I woke up. Something was different. I didn’t know what, but the world felt strangely light and orderly. I dressed the children, walked them downstairs, pulled back the curtains and made sandwiches. Everything was the same as yesterday: their dawdling on the stairs, the high-pitched shrieks when a sibling took up too much space, the endless stories they told me from the land at knee-high, stuttering with enthusiasm, clawing a hand in my leg.
Yesterday I was still tired, a little angry and mostly empty. No big plans, no thoughts beyond the end of the day. But now, as if a curtain had been drawn, I began to fantasize in the morning sun about a new book, maybe something with a family, vacationing in a French family home full of 19th century treasures, and then getting lost in a past that is still seem coherent, while their own lives are crumbled and lacking purpose. A little too bubbly, that’s for sure, I thought as I poured coffee. And hoopla, another idea just followed, for a monologue about a happy woman without a child, while I took a sip. Howls came from the living room. Cleo had fallen off the couch. Without completely interrupting my thoughts I gave her a kiss, looked at the clock, drove the pack into the hall, gave them their coats and shoes. Fifteen minutes later we were on our bikes. Fifteen minutes later I was home, without the feeling that I had already had a day. I flipped open my laptop and started typing, only to pause when I understood.
The hormones, they had stopped bumping, falling, itching, biting.
Three times I experienced what it is like to bring a child into the world and three times, a few months after birth, I boldly shouted that I was fully back, only to realize a year later that I was myself fooled again. In the meantime, I often felt completely lost. And not just me. Everywhere pregnant women walk around with heads full of worries and fears, from which thoughts just fall out, as if they are looking for the exit in a misty labyrinth. The problem is that, just like when you have a fever, you don’t know what it’s like to feel good for a while. So you think: this is it from now on, this is me, look, I’m on my feet again, otherwise just give me another ball to keep in the air.
Hormones cause shame. You must deny, hide or laugh away the unchained flumpies, who howl and use your mind as a swing. Naming them, or even embracing them, is pretty much like relegating yourself to Mother Heart with a holistic coaching practice. I too look with mixed feelings at calls for monthly menstrual leave, because I don’t think the price of a day or two a month is too high. And I certainly don’t want to be associated with babbling about soft powers, wild women and goddesses. Hormones are not spiritual. They don’t connect us to the moon. They are a given, nothing less. And sometimes, in something as exhausting as making a child, going through puberty or menopause, you’re busy.
We don’t have to rave about it, but we can see that the breaks we give women to prepare for a new phase of life are too short.
So be patient with those who go hazy through the days.
Because until they open their laptops, they’re occupied territory.