My Beloved Bitterness Burns On...

My Beloved Bitterness Burns On…

By Bronwyn Lewis

20/09/2014

My life as I know it is about to be turned on it’s head. Again. At the start of this year, I entered into the bewildering warzone of stay-at-home motherhood and in two weeks I shall leave it to return to the sour stench of teenage BO and welcome the self-aggrandising attitudes of our nation’s youth. I’m pumped. So, this leaves me a moment to reflect on how I surprised myself in how much I changed and surprised others in how much I didn’t.

Before you slam your laptop/iPhone/iPad/enormous Samsung thingo down in utter repulsion of yet another ‘mummy blog’, give me a moment. It is definitely not one of those. Or maybe it is.

I would like to think that the birth of my daughter didn’t change me. In fact, my nostrils flare with satisfaction when people suggest it hasn’t. Once that sheer relief that I am in fact still ‘me’ passes, I am left feeling perplexed as to why they thought I probably should have changed more, and wonder what life form they thought I would mutate into. Did they think that when the midwife pulled the slimy and confused little baby out of me that I would lose my sarcastic and somewhat unsavoury demeanour and opt for a more sickly sweet and timid one? Sure, I get that babies are ‘life changing’, but are they really ‘complete personality changers’?

When I stub my toe, there aren’t enough episiotomies in the world to make me say “Darn!” in place of ‘”Fuck-shit-piss-tits!”. I understand that one day I will have to curb my profanities, but for the moment, my chubby, screamy, blonde-haired baby thinks the most outrageous thing I do is perform the dance from Sia’s ‘Chandelier’ film clip whilst she sits in her highchair and rubs yoghurt into her eyebrows. After a good three weeks of this performance, she’s more tired of it than Australia is of Anthony Callea trying to make it big. Like my tolerance of Shania Twain songs, Mr Callea will be forever small, figuratively and physically.

Back to me.

I approached mothers group with the same attitude, and as a result I am the mad, outspoken, painfully honest woman with unbrushed hair who will eventually be ‘accidentally’ left out of invitations to play dates. I’m aware of this risk, but it is worth the sacrifice if I can keep from biting my tongue off until it’s a bloody stump when discussing the shit parts of parenting. In all different reasons parents find themselves gathered - whether it’s day care foyers, nursery rhyme-times, baby friendly cafes - I will be the one who crosses the line into ‘inappropriateness’. I will look openly repulsed when someone challenges the validity of vaccinations, I will call Olive a moll when she is being one, I will call the fat kid fat until he knows what that word means and I will say being a parent is a fucking shit gig when Olive has decided she would like to spend an entire week refusing to eat because she’s too tired and not being able to sleep because she’s hungry. Babies are dumb. Cute, but really fucking dumb.

So in that respect I haven’t changed, but I would be lying if I emerged from my enormous life transition with my pre-baby identity completely intact. I created this tiny person who I can watch sleeping on the baby monitor like a toothless bogan would watch the greyhounds: drunk. Just joking (not joking). Every little change she experiences, I swell with pride because learning how to cough on cue is hands down the fucking smartest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do. Or when she learnt that things look differently when she tilts her head, so she spent an entire afternoon giving herself early onset RSI in her neck I couldn’t have been prouder. Or when she recently clung on to me tighter than a pair of Gina Rinehart’s trousers when someone tried to have a little hold of her, which taught me that she is just as obsessed with me as I am with her. It’s awesome. And yes, I film these moments and insufferably send them as group texts to anyone and everyone I know and expect them to watch it on repeat for days, then discuss every minute detail with me when I see them next. If they don’t, I quickly question their commitment to the friendship seeing as they willingly and actively neglect my offspring. I’m becoming about as popular and palatable as Angelina Jolie when she went through that phase of making out with her brother.

In this self-indulgent moment of self-reflection, I have come to realise my extreme reluctance and sheer terror of morphing into a cookie-cutter mother was in vain because it’s simply not in my make up. Even though my daughter’s gappy-toothed smile makes my heart feel like it’s going to burst and worn down the most cynical part of me, my treasured bitter fire still burns on. So I remain me, just with less lipstick and more things to both swear and smile about.