of the dog. I love those moments and yet, always, I am lost in them – a small piece of me has broken free and is floating somewhere in the distance, in the realm of adult conversation, in loose trains of thought. In those moments, I sometimes wonder how the time will pass, and what we will do with the next three hours of our lives.

This is the paradox of motherhood, and especially maternity leave, something I have learned in the last nine months of being home from work and nurturing my little one. You want desperately to live each moment, savour each awkward step and full-bodied cry; you want to watch each second of growth, to be there for every breath and hard-earned first and yet those same moments are sometimes so exceptionally long, drawn out and lonely. I only vaguely remember now what it was like to have appointments, deadlines, an agenda book to fill and carry, a time that was marked by the length of meetings and intellectual exercises and not by full diapers, trains, sing songs and naps.

I am sinking into this motherhood thing, each day trying hard to not only be present, but also to be alive and engaged with a mind that does not wander, knowing how to absorb it fully as a second in my son’s ever-changing life, a second that cannot be retrieved again. Slowly, I am growing into the meditation required, the routine that is necessary and the patience that fuels it all.

Writing Start: Living in the Moment