It’s not just your imagination—moms are really into Mother’s Day while in quarantine
Related: Yes, your mom deserves this designer bag and other Mother’s Day gifts
“Nothing from nature is good or bad. Natural things are just are; the only good and bad things are people’s various choices in the face of what is.” – David Foster Wallance
The pandemic has pushed me to spend an unprecedented time with my family. It’s both good
and bad. As someone who’s worked all her life, as the oldest sister who has been trained to get sh*t
done, as a middle child who conforms her feelings to those around her, as a geriatric member of the
widely-despised Millennial (oh, our feelings!) generation, and now as a mother to two strong-willed, very young children… well, it’s been a lot.
Kid And Play
A few days ago, I saw my three-year-old playing by herself. She had it all: an unseen audience, imaginary friends and imaginary toys. “It’s a good thing,” my husband protested to me, as I bawled in the next room. “She’s resilient!” But earlier that day she’d paused in her make-believe and suddenly turned to me. “I miss them, mama,” she said quite seriously and sadly. “Who love?” I
asked. “I miss my friends,” she said, hugging me tightly and burrowing her face into my lap. And
we both cried. And I cried again when she skipped back to playing by herself.
Oh, I know I’ve got nothing to complain about. I have help, a wonderful nanny who adores
my kids. I’ve got a husband who works from home and takes the kids swimming every afternoon. I’ve
got work that I enjoy and that keeps me busy. I’ve even got a 10-month-old baby—and we all know that a baby makes everything better.
But beneath the gloss there are fractures. My nanny hasn’t seen her kids since the first lockdown, a fact that breaks my heart as it no doubt has broken hers already. Each time the lockdown eases, we check for news if she can visit already, but the trip to her province is so fraught with uncertainty that she herself thinks it’s not worth the effort. “You can take the plane. You can get the vaccine,” I tell her. She demurs. Meanwhile, my husband and I have the kind of relationship that thrives on not seeing each other all the time. In the pre-pandemic era of my work as a magazine editor, the countless junkets and late-night events kept us in love. Seeing each other everyday just drove us—okay me—insane. The first few months of our working side-by-side resulted in spectacular fights. “Don’t get married!”
I typed furiously to my younger colleagues. “It’s a SHAM!” As for my kids—I realized that despite my being home all the time, they still spend most of their time with their nanny or in front of the television. At night, when I put them both to sleep, I struggle to reply to work messages and send emails as one kid latches on violently to one breast and another grapples with my bellybutton, which she has
appointed as her security blanket of sorts. As soon as they fall asleep and I am able to send the last message, I pass out on the bed, only to wake up hours later to another round of suckling and grappling and messages that need answering.
Time And Time Again
There are days when everything goes swimmingly—the yoga works, the work flows, the kids are eating their vegetables. But most days all the hangups of my privileged life come crashing down on me. Like this Mother’s Day in quarantine, when hundreds of stories of moms better than you start cropping up.
You should be grateful to have a job, so please do better.
You’re home all the time, so please spend meaningful time with the kids,
ensuring that they don’t devolve into chocolate-stealing, YouTube-watching, spoiled
deviants who throw fits in the middle of their online class and can’t count to 100.
You can’t be distracted when you’re parenting your kids. Be present. Manage
your time better. Let go of the phone.
Fix your goddamn house. You’ve got help. Why is always so messy?
Why aren’t you helping out? Go help out.
Give. Give. And give some more.
Eat better. Stop online shopping. Get fit.
And on and on and on.
Take it easy, the mom groups say. You’ve got this mama!
But I don’t. Not at all. Sometimes I’m just able to let it go. But most of the time, it just overwhelms
and I retreat into a tepid pool of self-pity or work feverishly to get things done. After all, when you’ve
got all of this support, you’re supposed to be able to do more than simply survive this pandemic. Instead I’ve given up on my sourdough starter.
I don’t blame the virus. And sometimes, I don’t blame myself either. This is simply me reacting, very badly, to the unprecedented pandemic, a lousy government response, the loss of the life we had previously envisioned for ourselves.
About 5 kilometers away, my own mother is tending over another household. My brother and his family have set up camp there for the duration of the lockdown, so there are three kids running around to watch over on top of her restless husband and young adult daughters. I watch her as she waters the formidable plant collection she’s accumulated since her regular social calendar has been put on hold. I want to ask her how she manages to keep her cool despite all of this and all of them. She’ll probably tell me it’s her faith, her ministry. She might even tell me it’s her kasambahay Gina. But deep down, I think I know her answer. Perhaps she just learned to stop performing for an unseen audience, playing out an
imaginary life.
A version of Oh, Mother! A Quarantine Mother’s Day Story was previously published in the MEGA May 2021 issue available for download here.
