I get it now. Motherly love. The kind of love that means I think nothing of taking on angry wasps, vicious dogs, hoody clad teenagers and fat clumsy strangers.
I'll bark orders and bellow at people to make sure we three can all fit in a lift or navigate busy pavements or sit in a cafe.
An old friend told me how I'd changed since becoming 'Mum', more confident and organised she said. I paused and looked at her quizzically before realizing she was serious! Inside my head, most of the time, is a cacophony of self-doubt and panic and uncertainty. I survive by lurching from minute to minute, some sort of maternal mental leaps taking place in the synapses of my brain. (If, indeed, brains have synapses? You get my drift anyway...) It is certainly more by luck than judgment that the outside world perceives my strategy as vaguely calm and controlled. It is as though sanity shutters come down to filter out the world in order that I can focus on one thing two at a time.
The minute-by-minute experience of twin life is a bit like a beach. Not in a warm, sunny 'life's a beach' kind of way, just in the sense that it takes many thousands of imperceptible grains of sand to make a beach, and it takes many thousands of imperceptible moments for days and weeks and months to go by.
Suddenly the boys are bigger than they were. At a moment in time somewhere in the last five months mouths found fingers and fingers found toes and pairs of eyes found another of the same age looking back at them. And it�s been amazing. Even if (to continue a rather strained metaphor) I feel lost in a sandstorm at times.
Props help greatly in terms of pretend parental proficiency. I have a scrumptious black leather Koochu change bag that I carry around like some sort of grown up comforter. It's a hybrid bag, part scrummy slouchy on trend sac, part grown up, organised and full of daily essentials. I felt pretty smug in Selfridges when even snobby sans sprogs shoppers raised impressed eyebrows as I flicked open my fleece lined change mat and folded it up one handed thanks to an inspirational combination of magnets and leather tabs.
I also have a sheep, Ewan. Ewan the dream sheep comes everywhere with us and plays the most wonderful, non-irritating, calming melodies. A magic, heavenly combination of heartbeats and piano chords and just the right amount of tinkly bells. I like to think passers-by benefit from an unexpected aural treat when they hear us wheel by, although there is of course the possibility that I am building a reputation for being 'batty baa baa woman' with a buggy full of boys and a sheep. Oh well.
Katy Hymas
August 2010
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The 'Other' in Mother
