A mother's sacrifice?

Everyone talks about sacrifices mothers make for their children. It's true. We sacrifice a whole lot. Sleep. Our bodies. Sanity. Money.

But to me, those are not the greatest sacrifices. I'm fine (to some extent) without sleep, I could live with my baby belly, I usually have Packrat to help me regain some semblance of sanity and money, well, money is always a problem. With or without kids.

The biggest sacrifices I feel are things like having the energy to think about the world that exists beyond my family and my 3 children. So, I miss blogging about silly things and having time to formulate snarky opinions about things happening out there. Often at the end of a day, I can't even bring myself to formulate a coherent sentence let alone a thought, much less a snarky one. I try to though because I don't feel that motherhood is an excuse to forget that there exists out there a larger world. At the same time, there are only 24 hours in a day so even with that philosophy, some things have had to go.

And then, Sher (a fellow mom) writes about this writing project- eatshopplaylove - that some female overseas Singaporean writers are doing where they write about their lives overseas. While I don't particularly want to be caught in a cross fire between the red shirts and the soldiers in Bangkok, the sheer idea of living overseas and seeing new things, living new experiences is one that I would love.

A friend of mine is preparing to take No Pay Leave for most of next year to follow her husband to Japan while he does his masters there. Another friend of mine was in Ho Chi Minh City for most of last year with her husband as well. Sher quipped that I had already done my stint in Melbourne. But Melbourne as a student was different. We never meant for it to be our last sojourn. Returning to Singapore was supposed to be the sojourn. But as my brother said all those years ago and somewhat ominously at that, "Things happen. Life gets in the way." Indeed, it did.

We would still like to move and still have some intention to but it has become harder logistically and financially to do so. And even if we did, our experiences will be markedly different because of the children we will have in tow.

To me, that is the ultimate sacrifice. Because that would be the one thing I would love to do with Packrat and have given up because of the children. I don't begrudge them that. But I do feel a twinge of wistfulness when I read of the adventures of others. Some would tell me that I have adventures of my own with my children. Yes, that is true. But being out there, being in the world, seeing new things, doing new things and exploring a different way of life, I miss that.

The watered-down version of being able to do this exists in 2 forms. One, Packrat insists that we travel without the kids to places where there is culture to be soaked up. Many mothers judge me for this but I have made peace with this, however uneasy. Two, we will still try and move away and set up house somewhere else in the world, with the children. And we will try to expose them to experiences that we know they will not have if they lived in Singapore. We will also try and drive home the fact that those experiences will be precious ones for them because not everyone has that opportunity and therefore they should make the best use of it.

And hopefully, that will be the happy median.

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