Stay: On staying, and other things that aren’t happening

It’s bathtime, and my three-year-old is being a whale.

Not metaphorically. He is making a sound that I can only describe as wooooOOOOoooo, and his one-year-old brother is in hysterics watching him. At some point, this whale has managed to splash enough water that my t-shirt has changed colour on the back.

My three-year-old notices, stops what he’s doing, and points at me with great alarm.

“Mommy. Mommy. Your back. Your back.”

Yes. I’m well aware of what’s on my back. Thank you, whale.

—

While this is happening, I am sorting the dirty clothes that they came out of — turning each one inside out, checking for stains, putting them in the hamper. Beside me, already lined up in a row: the towels, the nappies, the pyjamas. Tomorrow’s layers, ready to go.

I am doing this while keeping one eye on two slippery children in the bath.

It’s at this moment that the voice note comes in.

A notification on my phone — forty-three seconds.

I see it and think: I need this. I need forty-three seconds of something that isn’t a whale.

I press play and immediately wonder if I’ll hear it over the wooooOOOOoooo.

—

It’s my friend, on her way home from work. She’s been listening to a podcast — someone saying she never wants to hear the words stay-at-home mom again. SAHM, they kept calling it. That it should just be mom.

She sent it thinking of me.

Then I hear the word stay.

Stay.

As in: passive. As in: idle. As in: the last word I would have chosen for what I’m currently facing.

—

And it started, as it always starts, somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30am.

No alarm. No moment to adjust. You’re asleep and then you’re not, and then you’re in the room. Big smiles, voice automatically lifting. Hello baby, did you have a nice sleep?

The baby’s hands are already stretched out toward you — to be collected, to be picked up. You take off the sleep sack. You give them a kiss. Sometimes you get one back. Sometimes you get a slap in the face, which means it’s time for breakfast.

The three-year-old hears the interaction from next door and arrives in an instant. Sixth sense. He trails you and the baby downstairs.

“Hold the handrail,” you shout back to him.

—

Downstairs. Highchair.

You have approximately three minutes to assemble breakfast before someone loses patience entirely.

Weetabix, peanut butter, the healthy version of Cheerios that isn’t actually Cheerios, milk in the microwave. In the background: the dog.

You are doing four things and thinking about a fifth — the mid-morning snack, what comes after that, what comes after that — and whether they’ve had too much fruit recently, or too much bread, or yoghurt again. And whether any of this matters as much as you think it does.

—

Then the morning.

You’re already calculating — outside play, gross motor, fine motor, emotional regulation. All the things that are on your list for them to get during the week.

Today it lands on crafts.

You get everything out. The little aprons. The colours. You tell yourself you’re not going to say anything about the black paint going into the yellow.

You don’t say anything about the black paint going into the yellow.

The three-year-old does three wobbly lines with a marker and announces he’s finished. Then insists that you do it.

You look at the table. You look at the markers. You think: but I know how to colour within the lines.

You clean it all up. Nobody mentions it again.

—

By 9:30, there’s a coffee you’ve been looking forward to.

You take the cup off the machine and turn around — and for a second, just a second, you scan the room. Force of habit. Looking for someone to have it with.

There’s no one. Just the two of them.

The cup says mama on it. You hold it with both hands. You drink it standing up — because if you sit down, they’ll climb on you — and while you’re drinking it you’re monitoring, because the coffee only happens if they stay occupied.

So you slide a toy across the floor. You spot the side table that has somehow grown corners to the exact height of a one-year-old’s eyes and move it with your foot.

You are drinking a coffee and running a low-level risk assessment at the same time.

Sometimes it goes cold anyway.

You do this twice a day.

You look forward to it both times.

It’s only 10am.

—

Mid-afternoon. Someone calls for hug dancing — a term they invented.

This means you are being asked — by a nearly-twenty-kilo three-year-old — to pick him up. Which you do. And then the one-year-old would like to be picked up too.

So you do.

Because somehow you calculate the geometry of it — one on each hip — and it works.

This is when the Shakira comes on.

Through a series of playlist migrations that started with the Zootopia soundtrack — the Disney movie, the one where Shakira does the song — the algorithm brought you back to 2001. Whenever, Wherever. And then, inevitably, Hips Don’t Lie.

“So many babies,” says the three-year-old, surveying the situation from your left hip.

I do the shoulder move.

One flash of a version of myself I’d almost forgotten — more carefree, dancing because I wanted to, not because someone needed entertaining.

And then back in the room, bench pressing two toddlers on my hips.

It is muscle memory.

Nobody is passive.

—

From the window, it looks like a great time.

Sometimes it genuinely is. The music does something to the body. Everyone is smiling — the baby grabbing your hands, the three-year-old on your hip absolutely beaming.

You’re so silly, Mommy.

He loves silly Mommy.

And for a moment, the whole thing lifts.

But so is this: you are moving muscles that only get moved in this context, at this hour, carrying them at the same time. Keeping it up — in your body, in your face, in the voice you’re using.

And when you put them down, they’re disappointed.

That lands for a second too.

From the window, you can’t see both at once.

—

And then somehow, you make it to bedtime.

Not the end — bedtime isn’t the end.

There’s the bath, the books, the pajama negotiation — which pair, no that pair, actually this pair — the three stories minimum, the resistance, the very strong feelings about going to bed.

Everyone is overtired.

And somewhere in the back of your head, you’re running through the day.

The hour on the floor with the blocks. Teaching them to be gentle with each other. The coffees you drank standing up. The paint nobody mentioned again. The bench press.

And then they’re asleep.

—

You sit down.

You’re tired.

And you cannot settle, because you can see everything that still needs doing.

You had promised yourself: get the cleanup done before the bath, and then after the bath you can just relax.

You did the cleanup. You did the bath.

And now you’re sitting in the quiet, scanning the room.

Stay-at-home mom.

Who came up with that?

Certainly not anyone who’s made it to bedtime solo parenting.

Every day, day after day — the meals, the cleanup, the bath, the books, the clothes lined up in a row ready for tomorrow — soaked to the skin by a whale.

Stay.

As if that’s the thing you’re doing.