A couple of weeks ago I met a young ambitious gentleman who was feeling anxious about starting a new job and complaining about how the 6 days a week/8 hours a day job will take him away from his passion in writing. Take a moment to digest this: the 48 hour week will take him away from his passion. Um, have you met mothers?
Mothers, God bless their souls, have the ability to juggle a million things a day. They must be on call all day, everyday, regardless of what they are doing or what they would like to be doing. They must be available for any kind of emergency ranging from a sudden hunger pang at 4 a.m. to a temper tantrum in the middle of a family gathering. On call ALL the time. So when a mother chooses to spend the last few hours of her day in exercising, reading, chatting with her friends, staring into nothingness, and living her life just a little bit then she is compromising actual sleep time for the sake of life. Please let her do what she wants.
Life, as you know it, is different with mothers.
I read once that a mother is living proof that human beings don’t need actual sleep and can live on coffee. I cannot be held accountable for the seriousness of this point but it makes sense to me. It all comes down to choice: would you rather sleep or would you rather feel like a person?
You see, regardless of common belief, mothers are normal human beings with hopes and dreams. They realize that they should exercise, have friends, and go out but sometimes they are not in a position to do so. Sometimes, life has to be put on hold for a couple of years to enable the caring of a baby and thus ensure the continuity of humankind. Yes, I am trying to sugarcoat the first few months of a baby’s life just to reassure myself that there is light at the end of the tunnel and honestly, I have seen it before. It takes almost a year for the phoenix to raise from the ashes.
But it’s that first year that tests what a woman is made of. How agile she is, what are her goals in life, how she thinks children must be raised, and what comes first in her list of priorities. Many women choose to put themselves first and foremost and I have the greatest respect for them because I believe in the freedom of choice. Do I support it? Does it matter? I’ve heard a blogger I highly respect repeat that women need to stop putting each other down when it comes to motherhood because each and everyone of us is doing her best as she sees fitting to her lifestyle. I would really like to believe that all women love their children regardless of how naive it makes me sound. Knowing that the most sincere and pure kind of love is emitted from every mother is a very calming notion and I choose to cherish it with all my heart. (tangent, I know).
Back to the chaos behind the love and the background mechanisms working to maintain the family life. Let’s compare a man’s morning and a mother’s morning.
Man
It’s 7 a.m. and the man is fast asleep. He hears the soft jingle of the alarm from yonder and quietly opens his eyes, his hand reaches for his phone and automatically snoozes the alarm, getting extra minutes of sleep after deciding that he is too tired from the day before.
Mother
It’s 6 a.m., there is no alarm clock because the mother is relying on her biological clock and/or her children to wake her up. She wakes up on a wailing child ranting about something that just doesn’t make sense. The mother wishes to put the child on “snooze” but sadly children don’t come with a snooze button. So the mother burpees her way out of bed to quiet the baby down. In the meantime, all other children wake up and start talking at the same time. Noise takes its form of insanity and the woman tries hard to maintain a smile on her face.
Mothers fight through the pain of sleeplessness, the pain of not being appreciated, and the pain of not knowing when her next shower is. This is not a joke, showers genuinely make people feel better. They fight through the screams, fight through not being respected and listened to, and fight through the physical exhaustion. True fighters, mothers still manage to fill their plate with ways to prove herself independent and amazing to act as a role model for her children. In the 24 hours a day, mothers manage to cram extra hours to give even more to her family.
So with the nearing of a new year, all mothers will consciously decide to take it easy while their subconsciousness will stand proud, chest puffed and ready for more responsibilities, more obligations, and more love.
Grabbing life by the horns.
Bring it on.
Bedoor Bluemoon 