“When you have a kid in nursery you’re basically paying for someone else to be your social worker.”
Photo by Liana Mikah on Unsplash
“Shit, sorry I’m running as we speak. I was pushing the buggy and I felt warm. I misjudged the weather and my little boy was shivering by the time we got to nursery. I’m running back now with a sweater and full mom guilt.”
Skye’s an independent businesswoman who grew up on the prairies in Canada, moving to Ireland when she was 10.
“People back home think I’m uptight and people here think I’m laid back – I can’t win. It’s a small town with a paternalistic culture – you can’t even take babies into pubs. When I had space and time to reflect away from there, it hit me that my mother is not the best person in the world and I was glad to be out of it.
“Just because biologically someone can have a kid doesn’t mean they’re their best self with their kids.
“I do believe she’s a narcissist but it’s hard to prove if not clinically assessed. She’s said things that in retrospect people don’t say – especially in front of their kids. I remember her telling me she’d have been fine with just one kid in front of my brother and sister.
“It came to a head when I got married. Because my husband is from a quieter, politer family, my mom assumed he had Asperger’s. She’s the kind of person who can run from nought to 100 with an idea and so when he went to ask my parents’ permission for my hand, she asked for us to be psychometrically tested.
“She wanted to prove that my husband had ‘something wrong’ with him and instead I was the one with suicidal tendencies and trust issues.”
Estranged from her mum, Skye guards her boundaries fiercely.
“It takes a village to raise a kid. Parenting is exhausting and human beings aren’t programmed to sleep eight hours at a time – before the industrial revolution, we’d wake up in the night, eat, have sex, read and go back to sleep! So when my baby is waking me up at 3am wanting to play, he’s the normal one and we’re trying to conform him to a modern way of sleep. You do need to have plenty of patience and communication – my husband and I take one disturbed night at a time each.
“I wasn’t going to give up my career for my kids – my mom did that and that’s part of why we don’t talk. She resents me for it. She wanted to go back to work but she got pregnant again and had to raise another child and that pissed her off. She shouldn’t have felt obligated; she had a better job than my dad and he’d’ve made a great stay-at-home parent.
“And so when I had my baby, his development got to a point where I didn’t have the energy to sustain his energy and I realised when I’m at work and I have time to myself I can be the best mom for him.
“I took him to nursery at five months and haven’t looked back. I remember dropping him off and feeling jealous because they were cuddling him but there are experiences he has that I just wouldn’t do with him. He wants to sit in the paint tray and do messy play and I pay someone else to clean him up.
“And from that first time I dropped him off I felt a total sense of relief – and I still do. My husband and I also book one night a week off together and when the sitter comes I find I need half an hour to decompress, relax and get my head sorted before I can even leave the house.”
Skye’s philosophical about how much any of us can do to change anyone else.
“Picture a situation where a blackmailer tells you they’re going to kill someone unless you do x, y or z. When is anyone going to realise that people are going to die anyway? There is nothing you can do can stop the killer, we have no control over other people whatsoever. The only thing we can control is our own reaction to any situation.
“I’ve only pinpointed my own behaviour because of my mom in the last few years. I try to protect myself from other people by managing what I do to prevent conflict. I can read people and spot quickly if they’re going to have toxic or malicious behaviour and adjust my own accordingly. That’s fucked up.
“We don’t talk any more; we used to communicate through passive-aggressive correspondence and most recently she kicked me out of the family by letter. I’m ok with it. Having my freedom from her is liberating. I have no patience for people who say you need to be nice and forgive: fuck that, it’s abuse.”
There’s a lot to digest in this short story Elle and I’ve had to read it a couple of times. I’ve taken something away with me and I’ll probably read it again and find something else x