The thing about being a woman is that you will always be bombarded with rows of fashion and beauty items the marketers will want you to own, you are spoiled for choice and while that isn’t in any way a catastrophe, you will soon realize that the outfits you choose may come with labels you weren’t prepared to hear - somedays you’re Superwoman, somedays you’re a villain. They will expect you to slay dragons, except that you won’t, you walk around with your hands in your pocket, and they will think you’re hiding your weapon, but the only thing you’ve got is a fist of superpowers better known as love, and when you free your hands up in the air, you will dance with them like you
I didn’t always enjoy motherhood as much as I do this way, under the sun. As I plant my smile somewhere in between my children’s cartwheeling shadows on the sunlit grass today, I am brought back to six years ago when motherhood first greeted me like a rush of huge waves; beautiful in pictures but surprisingly rough. I remember mourning what felt like a loss of freedom somewhere three weeks into the journey of mothering a newborn. I remember wondering why I didn’t instantly enjoy motherhood like in the pictures they painted. I remember wondering if I was going to feel that way forever and if I was ever cut out for this. And I remember, someone telling me that “someday, you will find a phase
Motherhood, as it turned out, isn’t as straightforward as looking into your eyes while bearing a sparkle in mine while cradling you with a familiar lullaby as I rest my cheeks against this warm headrest on the family’s old rocking chair. No, it isn’t as straightforward as that, and in fact, there are no rocking chairs. With you, I am somewhere in between being obsessed with routines and reminding myself to embrace this mess. I am “go to bed by eight” and discovering Duplo blocks in the fruit basket. With you, time is neither moving too fast nor too slow, it is both of them and it is us living in different time zones. You want things now and I want to put things back whe
We are always pedalling our way into sunsets these days. And if we’re not, we are either chasing each other, or our dreams. I love the way these little journeys remind us of our bigger journeys. Of how some moments leave us pedalling uphill in sweaty foreheads and shortness of breaths. And how some others leave us sliding downhill in giggly shrieks and fits of laughter. Of how it’s wonderful to have several (or more) stops along the way to simply enjoy the view, even if it’s imperfect. That even if the leaves at the end of the longest branch on this tree are drier than others, the greens at the other end are accentuated beautifully, and this fresh cool breeze on our cheeks feels magical. T
There are days when I would run out of words to say because poetry would have cartwheeled its way in between our sweaty palms as we rush down our favourite sunlit fields in fits of laughter hand in hand, or in between your tangled curly hair I couldn’t braid in between rushed morning school runs, or in between imaginary enchanted forests we’d play hopscotch for hours before sunset, or in between the same comfort of sunlight we’d chase each day but never get enough of. It’s funny how we look at the same sky with a different kind of marvel each day, each hour. But I guess maybe that’s how it is with the things we love - I have a picture of you captured on my phone each day;
