Does it get easier?

I am lucky enough that my neighbour is one of my best friends. I don’t know how it happened and maybe that’s the most beautiful thing about sisterhood, that it’s the kind of love that just grows like a fire.

It’s tiny at first, a spark - then it’s suddenly big enough to warm you.

We met at the bus stop on our street. It was a place I went to cry. There’s something that feels so raw about saying that. But, I know other mothers have felt this way.

The bus stop bench was where I’d go when I needed “a walk” but really I needed an escape from the relentlessness of parenting. I would walk my kids in their front packs up and down the street while they screamed at me. I always felt like they were screaming at me. Like every scream was a reminder - every scream was:

You’re not cut out for this.

You’re not cut out for this.

But, how could I not be cut out for it when I’d carved every part of myself off to provide shelter for these kids who it seemed were always ravenous for my flesh? When my eldest was little he used to pinch me, he used to drag at my skin constantly. My youngest used to try to rest his hand inside my bra. I would snap at him, pull his hand out - want to scream “STOP FUCKING TOUCHING ME”. I felt like what they were saying was that what I gave them was somehow never enough.

I would yell to my husband I need some time half out the door, half on my way to freedom, usually carrying nothing. Too tired to walk, I’d sit on my crying bench.

And one day She was there. She was crying too. She had a buggy with a baby inside who screamed as she pushed the buggy back and forth. We were autopilots, two planes going nowhere.

It’s funny how you go into Mother mode so easily. I immediately wanted to hold her, console her. We were both so raw though.

But there was a spark. We found out our kids were close in age. We had friends in common. She lived right there. I lived right there.

Photo by Krišjānis Kazaks

That was six years ago now. So much has happened in that time, and we no longer need to stoke the fire. Our friendship is just a warm and reliable constant for us both.

We both work from home and we do our errands together during the week. We fill the hours, we do our work - sometimes side-by-side at the dining table - we love each other’s babies, we fantasise about family holidays together, we plan imaginary nights away where we get couples massages and drink nice wine without children interrupting our every thought.

And yesterday, I cried on the floor of her kitchen, surrounded by her washing. And she held me in her arms and then hung the washing up.

I struggled a lot yesterday. I cried out my anger and sadness at my husband. I had a glass of wine but felt no relaxation, just the dry tiredness of another day.

I lay in bed with my son and begged him to go to sleep. He insisted I put my arm around him. My shoulder has been clicking in and out during the day from the weight of his body at night.

“NO! Just go to sleep”.

He whimpered.

“It’s hard mama. You don’t know how hard it is,” he said.

“You’re seven,” I said, being exactly the kind of mum I didn’t want to be.

“That doesn’t mean it’s easier mama,” he whispered.

It’s not easier. I keep waiting for the easier. I keep comparing - and I used to say: “it can’t ever be as bad as those baby days where they just screamed and screamed and screamed.”

Now I know it’s not that. It’s not easier. And it’s not harder. It’s not better or worse. It just is. But this pandemic is adding something awful to the mix - an undercurrent of inescapable anxiety. Health anxiety, bills anxiety, separation anxiety…

And the feelings I have on these very long and very hard days aren’t any different to those I had on those very long days without all the extra stuff.

You’re not cut out for this.

You’re not cut out for this.

But then, I remind myself:

I’m not the same wisp of a woman, carved to bone by need, sitting at the bus stop.

And neither is she.

Together we’re something else. Something stronger than that.

Because the days are still so very long. But there is room on the kitchen floor, surrounded by the washing that will get hung out. There is space to cry, to scream, to feel it all.

There are errands to do and coffee to drink. And we can slowly patch each other up.

We can nourish each other as we nourish our babies.

Today, my clicking shoulder reminds me it has been home for seven years to this child of mine.

As he fell asleep last night he said: “There are seven Catholic churches in Antarctica mum”. I closed my eyes. I could feel his brain humming….

He won’t fall asleep until the humming quiets.

“Tell me about them…” I whispered into the dark.

“One is carved right into the snow. It’s so cold and the ice is so hard. And they just keep carving it.”

“That must have been hard to do.”

“It was but they had lots of people do it together.”

Maybe we can make something beautiful when it’s cold and hard.

We can make something together.

We can make a place to rest, and we can make it beautiful.