Missing the need to be needed
My youngest went to camp over a long weekend. The middle kid was busy too, so the house was quiet. I cleaned it once and it stayed that way. Magic.
No-one asked me what was for dinner or whether their black jeans/school top/soccer shorts had been washed.
I started a little project in a corner of the garden and – praise be – finished it. Then I went out for dinner with my partner and friends and we didn’t talk about our kids, not once.
This little three-day glimpse into life-after-kids was titillating. I thought about my youngest on camp several times but, without having any way of communicating with her, considered the matter outside of my control and went about my weekend business.
The middle kid was doing what middle kids should be doing: working, studying, and hanging out with his friends . . . exercising his requisite independence to practise up for the looming, real world.
The oldest, well, since she moved out a couple of years ago, my relationship with her has changed.
Recently we went to a movie together and were having a coffee afterwards, talking about the film. I felt like I was with one of my friends, casual yet interesting conversation that it was. Except that she isn’t, and I felt un-old enough to be her parent. But I am. It was weird.
All of this got me thinking about the next stage of my life. When I was a younger working mum, people constantly needed me to do something. Each hour, each day was filled delivering, mostly, what other people wanted of me: reports, bedtime stories, hugs, Now that I’ve done what most presentations, emails, dinners, and parents do by nudging our kids dealing with (other people’s) along the continuum of dependency conflict resolutions at both work so that, eventually, they pop out the and home. To have some time other end and can survive in the where you alone could decide how world alone, I find myself missing you spent it was rare. the need to be needed.
On this quiet weekend, Also, I miss the noise.
I however, it seemed pretty much all knew when I was in the throes I did. Productive, introspective, of working-mumhood that relaxing, yes. But my long weekend these were golden years. I was something more. It was, a little knew that, as tiring as it was to surprisingly, empty. be needed, it was part of the human
I know that in years past, when I experience, and especially a was exhausted and constantly woman’s journey, to be available catering to the needs of my family, emotionally and physically to so work, and various communities, I many souls. I got that at the time. longed for a time when everyone But still, as I worked the soil and would leave me alone and let me imagined new corners of my get on with fixing up a little patch garden last weekend, I forgot about of my garden. But when the time how little time there was left for me came for me to have it, I felt a little, in those earlier years. I forgot well, I felt a little unwanted. about my bones aching and the
It’s a funny thing, isn’t it, to live mental fatigue and my inability to so many years of your life being read more than three pages of my needed? Really needed. Even when book each night. one of my jobs took me off My body doesn’t remember the travelling overseas several times pull of sleep as I woke to another each year, I felt as if my child in need, then feigning contribution to the household and alertness at work the next day. my offspring was unique and Instead, I remember of those irreplaceable. Only mum, I knew, chaotic, purposeful years the could deliver that sort of love/ wonderful feeling of being needed lasagne/feedback/organising. by people that I love.