“I’ll be back at about 2 p.m. The routine is on the fridge, his lunch is in the freezer … and, oh, don’t forget to read the sleep schedule … and, whatever happens, don’t pick him up if he cries when he is meant to be sleeping,” I shouted as I rushed out the door in my suit and boots, gathering my phone, wallet and laptop bag and almost forgetting the car keys in my haste to get the hell out of my prison for the previous eight months.
I had looked for a job until I was five months pregnant and showing too much belly to disguise my desperation to work and I had started looking for a job again as soon as I was off the painkillers from the birth. The interview that got me the job was the one that marked the moment of giving up hope of ever escaping the house in a way that would require me to use my brain … which is why I probably got the job. It was a case of: well, there’s my CV, you either like it or you don’t–give me the job, don’t give me the job, I’m not really bothered either way.
Eighteen months, a fall out with the boss, a few freelance jobs and a near breakdown later, I find myself at the school gates, my two-and-a-few-months-old boy by my side, feeling like I want to vomit. He cries, I’m upbeat. He wails, I’m upbeat. He tears at my clothes, I’m upbeat. I get to the car and I break down and cry. I’m weepy all week and I can’t figure out why–after all, I have waited over two years to get rid of him and now I don’t want to leave him.
I may have figured it out now. I still need to take a moment after the heart-wrenching way he has to be peeled off me in the mornings but I need to give us time … mainly I need to give me time. I know he is fine once the moment of separation is over and I know he will have fun, learn to socialise and learn a host of things I can’t teach him at home (mainly due to lack of patience than lack of ability). But I’m a whole different basket case. I need to give myself time to learn that relinquishing control three mornings a week does not have to send me back to therapy.
Perhaps sending him to school will teach me more than it will teach him. When is school ever out?
