I am a canoe (and other summations of March-y feelings)

March 30, 2014 candacemorris 0 Comments

It has been an unspeakable kind of Winter, but with new streaks of sun motivating me to scrub scary dark places and organize neglected pan cupboards, I think I shall endeavor to speak it.



Then something odd happened.  I started feeling these chords yanking, these ties binding.  They were not unwanted, and their presence wasn't entirely a surprise; however, their intensity surely was!  The bond with Bowie had always been there, but without it being yanked on, I suppose I didn't realize how strong it was.  For the next three weeks (to now, as I write), I have been decidedly heartsick.  No one I knew could watch Bowie full time, so I was left with having to hire a nanny.

I realize so many people do this, and so many people have practice that I never had at leaving their kids with people they didn't know (and how I will become accustomed as well, building a necessary callous to the pain).  I realize now how hard it is for people to leave their children, how many people we interact with daily are in a torn place, actively fighting guilt and confusion about how to maintain themselves, their work, and their families.  Surely I wasn't carefree before kids (have I ever been carefree without help from gin?),  but it's awfully tempting to remember it thusly.  The freedom of decisions, the leaving the house easily, the simplicity.

I looked around me and began to notice that perhaps every parent feels these yanks when they are apart from their children.  My thoughts further horrified me into realizing that perhaps these yanks NEVER STOP.  When I wanted a baby, I wanted a BABY.  I never thought fully about the fact that she would spend the majority of her life on earth NOTWITHME.  Perhaps it gets easier, perhaps not.  

These thoughts spiraled me into a pit of mud-soaked anxiety and deep weepiness. My heart began to feel bigger than my brain.  Where once I had developed a logical distance from Bowie's crying, now every single time she cries I am flooded with horrible visions of abandonment and sadness.  I cried during the singing time at preschool.  I cried making her breakfast.  I cried in my bedroom while trying to work from home and hearing her say my name desperately.  This reaction bothered me, yes because I fancy myself an evolved mother who can see beyond her instincts (I KNOW she is not abandoned or traumatized, but feeling the transition deeply and doesn't know what to expect each day now), but more because it hurt.  It fucking hurt.




I think I am more dealing with the truth of my long-term place in Bowie's life than I am about leaving her with a nanny for the next months.  I will not know everything about her from now on, know everything she ate or said, know how much she slept, know her mood.  My job is to raise someone to take care of themselves and in so doing extend themselves and their own resources out into the world.  I cannot keep us in this bubble, this little stage of life where it's just she and I and we sit at home and read.  Not only because I can't, but more importantly - because I don't want to, and that simply has to mean something.

I need help; I need work; I need my own thing.  I need Bowie to see a woman pursuing herself and working outside of the home (or staying home) as an empowered, free choice.  Not just because she has to financially (another nuanced question to wrestle with here.  It's hard to think that we are all miserable because I wanted this change, not because life forced it upon us.  It's my doing.), but because she is most fulfilled in this manner.

Oh, the shitshow that was finding a nanny.  I thought I had one that was fabulous, but she took another position in a strange miscommunication.  I then flew up my mom last minute, and she stayed with Bowie for two weeks while I interviewed and hired someone else.  15 conversations, 7 candidates, 5 interviews, 1 hired nanny from SPU (she's awesome! English Lit major!) and then all the logistics of training and care. So.Ex.x.x.hausting.

First day of work bathroom self-portrait