Babyhood goes by, in a haze of sleepless nights and gurgling days. Juggling becomes a new skill – not just man management, finance management but emotional management, never truly achieved. I return to work, I need to re-focus, to resume “my life”. But yearning sits inside me. I have always undertaken projects 100 percent. How can I be 100 percent mother and 100 percent to my job. When I sit in the office I want to be mother, I am being torn apart. My plans are in tatters, my goals pointless in the face of reality. I have to learn a new skill, compromise. I cannot be the mother of a perfect child; work is a means to provide an income to enable our family to function. All I need to be is a good enough mother. How will I ever be good enough?

The sleepless nights of babyhood were easier to recover from than the nightmare driven nights in seeking to find a way out of this maze of emotions. Before I know it, my son is walking into school. Not a baby, not a toddler but a growing little person. I am no longer the center of his universe; he now knows best and his utterances are constantly quoted to me. My one and only is now one of many. I no longer know all of his friends. I am no longer the fountain of all knowledge. My comments or questions are now greeted with “Oh Mom”. And worst of all, I hear my own mother. The most dreaded thing o

Some topics in this essay:
, Freya Stark, “everybody else”, 100 percent, tiny person, love sight, scrap humanity, sleepless nights,