Shame!
A woman I have never met (my secret girl crush) was my absolute saviour during this time. Brene Brown is the world’s foremost authority on shame and vulnerability. Her books The Gifts of Imperfection, The Power of Vulnerability, and I Thought it was Just Me (but it isn’t) to name a few, along with her Ted Talks, helped me feel not so alone and ashamed of... well, pretty much everything.
When I first watched her TED Talk “Listening to Shame”, I wept with the body-wracking sobs of complete catharsis, such was the deep resonance her words had with me. It was like she had written that whole talk and posted it on the worldwide web just to reach me!
I was desperate to find a way, personally and financially, to create a life for myself and Leo and finally free myself from the heavy cloud of shitful shame that had been trailing around after me for so long.
One’s an accessory, two’s a lifestyle.’
Don’t know who said it first or where I heard it, but that quote has been stored in my vault of pithy one-liners for many years, and it has been wheeled out on many occasions.
And at the end of a marriage, with all that is to be taken into account, when it comes to your children, the number of little lives you undertake to uproot must be a factor for women wanting to leave but choosing to stay. One is easier than two. A sleepover for one, for instance, is infinitely easier to arrange than coordinating the different ages, genders, friend groups, dietary specifications, screen habits, and rules (and the list goes on) of more than one offspring.
Once I’d committed to one, I never seriously considered more. One was challenge enough for me. I got the hang of it eventually, but it wasn’t easy. It very nearly didn’t happen at all.
Children had never been on the menu for me. Or so I thought. Andy and I had discussed it and he didn’t seem fazed by my ‘no kids’ stance, but just like the lyrics of the song… ‘what a difference a day makes….’ When the bug bit, it hit like a bolt out of the blue. I literally woke up one morning and said to Andy, “I want to have a baby.”
“Hang on,” he said. “You’ve always said you didn’t want children.”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
“Right…. Er, so, when are you thinking you want to have this baby?”
“Now. As soon as possible.”
“Oh, right. Does it matter what I think, feel, want?” (He may not have said this, but was very possibly thinking it.)
The answer was, in my mind, at least: “No. I want a baby. If you don’t want to have one with me, I’ll find someone who will. So, best you get with the program.”
I was that ruthless. I can’t explain it. It was like an insatiable, pre-menstrual craving for chocolate. I had to have it. I had to have it now! Get out of my way, I’m a woman on a mission – I have a need to breed!
Upon reflection, I’ll admit, this was not one of my finest relationship moments.
Where had it come from? What turned me from actress, chanteuse, and good-time party girl into this hormonally fired-up ‘breeder at any cost’… and seemingly overnight?
For most of my adult life up until this point, I had avoided babies like they were herpes – highly contagious and (when you got them) a life sentence. I moved to the furthest side of the room when they entered and made sure I had a drink in both hands, lest I be offered to hold such a little bundle of joy. I held them only if they were thrust upon me, and I did so gingerly, fearing that I was somehow doing it wrong, holding them incorrectly. I watched as other women buried their faces into their little heads, inhaling deeply the smell of newborn innocence, collectively cooing at the infant in their midst. I didn’t want to smell their little heads or touch their little hands and feet. No thanks. No way. Babies were not for me.
Truth is, I was terrified of them.
You see, I’d already been a mother. And I’d failed miserably.
Horribly.
I was seven when my brother was born. Mum and Dad moved us from the wilds of the aircraft hangar on the outskirts of a small country town (yep, for a while, a dis-used WW11 aircraft hangar was home, but more on that later) to a modest little fibro house inside the town, opposite a park. I guess they felt that, with a small baby, it would be better if we lived in an actual house. My baby brother had gotten lost a couple of times by this point – under ancient tracts of equipment – and had required considerable efforts to dig him out.
At this point in time, Dad was 32, Mum 28. Young, footloose and fancy-free (except for the fact that they had two young children). They were party people. As was the norm for many people of their era, they drank a lot, and the house was often full of people laughing, dancing, singing, and generally having a ball. I had a lot of ‘aunties’ and ‘uncles’ – some genuinely related, some not – who were always around having a rowdy good time.
Unless they weren’t there. Then my parents were to be found at any one of a large number of pubs within crawling distance from where we lived. Being a small country town, we had pubs a plenty dotting the townscape liberally. (At the height of its Gold Rush days in the late 1800s, 104 pubs serviced the population – we had the most pubs per capita in the country.) And if their friends were at the pub, Mum and Dad were generally with them, leaving Milo in the care of his older sister... who was seven.
I absolutely don’t tell this story to demonize my parents. That they loved my brother and I, I am 100% certain.
I’ve heard many people my age over the years share the ‘Samboy chips and a pink lemonade in the back of the car story’ – this was the socially acceptable practice of the day, you see… leaving your kids in the back of the car (with a window down, of course), in the carpark of the pub, with something (nutritious? Yeah, sugar and additives!) to keep them occupied while Mum and Dad hit the boozer till they were three times over the legal limit, and then drive home with no one wearing seatbelts.
And we all survived, right? Mostly.
Helpless. Hopeless. Useless.
Three words that perfectly sum up how I felt at 7 and 8 years of age, when I was left to look after my baby brother while Mum and Dad headed down to the pub.
I’d been given instructions on how to warm up the milk, so I could feed him. And I could cuddle him. But beyond that, I was ill-equipped to be caring for an infant (being barely more than an infant myself). When the tears and the crying started, I didn’t know what to do to soothe him. I was completely out of my depth.
Pre-Huggies and Pampers, the only nappies available were the old terry towelling cotton variety, and they were no match for the amount of poo that babies seem to be able to produce.
One episode that remains seared into my memory is of my brother standing in his cot, crying and smearing poo all over the cot and himself. Every time I tried to approach him, he would grab a handful and fling it at me. I think back to it – and maybe he was laughing, too. Maybe it was just me crying!
I eventually managed to lift him out of his cot, covered in poo, and put him on the floor while I tried to clean up the mess, only to turn around and find him rubbing more poo into the seagrass matting that covered the floor.
I
