Don't let no one convince you otherwise. This motherhood thing is the biggest con ever. One day there you are bright, with a waistline and a mind that thinks. The corporate world is waving offer letters under your nose and the future is roseate…that is the time the motherhood trap springs, disabling you for life in the normal world .
From the minute you behold that ugly wrinkled slip of humanity angrily demanding to devour you, you become a Mother. And never again will you walk this earth free of anxiety and without the conviction that your sole purpose in life is to wipe snot from noses and pooh from bottoms.
For the rest of your life you will be obsessed with shoving down food down mouths and education down minds. You will take it upon yourself to keep the offspring from all things remotely threatening. Even when he is fifty and lusting after a swelte golddigger. It was easier when he was five and lusting after worms .
Your life will be series of doctors visits, PTA meetings, in between, you will script your own legends of sock spending a lifetime matching socks and retrieving shoes from the potty. You will acquire rare skills in diapers drapes without spilling a drop, in digging gum out of navels and peanuts out of ear. You will swallow leftovers and end up getting ten kgs of excess weight that you will never have time to work off unless when you are running after the school bus with a water bottle. You will never again sleep lest there is that cry in the night. Your instinct will be sharper than ever, taking you straight to the backyard sump to rescue a drowning puppy and to locate a toilet in the middle of the street. You will learn to lie through your teeth about going for icecream when you are taking them to the clinic for a shot. And how touching their wee wee will make them pregnant, specially boys. When he belches, you will panic dash to a doctor. When he hiccups, you will take him for an ultrasound. When she coughs, it is a catscan. When she sneezes, you will call up John Hopkins.... When she talks too much you will suspect drugs. When she doesn't think , can it be throat cancer?
If anyone eulogises motherhood, stuff that tennis ball you fished out from the toilet into his mouth. From day one you are compulsive, obsessive and neurotic with symptoms of schizophrenia. But even the psychiatrist will brush it aside as untreatable motherhood, Maybe you thought that it gets better when they grow up and go away. It just gets worse because now, you need to be covert. Like my secret calls to my son's Man Friday to check if he is swallowing his vitamins and how many cigarettes has he smoked. I call my daughter in the US to remind her about breakfast. The other day, I started telling my husband about the toothfairy and he looked aghast. "For Godssake, no toothfairy will give a coin for dentures. And will you please stop wiping my nose for me?"
Somewhere between cod liver oil and washing mouths out with soap, I’ve lost the plot. Now I auto suggest myself to sleep saying that my kids are grown up and capable of washing their hands with soap after pooh pooh. That is when Father Nature writes in a whammy. Your parents become children. And you are telling your mother to go to the toilet ... yes again …before you take her out. And no, she cannot have icecream with her sore throat. And has she washed her hands with soap after pooh pooh?
