Betraying the Next Generation – Part Two
And so..it goes on. My generation started the whole thing by cocooning in the late Eighties and early Nineties, once we stood still long enough to hear our biological clocks ticking. And, man…were we ticking!
Once our post-pregnant ever-widening butts were firmly planted on the nursery floor with Baby, it hit us with a sledge hammer. What were promotions, business trips, well-padded bank accounts, the acclamation of your peers and Chanel accessories compared to this…rolling around on the floor with your heir, your spare, or your heir AND your spare(s), seeing that unquestioning adoration and worship in their eyes and hearing the intoxicating champagne bubble sound of an uninhibited baby belly laugh? What is a Clio award compared to that? Oh, the bliss of not having to pour yourself into your power suit every morning, not having to wear makeup to be beautiful! The sheer Zen of losing yourself in making bread dough from scratch, of reading your destiny in the dishwater foam!
So, mothers gathered everywhere with their Pampered offspring at playgroups all over the Western world, blithely asserting their utter domestic bliss, of how they had found, if not God in the baby’s bathwater, then at the very least their One True Purpose in Life, and they preached to the converted:
Motherhood…rocks!
And yet…and yet!
Sometimes, in those deep, dark, dead hours of the night, when the Infant God of the Household has attached himself like a leech to your breast, when you haven’t slept properly for weeks and yet, you’re too tired TO sleep, those deep, dark, demi-dead doubts begin to creep in like the fog accumulating outside your bedroom window. With a start, you realize that you haven’t made love to Darling Hunky Hubbie in…months. This was the man who boldly took you where no woman had gone before, who would worship at the altar of your body with heavenly regularity and no monotony as often as his erections would allow, this was the man who made you purr like a cat… and …you don’t even miss it! That Hitachi Magic Wand has brand-new batteries, and it’s gathering dust in your La Perla drawer, because you’re just too…tired? Brain-dead? Comatose? to care. Now, he has become just another demand on your ravaged body, and all you can feel is “Enough already!”
Then, there are all those other dark secrets of stay-at-home motherhood, so dark you don’t even dare breathe it to your closest girlfriends. The sheer, unrelenting bla-di-bla, routine boredom of it all. There you were, once upon a time, the Fairy Tale Princess of Ferocious Self Sufficiency and high-powered glamour, with a mind of your own and hard-nosed intellect, the one who even managed to explain Schopenhauer to your two-month boneheaded boy-toy fling…and what ARE you doing? Standing at the changing table over a smelly, filthy rugrat covered in organic baby cereal, going…”goochy, goochy GOOOOOO!”
Suddenly, Sex-Goddess Gucci seems several alternate universes away.
Even if you’re lucky enough to have access to what passes for adult conversation, you’ve fallen victim to Mommy Brain. No matter how hard you try, all you can talk about is the Infant Household God(dess). Every gurgle, every coo, every stuffed diaper has suddenly taken on the status of religious epiphany, and now you worship at the High Altar of Fisher-Price.
No wonder people take to giving you strange looks.
Meanwhile, you bang your head against the wall and wail…”But I wasn’t always like this! I used to have opinions, I used to have proper conversations, I used to..be a person, not this frumpy, fat hausfrau!”
You coulda been a contender…and now, you’ve settled for contented…
Sooner or later, the kids grow up, much faster than we like, because who wants to be reminded they’re getting older? They head off to the outside world of nursery schools and kindergartens, birthday parties and sleepovers and the Raid of the Mad Mohicans through your carefully planted marigolds, tracking mud all over your mirror-finish merbau floor. Suddenly, one night, you look into your mirror and wonder…”who IS this person? Why the frown lines, the gray hairs, the faded silver stretch marks? Where did it all go, besides south? What do I do NOW?”
Enter the allure of Martha Stewart, Domestic Medusa…any activity to fill that aching void, anything at all…and in march the matching placecards, the crafty thank-you cards, the homemade “seasonal” dupioni curtains, the organic lemon curd you hand out to other wives at dinner parties as a thoughtful “hostess” gift, with matching lemon-yellow grosgrain ribbon, gingham cap and label in Carolingian calligraphy. The high altar of Fisher-Price has been replaced with the temple of Michael’s and Hobby Lobby, where the sales clerks know you by name, verse and chapter. (“Watch out for that woman – she wants to know if the candle wax blocks are organic!!!”)
And all the while…you’re denying, denying…denying your unhappiness, denying yourself, denying that anything at all could have been, should have been, would have been different – if only your ovaries hadn’t started ticking so loudly.
And your daughter, the daughter you tried so hard to turn into your better, improved, vitamin-enhanced radical-feminist self…dances out the door to her Ivy-Leagued destiny, while you pray to that Goddess of all mothers – “Please, dear Goddess, let her do better than me! Please let her fulfill herself! Puleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze….”
Only to hear her proclaim one day the dreaded words…”Well, Mom…once I have kids, I’m staying home…”
Where do you start?
(to be continued…)
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