Motherhood
She limpits my leg
suctioned on, screaming
for an icy-pole.
He buckles and squirms,
in arms, wanting out,
wanting down, up, on, off.
She calls me stupid, a bitch.
Mightily high and strumpeted
she throws open the freezer
and fingers her prize.
He demands suction,
bodily moulding
of mouth and breast.
He sucks on my arm, and
wails like a wounded seal
at the lack of sustenance.
She’s quiet now,
flinted and formidable
the challenge is made.
I don’t have the energy.
My battle gear is mulched under
four years of dirty nappies.
Half-hearted, half –arsed,
“No…”
I suggest, but she’s immovable
and I waver only slightly, before caving.
Sternly- “Only one” I say,
but face is not saved
and I’ve doomed her to ‘brat-hood’.
I sit.
He sucks, she sucks,
he kneads me like a stress ball
she plays me like a lute.
And we’re all happy.
“My patience, resolutions and beliefs are tested to the limits – sometimes daily.”*
Right at this moment one of my challenges is the constant, tuneless whistling from my elder son. When my boys were babies it was getting them to sleep or trying to figure out why they were crying. On any given day now, it might be squabbling, fighting, teasing, screaming, shouting or rudeness. Who’d be a parent? We might well question ourselves after the event, but we can’t very well put them back! Just how we find those inner resources, how we constantly demand more of ourselves, how we keep marching up that hill with a smile on our face and gladness in our heart at the sight of our ‘babies’ is one of life’s mysteries.
* © from Being Mummy by Anne‑marie Taplin published April 2007