Reality bites

The dust in the house hasn't really settled yet. We're in, what would be generously known as an interim period where we live day by day and firefighting is the name of the game. The silver lining, if there is any, is that we are spending a great deal more time with the children. That, in itself is great, but I am only the one person. It's not a cliche when the proverbial they say that it takes a village to raise a child. And in our case, two children.

I know mothers who raise twins all by themselves and I take my hats off to them. If it were in my power, I'd declare a public holiday in their honour because it's an incredible thing for them to be able to care for twins all by themselves. I am unable to do that. There. It's taken me a good 15 months worth of therapy to be able to utter that phrase. There's still guilt behind it though, that I'm not able to do it but hey, admitting it is the first step towards sanity.

By being able to admit that I can't go it alone means I have to accept help. And when the paid help fucks around with us, it is even more imperative that I be open to whatever sort of help I can get. The division of labour in the house has been pretty much out of my control in the day especially because I'm at work most of the day. I try my darndest to be home by late afternoon so that I can hang with the kids. On any one day, one child gets more attention than another one because one of their caregivers is partial to Evan and the other is partial to Baby J. In a sense, it is fair. I try to give the other time of day when I come back. At night however, the battle lines are a little bit more rigid.

We decided when the mess began that the children will no longer sleep with the househelp, for various reasons. The children'sGgrandma called dibs on Evan for a variety of reasons, one of which being a very practical one. He was the one that did not need Mommy's breast in the middle of the night. So it's been this way for the last 10 days. Don't get me wrong, the best time of day with Baby J is in the morning, when she wakes up with sleep still in her eyes and a bird's nest of hair on the back of her head clamouring all over me and using my belly as a pillow. But I cannot help but miss Evan at the same time. As with his sister, it's his best time of day and I miss it because he's in Grandma's room.

I will be lying if I said I'm wasn't jealous of the fact that she gets to laugh at his morning antics and hear him chatter away about what must be what he dreamt about the night before. I will also be lying if I said I didn't care that because he spends more time with Grandma, she is who he runs to when he hears loud claps of thunder or bumps his head (which is an everyday occurence by the way).

Packrat tells me that it is natural to be jealous but it is not a neurosis that Evan must know about because it would not be fair to make him choose between Grandma and Mommy. So I try hard not to show that I care and I savour every moment when I can heave him around and complain about how heavy he has become. Packrat also admonishes me for over compensating for not spending enough time by indulging Evan when he asks to be carried and for me to dance him round the whole room waltz style. I love doing that because the chuckles of glee are endless but it kills my hips, knees and ankles and Packrat knows that it is in my future to get osteo-arthritis even without this weighted ballroom dancing I do with my son. So he chides me and assures me that Evan knows who his Mommy is and loves her even if Grandma is the one that deals with his immediate needs.

It's a difficult pill to swallow because in my husband's words, I did not read Naomi Wolf's Misconceptions closely enough. That even though society, aka the proverbial they, judge and expect mothers to do everything and be everything, it's a myth and it's impossible. Unfortunately, even though I read the book before I was pregnant and swore that I would not allow them to drive me crazy, I have inadvertently fallen into the trap of expecting it of myself thereby flogging myself for not doing enough and not being Mommy enough to both my children and their every need while working, struggling to be a good daughter-in-law (a role I would never be able to claim to be good at but by God's grace do not fail miserably), a daughter, a wife and all the multi-faceted roles that I, ever the superachievet, heap upon myself.

But if I stop and count my blessings and those I am aware that I have many of, I should be grateful that there is someone to pick up the slack where I fall short and that Evan doesn't ever need to feel he is second class because he is not. It's not how I would choose to do things but how things end up and even though I almost bend over backwards and kill myself trying to spend every other moment with him (which is harder now because Baby J has a case of false measles), I will always feel that I am not doing enough. So when he runs to Grandma when I'm busy trying to get a very cranky Baby J to take a spoonful of porridge, I am grateful that he gets hugs and kisses from her even though I'd love to be able to be the one to give it to him.

Reality sucks, especially when I have no superpowers that can help be the Multiple Mommy but I guess I just have to suck it up and take the lemons that life deals me to make iced lemon tea.

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