A Day in the Country: Maggie Mackellar reflects on motherhood as her youngest prepares to finish school.
WITH HER YOUNGEST ABOUT TO LEAVE SCHOOL, MAGGIE MACKELLAR REFLECTS ON HER LIFE AS A MOTHER AND FINDING HERSELF AGAIN.
WE ARE TUMBLING towards winter, the afternoons are short and last light is a sharp golden blast that I miss if I get caught inside. I rush through evening jobs to steal a walk with the dogs and even though we hurry, the dark catches us and the grey of dusk sinks to a crisp black out of which skeletons of gums loom, marking my track home. I’ve lost the corgis, they are out there somewhere, but my labrador, Dusty, has stuck by me. We cross the flat and walk back to the house. In the quiet I’m aware of my solitude and the contrast to the busyness of these hours when the children were small. That time, the insane loud neediness of it, I thought would always define me, but now in the silence I scratch for what I feel and realise it’s the snag of loss.
The house is still and quiet but The Farmer stoked the fire and filled the wood basket before he headed to the pub. The corgis haven’t turned up so I feed Dusty and come to my desk. It’s cold in here. I type with fingerless gloves, a beanie and even though the fire snaps behind my back I can still see my breath. I want to follow the trace of this thought.
Becoming a mother is a sort of trauma, or it was for me. I was instantly transformed, a process that seemed to happen almost against my will. I gave birth and was changed. My self became something new. I became fierce with love and the need to protect. My desires became second to my daughter’s needs. If I wanted to write a book or climb a mountain or ride a horse, I had to steal from myself the time to do it. This identification became stronger with the death of my children’s father and not long after that my own mother. I’d lost the one who would accompany me and the one who had gone before. So many wonderful people stepped into that vacuum over the years but still, once the door closed there was only me and — not unnaturally — my whole being orbited around the needs of those children.
Please understand I was not a ‘good’ mother. I never had a spare change of clothes in my bag. I regularly forgot to think about dinner before dinnertime. I let them watch too much TV and not have a bath every night. I neglected to listen to them read (they read to each other) or enforce homework (one of them did it, one of them didn’t). When they were young I moved their birthdays to days that suited me. I took every shortcut available. Always my mind was on what I was writing rather than the intricacies of what had happened in the school ground. I mothered distracted. But with a little distance I see I also did so much. I did hear their heart’s desires and try to give them a shape. I drove them all over the country to championships knowing the importance was in the participation not in the result. Despite the fact I have always had my writing, I now see my identification as ‘mother’ has stained every part of me. And it is only here in the quiet hours, on the cusp of my youngest leaving school, that
I am starting to search for the young woman who had such certainty about her future, her aspirations, her desires.
I can hear the corgis banging on the back door. The fire sends a cascade of sparks onto the rug and Dusty is snoring under my desk. I sit with the peace. I’m 23 years into motherhood, my parenting tonight will be to send a text message to both of them. They are out there doing their thing, growing up and away. I will always be their mother, but now in the quiet is the time to pick up those threads of the young woman I was and start stitching a new story.