It’s 5:30 am. I like this time of the day because the house is quiet. I open up the windows and breathe in the vanilla air of early dawn. And if I am not misinterpreting their hyped cackle the parrots on the eucalyptus tree outside my window like it too.
It’s a wonderful time of the day but it took me over thirty years to discover it and the last eight years to claim it for myself. Now that I have, I am a much better person and, I think, a much better mother. My thoughts are clear and my motor is tuned. The day can begin.
I wish for everyone to find the hour that belongs just to them. A time within the 24 hours of our overly scheduled lives where thoughts can roam and ideas flow. More than anyone, a mother with little children should have that time. It should be a constitutionally anchored right, if you ask me.
Since I moved to Costa Rica, my life quality as a mother has improved manifold. I have help at home for the chores that take time and still never get done like dishes, the wash, bathrooms, floors, and windows. And I also can afford a nanny to watch the kids when I have to run errands, want to meet my friend over lunch, or schedule a work meeting.
As it is, I am still with my children a lot, since we homeschool, but I rarely feel stuck with them. I am as free as a…hmmmm…man!!! And it feels great.
As a home base, Costa Rica was never really on the map for me. I am a hard-core European who will make a few exceptions when it comes to the US, my second home. So, life in the Third World – and believe me, Costa Rica is in almost every respect Third World – was never an option for me. Never before I had children. But, as many of you know, children tend to turn the world up-side-down.
Children make us move to the burbs, they make us buy mini-vans and dogs. They make us spend the holidays with our in-laws and vacations on the beach year after year after year. But they also influence our behavior in a much less obvious but no less life-altering way: they make us forget about who we were before we had them.
In a positive sense, they curb our ego-drive at least when we are around them. We are willing to do with less sleep, more noise, fewer pages read, and – most of all – less time to ourselves. But they also place a heavy toll on our ability to find some sort of equilibrium. Relationships with friends suffer, partnerships get taxed, and sex life, to say the least, tends to morph into something one might call a rushed close encounter.
It’s probably fair to say that quite literally we love our children to death. Our own mental and physical death that is. This is more true for women and monogamous men because the limited number of children they raise are it: They are their one and only chance to push their gene pool into the next generation. Hence, they flutter around their precious off-spring like nervous sparrows and provide for them with every last bit of their energy. Believe me, I know what I am talking about. With all the help I have had over the past three years, I all but invested every ounce of free time back into my kids: More activities, more play dates, more fun one-on-one time.
But I have come to realize that this is all just another form of ego fulfillment. The yearning to have it all, do it all, be it all – only this time vicariously through our kids. I see mothers do insane things all the time because they want to believe they are doing it for their kids: birthday parties with thirty hand-made matching dino hats, masks, and gift bags, one ballet performance after the other with pricey white, pink, red tutus, ice cream socials to meet parents and peers before the school year starts…but whom are we kidding? Kids can do with a lot less. The question is: can we?
Can we give up on being the super-mom? Let’s take a step back and look at the dads. They are loved just the same even if they don’t buy party favors, order layered cakes, and schmooze with the neurotic ballet teacher. The fact is, most likely our kids will grow up and survive us whoever we are and whatever we did. But being a balanced and content role-model for them to follow is the best we can do.
I wrote this in 41 minutes with my door locked while my youngest sat outside protesting loudly and then finally gave up. He now is happily playing with his blocks in the hallway and what’s more: I am happy I got to share these few thoughts. The day can move on and it’s gonna be a good one, I can feel it.
