A sense of achievement

What does our society regard as "achievement"? This time that I have away from work, on maternity, I have been asking myself this question a lot. I've spent six months with my daughter, raising her, helping her grow up, making her (hopefully) happy and yet I only get a sense of achievement when I do more conventional tasks like bake a cake for example;
or buy a gift;
or clean the bathroom;
or something like this.

Why?

Raising children is like doing a PhD: you strive like a slave day after day and on the short term you really have nothing to show for yourself; in the end, however, you get fantastically rewarded, if everything goes well :-)

Anyway, for the festive season I will also post a very non-festive but quite addictive song "I'm too hot - god damn"

Alone

Morning in bed.

Not much light outside, the winter has come.

P sleeping next to me.

Listening to the radio, having a second coffee.

Staying a bit alone with myself, with my thoughts. Getting ready for the day.

Καλημέρα. 

Birthday post

Aren't birthdays supposed to be some sort of taking-stock moment?

Mine is today, and am thinking of my life in the last year: I turn 36, and I still feel like so much younger sometimes. My husband always says to me that our ages sound "so adult" and it's true. I have a daughter now, you can't get more adult than that, no?

Last year on this day, I was pregnant and bopping it up watching Depeche Mode. This year, I snuggle with my girl in bed and it feels so good. We might be able to sneak a quick dinner later, who knows?

"Age is just a number" - why are clichés so true?

Although I have an adult age, a mortgage, a husband and a daughter, I often still feel like the young girl who first came to the UK 13 years ago, ready for a big adventure.

On for the next 36 years then, just bring on the anti-wrinkle creams and we'll be just fine :-)

The two selves

And just like this, you are no longer one, you are two, both literally and figuratively. Literally speaking, you, your body created and produced another human. Mind you, sure you had help from this other guy and all but at the end of the day, this new individual grew up inside you. So there.

Figuratively, there is the 'you' before baby, when clothes, job and friends mattered, and then there is the 'you' after baby where you feel utterly disengaged from the world. I mean, I still like clothes, my job and my friends but sometimes I just feel not entirely present. My brain is half elsewhere, don't know how to explain it really, but I can't focus and I often just don't care about what is happening around me.

It's not that I find my child as the most important thing in the world. It's just that suddenly you need to make certain choices about what happens in the life of another person, and this is time-consuming and profound, so suddenly some little detail at work is just not important...

Now that I am on maternity all this is fine and dandy, but what I am really afraid of is the reconciliation of these two selves when I go back at work. Part of me wants to come back and engage again with my normal activities, and find my old self again. Part of me however really doesn't care about all this at all and just wants to stay here and watch my small individual grow...

It's a tough life for new mothers.

Change

Change is always present. It's not good and it's not bad. It's just there, all the time. Despite this fact, people (including myself) find it very hard to accept it, embrace it, and ultimately know how to deal with it.

This summer for me has been a summer of change: I am a mother and adapting to my new role is a challenge. One of the most difficult aspects has been the change this has brought to my relationship with people: my husband, my parents, my friends. My friends here in Greece have been difficult to deal with this year because so much of us being together requires coordination, which is so much harder with a baby. I have felt bitter, angry, melancholic and so many other things. Most of all I feel that it is hard for me both to accept and to embrace the fact that things are different now. Perhaps I just don't know how to adapt.

I've always wanted to be stoic, blasé, wise. It's hard, more now than before. I guess though that the super emotion hormones are stepping in big time and are not going to let me do that. Not any time soon anyway.

But this is what life is about anyway (as Madonna knows all too well): adapting, changing, evolving, never being the same person twice "cause I'm a million different people from one day to the next" as my old favourite verve song says.

I'll do my best then to accept all this and change with the time. 

Two months a mother

On the 10th of August, I'll be a mother for two months. It's a surreal feeling that includes accomplishment, tiredness, excitement, worry, and always amazement at the miracle of life that was created, grows up and thrives.

For me the difficult bit has always been how to embrace this role and stay myself in the process. Not sure I figured it out yet, but is early still.

Little P is beautiful and funny, she looks like a cheeky baby, happy and content and that is so gratifying. Breaks my heart to see her cry whenever she does, which is not often.

Am enjoying my moments of peace and loneliness, when no-one talks to me and I don't have to do anything.

Being home in Greece is so easy, the sun, the sea, the help, the open space.

Scattered thoughts on an August afternoon. 

What are you doing today?

This is the curse of the modern mother, I figured it out. All your adult life, you spend it "doing something": wake up, go to Uni, have some studying to do; and later working, writing a paper, preparing for a lecture or whatever. Of course you spend some days doing nothing, being lazy, going shopping, being on holidays. But these are the exception, not the rule. These days you cherish, you feel sneaky, lucky for having them.

And then you have a baby. And you spend months dreaming of your glorious maternity. Of the time you will have to think, to maybe read a book, to look after this new human being. But no-one prepares you for the blending of one day to the next, of the repetitiveness of the task: feed, change, soothe, repeat. It's not bad, don't get me wrong. But it's funny when you think about it. You are not used to it, you wake up in the morning and you think: "what am I doing today?" and the answer cannot be anything you used ti do: write a paper, prepare for a lecture, whatever. The answer has to be something else, something you also did yesterday, definitely nothing worth noting per se, at least not like in your previous life.

And this, my friends, is the curse of the modern mother: it will take us time to get used to this new role, this new life where you have nothing to show for the work you did all day, nothing apart from perhaps the weight your baby put on, or the nappies you changed. And you need to learn to cherish that, you need to learn to get used to that. You need to learn to be that.

I just hope I learn to do all that before my maternity vanishes and I feel sorry that I never actually got into it, I never managed to go with the flow and learn to let go and enjoy looking after my child and clearing my mind of all the things I thought were important all these years.