A smile

This piece of writing was inspired by a book of short stories I am currently reading.  It's a reflection on a day in my life as a mother. Sure, it gets easier but thirteen months on I am still getting my head around our ever changing routine, the issue of sleep and the mounting 'to dos' that seem to multiply daily. Is it any wonder we women are prone to depression and exhaustion?! Right now I'm working harder to make the everyday feel less robotic and more spontaneous. I am also busying myself with writing and reading so as to afford less opportunities for my mind to agonise over things.

She tears her eyes away from the picture before her. Two women laugh effortlessly. She fails to register anything else, not their dress, nor their discussion. Nothing but their bloody big smiles, which would even put a row of sideshow clowns to shame. Sadly, there is nothing fake about these smiles.

She pauses a distance from the counter, waiting for her latte. A baby in her arms. Her hair is clumsily parted and harshly pulled back into a ponytail. He face is like a gloomy still photograph, eyes transparent, expression blank. Her finger nails bitten down to the quick. On her feet are black flats with bows attached. The left bow is slightly off-kilter, as if mocking her mental state.

There is no job waiting for her to return to and that pains her, as much as the mother who is both geographically and emotionally distant, the father who favoured his drink over his own children and the grandfather she has recently put to rest. Then there's the husband from whom she has since become estranged, metaphorically speaking of course.

In her arms is her most valued possession. He burrows himself into the safety of his mothers neck, resting weary head upon weary shoulder, with the generosity and tenderness that only a baby can. He knows nothing of her concerns, her boredom or her lethargy. He doesn't mind that she talks to him in song or even that she pulls him down from his cot rails in the middle of the night, voice raised, movements tense. She's his mother and that's all he knows. He couldn't ask for anything more.

She worries herself over him - his inability to sleep for long periods, his seeming aversion to books, his awkwardness in strangers' company. It mirrors her own. She recalls with clarity a day in Preschool, smock on, paint brush in hand, prompted to paint but paralysed by fear. Too busy worrying about the other children at her table, of her inability to relate to them, of feeling so inexplicably detached.

Please don't walk in your mother's shoes, son.

'All new things eventually become old,' chimes the character in a movie she's recently seen. These words have been ringing in her mind for weeks on end. She ponders her marriage. Her bundling joy has affected her marriage, but has this new sense of responsibility put a strain on things or has it merely exposed what was lurking beneath the surface all along? The mere suggestion leaves her unhinged.

What wipes the despairing look from this pessimists face? Good coffee, witty words on a page, friendships borne of truth and love, travel, freedom, anonymity, sunshine and most especially sleep.

The silence is shattered. She hears her son, now 13 months old rousing from his sleep. As she enters his room for the first time in a while she is hit with a grin she can most definitely bare. Her heart skips more beats than she cares to remember. For once she isn't counting the smiles on strangers' faces or the length of the queue at the checkout or the balance of her bank account or even the display on her alarm clock.

Her place is here, in the now. The rest can wait.