(This essay is a
two-part series — part 1 of which explores certain adjectives a mother decides
upon as an expression of her identity, and which compose the anatomy of my
existential crisis during the second year postpartum.)
I read an
article during the initial months after my son’s birth, something about how a new
mother was privately important. But how lonely this private importance had the
potential of making her feel, I have only come to understand over the past year.
My entire
life, ever since I began to understand the apparent nature of the two roles,
all I have ever wanted, ever dreamed of, ever fantasized right down to white-lace-curtained
detail, is to have my own family — to be wife and mother.
Some sort
of a professional career was always a given, and had certainly never been a
gender-related issue growing up — I came from an educated family full of many a
successful career woman. I was relatively intelligent, good in school (perhaps
not so much at networking, but eager to learn and eventually acquired that
knowledge as well), and had a comfortable enough time glorifying my meagre
academic accolades during the interview process.
And despite
the battered shape in which my domestically violent, abusive and traumatizing previous
marriage had left me in, I still managed to carve out a decent career path,
alongside and thereafter. Basically, I could care less about professional
success in the long-term, and was unambitiously content making do, during my
years in the workplace.
Wife and mother
My husband
is a good, conscientious and thoughtful man, and my son is healthy, happy and
as brilliantly slapstick as me — and this is all in the present, active sense. I
have the best time every day, despite being gloriously mediocre at most of the things
I am responsible for.
Having
spent all these years in wretched persistence of a place called home, I am finally
the sum of my biggest goal in life: I am wife (to a good man), and I am mother
(to a healthy child). Learning every day and trying to proactively improve
myself in those roles and all that, but — and I remember asking my reflection on
the phone screen very clearly — how could this possibly be it?
Or rather,
how could I possibly still be unfulfilled and so profoundly unsatisfied when everything
I have ever wanted is all and entirely mine?
(Working professional) wife and mother
Previously,
I have been quick to judge Muslim mothers going back to work in the early years
of their child’s birth, especially when Islam places such particular emphasis
on how psychologically and spiritually beneficial their presence is in both the
short and long-term development of the child. Perhaps that all the favourite
women in my comfortable and conventionally together life have been only the
kindest and most loving mothers, alongside also staying at home, had something
to do with it. But I understand now what could absolutely be one of the very
many driving forces (besides obvious concerns such as financial instability and
the like) behind the decision to go back to work however long after giving
birth.
Did I want
to go back to academic work from home? I tried it for a whirlwind six-month
period and did not enjoy it — my pre-pregnancy efficiency was nowhere to be
found, and everything from my relationship with my husband and child to my love
for my home and my interests in my spare time to work-related deliverables all suffered
unequivocally.
Did I want
to go back to advertising work outside of home? Ugh. Just the thought of waking
up for breakfast, packing lunch, dressing up, and commuting to a job I would
have to small-talk a whole lot in order to enjoy maybe a little was enough to
throw that thought out of the window. Let alone how much I would miss my son (I
am missing him as I write this, despite there being between us only a pathetic
dry wall separating my parents’ living room from the guest bedroom). And let
further alone the logistics nightmare his care arrangements during my work
hours would most definitely be.
(Self-aware) wife and mother
So, if I did
not want to work in the traditional sense (besides my remote role in our family
business), then what did I want to do?
I spoke to
my mother. She was supportive and calming as per usual, and offered to take
care of the little one as much and as many times as I needed to take time out
for myself, so that I could figure this out. It was such a huge relief just
getting the words out in the open, and hearing myself say them in the presence
of another mother, I almost forgot that we never did find an answer to the
question.
Then, I
spoke to my husband. As in, cried my heart out in shaking sobs because I simply
could not take the oblivion anymore. I told him — and I hope if our child ever
reads this, he will feel comfortable enough to come and talk to me about it —
that had I known how unfulfilled I would feel during this most wonderful phase
in my life, I would perhaps never have gotten married or started a family for
the sole reason that my thankfulness was not absolute. And as a result of which,
I sincerely felt that I did not deserve the fulfillment of this lifelong dream,
this most precious blessing, of mine.
With one arm
wrapped around my shoulder, while our son slept soundly in the other room, he
quite plainly laid out in front of us the sum of some things (life, marriage,
and parenting) that he had come to a conclusion on.
Most
married folks would do things differently, if given the opportunity, after coming
to a similar realization. But does that mean that they should? Challenges come
and go. We are, however, privileged to have our faith as a steadfast guide in
the face of both trials and triumphs. And along the course of working through
this and other life-changing insights (as life goes on, there are bound to be
many more), our job is to do our job, to do our job as best we possibly,
humanly, fallibly can — and to address, understand and take care of whatever
needs taking care of in order to ensure that our job is done as best as we
possibly, humanly, fallibly can.
Giving my self such a hard time in trying to
figure out just what it was that needed taking care of was indicator enough
that I was doing my job as best I possibly, humanly, fallibly could, even
though my goal, the journey, and its destination were as yet unclear.
(Spiritually-inclined) wife and mother
Later that
week, I sat down with a recent lecture series on motherhood by renowned Shi’i scholar
Sheikh Farrokh Sekaleshfar that had been on my list for a while — the most
relevant takeaway from which, was this: understanding the value of raising
children well, and the divine, unquantifiable terms in which their mother plays
her most important role in doing so.
While I may
have originally been seeking out the answer to a different question (which turned
out to be rather uncomplicated, and which I will elaborate on in part 2 of this
series), everything I learned in those a hundred something minutes helped
restore my perspective almost in its entirety, on the efforts that I had been
putting into nurturing our family life.
There was
nothing actually missing — all I had
needed this whole time was to recollect the reasons why I had chosen staying at
home and caring for my child (and my family) as my life’s work.
(Existentially stable) wife and mother
I have been
in an existential crisis for most of my adolescent and adult life — and never
before, have I had an indisputable reason not to be. There was always something
going on with the world, with the economy, with warfare, with civil rights,
with healthcare, with encroachment, with discrimination and injustice, with the environment, with any
number of endless systemic and individual issues, and of course, with me.
In this particular
hour, the culprit is a virus that we have been unable to contain as of yet, and
we are having to learn first-hand the challenges of isolation in a rapidly
changing, apocalyptic-style environment. Kashmir and Palestine have been
suffering the ruthless brunt of fascist state-sponsored isolation, paired
unabashedly with violence, rape, enforced disappearances, curfew and
communications clampdowns, for decades.
Amidst all
this chaos and suffering and helplessness, however, when I look at my child, my
heart is calmed, my breathing quietens, my worrying is subdued, and my
existential crisis eventually fades away.
His
sleeping two-year-old form is pure, unadulterated faith itself — faith in the
divine, faith in the humane, and absolutely, faith in myself. It emanates hope
and joy, warmth and care, love and blessing, sowing slowly and steadily the seeds
of strength and conviction, clarity and steadfastness, gratitude and prayer in
the budding garden of my once-parched soul.
Here I was,
thinking that I had lost myself in the deceptively mundane trappings of
everyday motherhood, only to remember (in good time) the long-awaited fruition
of the self that those very (invaluable) trappings, in fact, had been all
along.
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