Who Me? So What!

Nervously I walked into the building, clutching my daughter’s hand for courage, although I'm sure I'm supposed to say it was to comfort her. This was the first of many days that I knew from the very first moments I had held her, as a newborn child that would come into my life. Yet I had successfully ignored the reality of it for two years.

I signed the enrolment forms, paid the fees and after taking a deep breath to calm my nerves, took Sweetpea into her first Mainly Music playgroup. Of course, as the universe would have it, earlier that morning there had been a major accident on the freeway, so what would have been a perfectly timed journey had turned into a 20-minute late entry. Everyone was sitting in a circle on the floor, having been given homemade maracas filled with dried rice dyed blue studded with gold flecks of foil to shake to the beat of the song. Sweetpea wasn’t really into the maracas, bar clinging onto both hers and mine and refusing to do anything with them.

After a shared snack time of cut up cubes of the next-to-last fresh summer fruit of the season it was free play time. Those of us with toddlers and small children herded them outside to the playgroup shaded by giant eucalyptus trees and the shade sails that are so hugely popular in this country. Standing around making small talk with strangers is my idea of perfect torture. Still, I knew that if I was going to make this a regular part of my daughters educational opportunities, I was going to have to swallow my fears and talk to the other women that seemed so at ease with each other.

“So is this your first time here?”

“Yes, how can you tell? Is it the deer caught in the headlights look on my face that gives it away?” I replied.

Laughter followed, which I read to be a good sign.

“Is she your only child?”

“Yes, she is, and she is my pride and joy. How many children do you have?”

“Two here and one at school already” she replied, managing to drop the name of the exclusive boys school into the conversation.

Out of the corner of my eye I had been watching a group of three boys (‘da thugs’ as I christened them in the later retelling of the event to my mother) purposely refusing to allow Sweetpea to join in their games, even though she was truly innocent about what was going on. She had been standing outside a cubbyhouse, wanting desperately to join the little boys, and they had been shouting at her to go away, that there was no room for her. Oh how my heart ached. Yes, yes, yes, I understand that this is the law of the jungle and this is how children work and yadda yadda yah. I'm a school teacher. I know how it works. I've made a career for many years out of knowing how it works. But we are talking about my Sweetpea here, and all the protective passion of a mother lion wanting to guard her young cub came to the surface. Obviously, my face hides nothing well, as the mother I had been talking to jokingly shrieked,

“Look out! Over protective mother on the loose!”

It was like a knife to the heart. My already shaky self confidence in my parenting skills crumbled to the ground as if hit by a 6.8 Richter scale earthquake. Squaring my shoulders I went and redirected Sweetpea to another activity and kept my distance from the shrieking harpy as I had now named the ‘didn’t give a damn’ mother. But the words “over protective mother’ were burnt into my mind.

And several hours latter I was still considering them. I had sworn up and down as I underwent fertility treatment year after year that I wouldn’t wrap my child up in cotton wool if I was ever so lucky to be blessed with a child, I would allow my child to deal with the real world knocks and scraps and let her grow up to be free and strong. Could it be true that I was over protective? Was I holding Sweetpea back because of my own fears and inability to allow her to be roughed up a bit by the real world?

And then it dawned on me, bright and clear and the early morning rays of sunshine that banish the darkness of the night. Even if I was ‘over protective’ according to the views and opinions of some people, it was OK by me. Because if that mother had had her world pulled from under her as mine has been in the last year, left with nothing but three suitcases of holiday clothing and a small baby, I would be willing to bet my bottom dollar that she too would be a smidge over protective of her children. She would be desperate to hold onto what little she had left to provide some kind of stability for her child, she would do whatever it took to make sure that the most precious thing left to her – her child – was safe and happy. She would hover and worry and feel stupid for it all at the same time.

But its OK. I wont be this way forever, it isn’t a natural part of my personality and its not how I want to bring up Sweetpea. But this is a healing period in both our lives. This will be the first of ‘one step at a time’ experiences until it feels normal to be a single parent with my daughter. So tomorrow is Mainly Music playgroup day for Sweetpea and I. Want to join us be over protective and shake some maracas?