Faking it

Why is it that, when children fall asleep with you, they make sure to toss a leg or two nonchalantly over yours, and maybe an arm across your chest as well, just to ensure that you can't creep away without their knowledge. Even in their sleep? It couldn't be, could it, that they're cunning little buggers? No, I'm sure it's purely coincidental. Or innate, or something.

Mabel just now propped both legs up on me as she conked out. Monkey at this age used to fall asleep, finally, with his head resting on top of my head, for maximum imprisonment and minimum comfort.

Monkey and I have come to an agreement: I'll cover his ears for him without complaining, if he'll go to the bathroom when I can see he has to go, and not three hours later after a succession of increasingly teary shouting matches. So far, this is - sort of - working. It's really picking one horn of the dilemma and landing myself on it, but at least it leads to a quieter life and a happier household, and I'm hoping he'll grow out of the need for the sensory deprivation faster if I don't make a big deal of it. (I'd also like him to start opening his eyes again. I'm mostly trying not to think about that.) I know he can go by himself if he has to, because he did on Monday when I was out and a friend was watching him, so I'm satisfied we don't need to call in the shrinks just yet.

******

It dawned on me the other day that I am really, truly, a soccer mom. I bring my kid to soccer practice, so I must be. It's a bit of an adjustment: I liked being the pregnant lady, I was delighted to be the woman with the baby, I love being the mother of the cute little ones, but soon (far too soon) I'll just be somebody's mum. It seems unfair, perhaps because I so vividly remember what somebody's mum is like from the other side of the fence - the side when it's your playground, your classroom, your teacher, and the mums are the gathering hordes outside, waiting lovingly to retrieve you from being just another one of many and bring you home to your domain, where you're one among few, and life revolves, to some degree, around only you.

People's mums have perms, and slacks, and cardigans, and coffee mornings and dinner parties. Times have changed, and I've never had a perm, but I do like my cardigans, and khakis are the slacks of the noughties. (Though three seasons of the year I live in my jeans. I'm a trendy mum.) I know, because the supermarket's canned music tells me so, as I hum along the aisles, that I'm the one who's supposed to be doing the grocery shopping these days. All this time I've been pretending to be a grown-up, doing the things grown-ups do, and now it turns out that these small people I've nurtured in my bosom (and their friends) think that's just what I am. How they betray me, reeling me in to motherhood by letting me bask in their reflected cuteness, and spitting me out all too soon, all haggard and grey and looking like somebody's mum.

Perception is everything. "Fake it till you make it" really just means fake it until everyone else thinks you look like it.