Parting is such sweet sorrow (or, What They Never Told You About Bonding)
Since Ed is away again, I signed the children up for two weeks of day camp at Daniel’s school.
Now, me and Daniel, we’re down with the separation thing after two years of school. Helena is another matter. Not from her perspective — she sailed off up the stairs with a lunch box and back pack like she had been doing it for years. And I’m proud of her independence and spirit.
It’s me. I howled when I got back to the car and felt abandoned, abandoning and only half there. I drove off to a friend’s house and sniffed miserably at her for ten minutes while she stared at me in astonishment. “I thought,” said she, “that you’d have been dancing down the sidewalk.”
So did I. I’ve had hardly ten minutes alone in the last five years. So why was I sitting there like some damp marshmallow sniffing because my almost three year old and five and something year old had sauntered off for five hours?
Bonding: root, bond: nouns include bond (as in stocks and) and bondage. Ain’t that interesting. Same word we’re currently using for suburban S&M or in political speak for them without rights is what mothers are supposed to achieve with their children. Bondage. Well, goody.
So although I am an exhausted wreck of a temporarily single mother who needs a few hours to herself if she is to retain her already fragile sanity, without the children, I feel bereft.
Further proof, if any were needed, that once you step ashore in Motherworld, you’re pretty much damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Now I’m going to take that cheery thought and mix it into this evening’s g&t.
(Actually, that would be a better name for this blog: Motherworld.)
